Summer may be at its peak, but members of the Smith Lab at Scripps Institution of Oceanography (SIO) are still hard at work! Some are out & about around the world checking on their experiments and collecting data, others are right here in San Diego learning new skills and working on various projects.  Find out what people are up to!

Many lab students have been traveling to the beautiful island of Hawaii for various research-related projects.

Jill Harris went to Maui  to scout sites for her upcoming project, gather samples, and help fellow PhD lab mate Emily Kelly gather data from her long-term experiment. She also happened to make some new friends with a beautiful sea turtle and an adorable slipper lobster. (Photo Credit: Jill Harris)

          

Levi Lewis & Clinton Edwards also went to Maui to collect data and check on their in situ experiment that look at the rates and preferences of herbivorous sea urchins in Hawaii.  You can check out that post here.

                    

Susan Kram, Molly Gleason, Niko Kaplanis and Sam Clements are all taking the SIO SCUBA diving AAUS certification course (American Academy of Underwater Sciences).

We are working hard and having a lot of fun!  We do two dives a day and discuss important diving skills and theories in lecture sessions like the physics of diving and steps to dive planning.
-Susan Kram

9 members of the Smith Lab have also just returned to the US from Carin, Australia where they attended the 12th Annual International Coral Reef Symposium. Here you can see Master’s student Clinton Edwards (left), PhD student Emily Kelly (middle), and Post Doctoral Researcher Nichole Price (right) giving presentations about their research findings.

But at the end of a long’s day work, the lab knows when they work hard – they can play hard.  And nothing is better than a fun game of bocce ball on the beach while enjoying the gorgeous sunset right here at Scripps Pier.