The Humphries Lab marked the end of its very first academic year last week with a celebratory potluck dinner. A culinary cultural exchange, Austin, Lauren, Evans, and Diky filled the table with dishes from where they grew up – representing Virginia, New England, the coast of Ghana, and the island of Java, Indonesia. And because we take matters of food very seriously, the result was mouth-watering!
In our first year we’ve gone from Austin and lonely grad student Lauren, to 8 official members of the Humphries Lab team. Talk about a serious growth spurt! Evans and Diky joined the team at the start of the Spring 2016 semester, and Paul Carvalho, Elle Wibisono, Katie Viducic, and Aditi Tripathy will be officially jumping on board this Summer and Fall. The research topics of our grad students now include topics such as data visualization of small-scale fisheries, human dimensions of coastal restoration, gear-based management of coral reef fisheries, and stock assessment methods for data-poor fisheries. These projects span geographies: Martha's Vineyard (MA), the North Atlantic Ocean, coastal Ghana, and islands throughout Indonesia. Developing projects in the lab include research on integrated multi-trophic aquaculture (kelp + oysters) in Rhode Island, as well as tourism and fisheries socioecological work in Lombok and Sumbawa, Indonesia.
We’ve carved out our office space(s) in Woodward Hall, stocked up our laboratory on the third floor, and filled up the gear racks with field sampling equipment. Diky is spending the summer doing field work on the islands in Wakatobi National Park, Indonesia, and Lauren will launch into her first field season on Martha's Vineyard. Evans is on URI campus laying the groundwork for his dissertation proposal, and Austin is busy island-hopping in the Bahamas, Indonesia, and Hawaii. Stay tuned for updates on all of our summer research endeavors!
