Malinda Sutor on tiny creatures that make a big impact
Plankton provide the single largest source of oxygen and carbon sequestration on this planet all while nourishing the largest mammal on Earth, the blue whale. With the rise in temperature and acidity in the ocean an urgent question emerges; how will the environmental changes affect the plankton’s ability to maintain these global processes and provide the foundation of the world’s food web? Join us in our conversation with Dr. Malinda Sutor, from the Department of Oceanography and Coastal Sciences in the College of Coast & Environment, as we cover a range of topics including the challenges of quantifying zooplankton to her research into this puzzling question to the importance of quantifying these organisms from a national defense perspective. (Transcript below.)
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LSU Experimental is a podcast series that shares the research and the “behind the scenes” stories of LSU faculty, student, and alumni investigators across the disciplines. Listen and learn about the exciting topics of study and the individuals posing the questions. Each episode is recorded and produced in CxC Studio 151 on the campus of Louisiana State University, and is supported by LSU Communication across the Curriculum and LSU College of Science. LSU Experimental is hosted by Dr. Becky Carmichael and edited by Kyle Sirovy.
Transcript
Becky Carmichael
[0:01] This is LSU Experimental where we explore exciting research occurring at Louisiana State University and learn about the individuals posing the questions. I'm Becky Carmichael. Today, Dr. Malinda Suter from the Department of Oceanography and coastal sciences, shares her work on microscopic zooplankton. They're large effects, and why we should sweat the small stuff.
Malinda Sutor
[0:25] What is the single largest source of oxygen on earth, nourishes the largest mammal on the planet, and served as the biggest sink carbon dioxide. Its plankton, and they are small. Plankton are the small plants and animals that live in the oceans and are at the base of the food web. They can be microscopic, sometimes only a single cell or larger like a jellyfish. We may not think about the much, if at all, but we depend on them every day. They give us the air that we breathe, help to reduce global warming and provide food for the fish that we eat. I primarily study zooplankton, the small animals that make up the plankton, and where they live in the ocean, and how they interact with each other and their environment. Why is this important? Let's consider blue whales that depend on zooplankton for energy. Whales not only have to locate zooplankton, which can be less than a millimeter long and so too small to see. But they also need to eat a lot of them. If zooplankton were not concentrated in patches and layers that the whales can find, the whales could not survive because they would have to filter so much water to get enough to eat, it would take more energy than they would gain from their food. Because many of the largest marine animals from Blue Whales to the whale shark have evolved to depend on zooplankton instead of fish, then concentrations of plankton must be a great resource that they can consistently find. How do they know where these concentrations of plankton are? And why are plankton patchy in the first place, instead of being evenly distributed in the ocean, the distribution, abundance, composition, and rate processes of plankton control food webs and global processes, like carbon sequestration. Still, we know relatively little about these things on small time and space scales. Because it has been so difficult to observe them. Understanding the small scale actions of plankton is key to unlocking our understanding of larger scale marine processes. Like why populations of fish change over time. This is increasingly important as our oceans are undergoing major environmental changes. It's even more critical than ever to better understand the role of plankton in the marine ecosystem, and how they're being affected by these changes. One of the things that I do to study small scale processes in the plankton is to use cameras, and acoustic instruments to map out distributions of plankton. Just like a fish finder used in recreational and commercial fishing, scientific echo sounders that use higher frequencies can send out sound waves and detect the reflected sound from plankton to find out where they're located. If we add in a camera system, which is like an underwater microscope, we can get pictures and so be able to identify what type of plankton are in the layer or patch we've mapped out. My research and the work of many others has also shown that plankton do seem to concentrate in layers around environmental features, like the picnic climb, where the density of the water changes very rapidly. This may be how whales find plankton layers. It may be they're using environmental cues, like sensing when the temperature or density of the water is changing quickly to know where to find the plankton. So what happens if the oceans warm up, or become more acidic? How will that affect plankton populations and where plankton are concentrated? How will that affect the plankton ability to produce oxygen, draw down carbon dioxide and provide food for higher trophic levels. How will it affect whales ability to find enough food? We need to know more about how the small scale processes in the plankton to be able to answer these important questions. And this might surprise you, but you know who else cares about plankton? The US Navy? That's right. The Navy has funded a lot of research on plankton, including some of my work. The kinds of ecological questions that I'm interested in the Navy is too, but for different reasons. Why would the Navy want to be able to predict the location of layers and patches of plankton? One reason is that many plankton are bioluminescent, that means if they're disturbed, they glow like a firefly. If you're a Navy SEAL diver, you don't want the enemy to know where you are by following a trail of lighted plankton. I think this is one of the great examples of how basic research aimed at understanding our planet and the organisms that live on it can have important impacts on other parts of society that we might not expect. The oceans are by far the biggest ecosystem on our planet., and the one we probably know the least about. Organisms and processes so small, they're not readily visible can have direct impacts on the food on our plates and our planet’s climate, we still have a lot to learn about the small scale processes in the plankton. Unlocking secrets about some of the most important and oldest organisms on Earth, may help us to understand some of the large scale changes we observe in the oceans, and to predict future changes. We can't effectively manage the ocean resources and environment if we don't understand what makes it tick. So we do need to sweat the small stuff.
Becky Carmichael
[5:57] So Malinda, thank you so much for sitting down today with us. I'm really excited to learn more about your research. But I first want to know a little bit about who you are. What's your position here at LSU? And could you give us a little bit of your background? How did you get to LSU in the first place?
Malinda Sutor
[6:14] Sure. Well, I am an assistant professor of research in the department of Oceanography and Coastal Sciences, and for people who don't know what that title means. That means that I'm not a tenure track faculty. I'm supported primarily on soft money, which means by bringing in grants, so that's what the position is. I came here in kind of a long route. I did my undergraduate at Whitman College, which is a liberal arts school in Washington State, and there ended a degree in both Biology and English Literature, as I really love both subjects, but at the end of the time, I was knew that biology was where I was going to be headed. I took a year off and worked because I had some student loans to pay back, but I was very lucky that during my undergraduate I'd participated in a research cruise that one one of my professors at my undergraduate was doing. And he was doing that with Dr. Joe Siebenaller, who's here at LSU in the Department of Biology. And just participating in the cruise, I got to know a lot of different people. So when it came time for graduate school, unfortunately hadn't had great guidance, so I didn't apply as many places as I probably should have. But I was accepted and was probably going to go to the University of Washington and the Fisheries Program, pending grant money coming in, and when the grant didn't get funded, Joe heard about it and invited me said, "You know, we're looking for good students at LSU this may not be exactly what you wanted to do in Fisheries, but there's some faculty here working on plankton and I think you would be a great fit." And so it was really through that connection, I applied, I was accepted, and came to LSU and did a master's degree in what was then the Department of Zoology and Physiology. And I worked on plankton in freshwater lakes, So we did our research up in Canada. After my Master's, I worked again and wasn't sure exactly what I wanted to do, so I worked as a technician at the National Marine Fishery Service, in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, which was a great experience, working full time, you really learn your skills and your craft in a way that you can't when you're a student a lot of times, but about six months in, I knew I wanted the stresses on the Ph.D. side of the fence on the Masters side of the fence. And so I applied to graduate school and was accepted at the place I really wanted to go, which was Oregon State University at the College of Oceanography and Coastal or sorry, College of Oceanography and Atmospheric sciences. And then after that, I had been in a relationship with somebody since my Masters who I had met at LSU. He had secured a faculty job here at LSU. So then like many people, all my decisions became very geographic, so I came back to LSU, I was very lucky to do a postdoc at the Lumcon Marine Lab with Dr. Mike Dag, a very short one kind of truncated by Hurricane Katrina. And then the department gave me, basically an office in the ability to write grants. And so that's where I've been since then at LSU.
Becky Carmichael
[9:06] So you started off in the Northwest? Is that where you're originally from?
Malinda Sutor
[9:11] Yes, I'm from Eastern Washington State.
Becky Carmichael
[9:13] So you've really been surrounded by this type of even ecosystem and these types of questions, maybe your whole life? Are you close to that where you will the water.
Malinda Sutor
[9:22] I actually grew up initially on a wheat ranch in Eastern Washington, So I would never lived near the ocean, even though we used to go and visit it. So a lot of you know, I think a lot of what got me interested in science overall, where, you know, probably some of the things I saw on TV, I remember being fascinated with Jane Goodall, and just the idea of being a natural historian just being out there observing the fact that, you know, careful, detailed observations over time, done in, you know, a proper scientific way could yield these amazing insights. And yes, we watched a lot of Jacques Cousteau and no oceanography is nothing like that. And Anyways, thank goodness. But I've always been fascinated with the natural world, and you know, with water and the oceans in particular. So
Becky Carmichael
[10:07] I'm also excited that you were mentioning, you took opportunities. So you took these, this cruise, and that's provided you with these connections, and these are some pretty amazing connections to have both at universities as well as at research institutes like Woods Hole. Along the way, at any point along this trajectory, did you ever say to yourself, I should have gone back to the English literature.
Malinda Sutor
[10:32] Um probably not, although I will say my degree in English, really benefited me as a scientist, and as a student in graduate school, was a really, you know, English degrees are tough. And there's a lot of critical reading and thinking those are skills, I learned that I was so glad I mastered at that high level before I became a graduate student, and then a scientist. So I've been ever thought about going back. I still love literature, and you know, maybe that will be in my future writing something about, you know, some of the things that I do, but science has been wonderful. I find it fascinating. It's a job that I love, so no, I've never thought of going back to the back to the other way.
Becky Carmichael
[11:16] But I would imagine that as you're saying, You're still you're finding that connection between those two as well. And so implementing it daily, that merging of both your passions.
Malinda Sutor
[11:26] Absolutely. And I think we're making a huge mistake by steering STEM students away from the humanities, I think the humanities, and humanities education is very important, not just you know, a lot of people will just bring out, kind of, the philosophy and the ethics side. But you know, some of the most talented scientists I see are also incredibly artistic, and, you know, have a lot of these other kinds of interests. And those are kinds of things that I think are really important to bring into the sciences, And I think that we need to continue to encourage science students to not steer away from some of these really important humanities courses. And it's more than just, you know, basic, go take your writing 101, I think that there's a lot more that can be gained to make you a better scientist because of that.
Becky Carmichael
[12:10] I completely agree. Because I think that if being a scientist is also being creative, and if you can't find that creativity, and then you can't convert those observations into language that's accessible, then all those discoveries and all that information is lost. And so I think that there's there is that, that crossover and it's not just connection, I think there's that intermix between those areas that we do need to foster, not only as you're a student, but then also as you continue on in your professional career. So you said a little bit that, you know, you had done some of your work in freshwater, plankton. When did you realize that it was the marine systems you are most passionate about? How did you find that niche?
Malinda Sutor
[12:57] It really always was the Marine systems, and so I just kind of took this opportunity for a Masters where, you know, I was going to be in limbo, there was an opportunity to do this. Yes, it was in lakes, and yes, it was maybe not exactly what I'd wanted in the beginning. But I actually think it was a great place to start for me. Freshwater systems, I mean, not to say that they're not they are incredibly complex, there's a lot going on, but there's some things that are a little bit simpler. And so it was kind of a great place to really learn a lot, and the the work that I did was controlled field experiments that we built these huge enclosures that basically were like 36, big Ziploc bags that encompass the water column, and we did manipulative experiments in them over a period of time. So I learned there were a lot of failures in that experiment, and I learned a lot from that, and was lucky to have very supportive committee members who helped me to put together you know, what really could be and it was it, you know, I got it published and everything. So you know, it, it all worked out. But yeah, I mean, I love that. But it's, it was really just kind of taking the opportunity, saying, this may not be exactly what I want to do, but for a Master's, I'm going to learn a lot. And it's really along the same lines. So the fundamental ecological questions are the same.
Becky Carmichael
[14:14] Yeah, and you pick it, you're picking up that adaptability, because I think one of the big things that I had learned even on my first field season was like the phrase modifying based on field conditions, because you can't always predict everything that's going to happen in the field setting, going is that field setting always going to be the same. And so you have to really be able to adjust and make it work, so you can get that data, and then also get the data so that you can compare data from either previous seasons or years.
Malinda Sutor
[14:47] And that's, I think, really true in Oceanography, especially when you're paying 10s of thousands of dollars a day for a ship that you have for a limited amount of time. And you know, what, if the weather gets bad, what if something breaks, you know, you kind of get out there, and you plan as much as you can. And then you collect as much data and as many samples as you can. But a lot of times, you know, you sometimes you're able to modify while you're out there, but a lot of oceanographic cruises the way that we're able to undertake them as they're highly interdisciplinary. Oftentimes, there's many groups on board, and well, it's cooperative. There's also a competition, you know, for time, we call it wire time, you know, time to get your instrument over the side. So you have to work together and be cooperative. You can't just say, Well, I didn't get my sample at that station, because the weather's bad, we need to go back. There's usually no going back, and so a lot of times you do you come back, you know, to land and you reassess and say, Okay, what, what is good about this, what it's not, what can we use? And so you have to plan your cruises like that as well. But it is definitely, yeah, something you have to be adaptive about. And you know, and come back and be able to say, I can still get something good out of this.
Becky Carmichael
[15:54] So do you have a story or an example of when you really had to be adaptive on that ship?
Malinda Sutor
[16:00] Yes. I did a lot of fieldwork during the oil spill, so I was going out on a lot of cruises on behalf of Noah, the federal government to do assessments on plankton, but also we collected, you know, water for oil samples and lots of things. And there really aren't that many research vessels, you know, overall in the United States in terms of how many the scientists would love to have, and especially in the Gulf, there's quite a paucity of dedicated research vessels. So we have the Pelican, here in Louisiana. And then there, there are certainly some other vessels around but you know, that's kind of our main one in Louisiana. So we were utilizing a lot of ships that are used in the oil industry. And so you're kind of outfitting a ship. That's not necessarily meant for oceanographic research. So you're putting equipment on that maybe hasn't been tested like winches, which carry the cable that we use to lower things into the water and out, you might get a winch from one place and welded onto the ship, get a generator to run that winch from somewhere else. So there a lot of hodgepodge of putting things together, and we went out on a vessel that, yeah, pretty much everything broke. At one point, when we were in port, as the chief scientist made a list saying, "We will not leave the dock until the toilets function, like the winch functions, we can control the speed of the ship from the wheelhouse where they actually drive it from," you know, there were a lot of things. But what was neat is I was out on the ship. And yes, a lot of things did break, but one thing that did break, one thing we depend on is something called a wire meter. This tells us how much cable has come off the winch and into the water, so that tells you how deep your instrument is. So for a lot of the work we did, we were far off shore working in the ocean where it's thousands of meters deep. And so by the time you get an instrument, we were using an instrument called a CTD, which measures temperature density, salinity, it also has bottles that you can trigger to close at whatever depth you want. But you have to know where the instrument is to do that. And those can contain water samples you can bring to the surface. So put something in, when it's this deep, sometimes you're spending hours, you know, for something to go down and something to come back. So we put our instrument in, got nearly to the bottom, and then I was alerted that the meter, the cable meter had quit working at some point, nobody quite knew exactly when. So at that point we were faced with, okay, do we just bring it up and try again, and we decided it was so long, so this is where your fundamental algebra and geometry comes in. I went out and measured the circumference of the winch, figured out what the circumference was. So we knew that every time a wrap of wire came off, we knew how long that was. Within stations, people we put a couple tape marks on so we could tell when the wraps were coming off, and we just station somebody to stand and just their whole job was just to count how many wraps. And we periodically would go and make sure that circumference again and recalculate what the length was. And we use that to bring that instrument up and fire the bottles at the depths we thought we wanted and amazingly, we were pretty right on. You know, I was I was out there with another Oceanographer from Woods Hole Oceanographic, a guy named Cabel Davis. And we were talking just about how it was really great to even though he's much more experienced and you know, came up longer ago than I did. We both were taught to basically do analog oceanography, and that was really important. Because once we were out there, and we didn't have a lot of the bells and whistles, we were able to put something together. And it's also perseverance you can kind of give up and say we'll pull it up, it doesn't work. Or, you know, that's kind of what takes the extra mile to really be successful is say, "No, you know, even if it's raining out whatever it is, I'm going out there, we're going to measure this thing we can do this." So yeah, that would be a good example of persevering.
Becky Carmichael
[19:57] That's a fantastic example. So let's get back to the plankton themselves. So can you tell us I know in your monologue, you said they're small organisms? Can you describe those a little bit further?
Malinda Sutor
[20:13] Absolutely, yeah. I mean, plankton, you know, we use the term plankton, comes from the Greek meaning to drift. And it really encompasses a huge diversity of organisms. and so we often end up classifying them just based on their size, because then it even be difficult, like some are single celled plants, their auto traffic, and those are the phytoplankton. But then as we get into what we call micro zooplankton, we have things that some of them do have chlorophyll, but they can also eat other things. So they're mixedotrophic, they're not just autotrophic or heterotrophic. So there's a huge diversity, we get up into a lot of things people be more familiar with that we call plankton. Certainly anything that is like crab larvae, so then lot of the things we recognize as adult organisms, their larval stage is in the plankton. And so crab larvae, shrimp, copepods are one of the most ubiquitous members of the zooplankton, and many people probably haven't seen them unless they've come by one of our booths at Ocean Commotion. But they look like you know, just little small oval kind of shaped, people might equate them with fleas. But we get this huge diversity, even up to some of the larger jellyfish are considered plankton because of their inability to swim against strong horizontal currents.
Becky Carmichael
[21:35] So if they drift. That's one of the characteristics that kind of placed them into that category.
Malinda Sutor
[21:42] Yes, one of the one of the rules that has been used is to say, "Can you swim strongly against a horizontal current, and if not, then you're generally put into the plankton." Now, this doesn't mean that plankton can't move a lot. And in fact, things like copepods, which are you know, sometimes less than a millimeter, will undergo vertical migration, so vertical up and down in the ocean, of hundreds of meters every day, they will come up into the surface waters where there's phytoplankton for them to feed on. And they'll do that during the night because during the night, the kinds of things that like to eat copepods, which are fish, or visual predators, and they can't see them as well. So then, when the sun comes up, the copepods all descend down into the depths where they can't be fed on as readily by visual predators, and they'll wait to come up the next night. So just because we think about them as drifting are not able to swim against a strong horizontal current, doesn't mean they aren't capable of really great movements and very directed movements.
Becky Carmichael
[22:39] Wow, you mentioned something about them kind of being in concentrations, how have you been able to measure these concentrations to know to approximate the abundance in particular locations?
Malinda Sutor
[22:54] Yeah, so plankton had been hypothesized to be patchy for a long time before we had this technologies that we're using today to measure these distributions. People pull a net through the water and say there has to be more here, because we know they support so much life. So the kinds of things that I alluded to in the monologue that we use a lot today are acoustic, so using sound, and it can be difficult because you can you just know that you're getting reflected sound. You don't always know exactly how many plankton are there or exactly what type. So that's why you need to combine something else like cameras, or a net that you can actually put in the water to get a direct sample and say, okay, here's what's composing this particular layer or patch of plankton that we're seeing.
Becky Carmichael
[23:42] And so when you have these patches, it's not just one singular type of plankton, but it could be a mix that... say the blue whale is feeding on at any given time, they're pretty much going to a buffet right in the water.
Malinda Sutor
[23:59] Yeah, I mean, as we've been able to look more at these layers, it really, it really depends on the place too and kind of what's going on with the ecosystem. So the highly endangered right whales depend on feeding primarily on copeods, and copepods of one particular species, that set up in these very distinct layers in the Bay of Fundy. And the reason it's mostly a composition of all one species, it's a particular time of year when they come out of hibernation from the deep waters and start to go through reproduction. So that's an example where what the whales are feeding on is probably pretty much all [inaudible] in these layers. Now, other places, and I've done work off the Oregon coast a lot for my Ph.D., the layers we looked at can be more mixed, they can also change based on, you know, reproduction, it might be a whole pulse of barnacle larvae, that will be in a layer at one point because that's a reproductive event that's just happened. So we we still, I think, don't have a great understanding of predicting exactly what the composition of these different layers will be at different times, because we haven't had the ability to make as wide a range of observations in a lot of different systems to really kind of get a handle on that.
Becky Carmichael
[25:15] So this is really getting at the complexity of not just the marine ecosystem, but the... Can I say like the sub ecosystems within a marine environment that really are complicating kind of what you can find and then not to mention, we had talked a little bit previously about how you're measuring these components. So what are some things that you're currently working on, or proposing to work on, to try to tease out some of these obstacles you're encountering with this?
Malinda Sutor
[25:50] Yeah, so more of my research recently has been not quite as focused on what we call the really fine scale or small scale. But I'd like to kind get back that way. But through the oil spill, getting to do so much work far off shore and with the deep ocean, a lot of the work on plankton and plankton distributions, oceanography in general has been done more in coastal waters. It's more accessible, you know, easier to get to. Instrumentation is easier to use in those areas. So the deep sea and especially far offshore waters, even the surface waters far offshore, haven't been accessed as much, because it just takes longer to get there, it's more expensive. So some of the work I did during the oil spill, and that we're working on for publication. We were certainly looking at the plankton, maybe not on like the centimeter kinds of spatial scales, but one interesting thing we found, which has been found other places as well, is that in these far offshore waters in the oligotrophic, which means the nutrient poor waters in the offshore Gulf of Mexico, the highest concentration of phytoplankton, which are the plants that are part of the plankton, the real base of the food web, is not at the surface, but really it's much deeper at about 100 meters to 80 meters. It's something we call the deep chlorophyll maximum. And they can be concentrated there for a lot of different reasons. There might be more nutrients there brought up from the deep. Sometimes also in waters that are very oligotrophic, there can be too much light for plankton that can be damaging, just like UV rays are damaging to us, can also be damaging to them. And so they want to find the kind of a happy medium of where it's light enough that they can undergo photosynthesis effectively, have the nutrients they need. They're kind of looking for that happy medium.
Becky Carmichael
[27:33] It's kind of like a closed canopy system almost.
Malinda Sutor
[27:36] Yeah, yeah! That's a good analogy. So what's really interesting is we have done measurements that show that this deep chlorophyll maximum in the offshore Gulf of Mexico has twice the bio mass that the surface waters around 10 meters do. And we measured primary production, and it's about twice as high at this deep chlorophyll maximum as it is in the surface waters. So we use satellites a lot to look at distributions of phytoplankton in particular, and satellites are an amazing tool. But they can really only penetrate the surface. And so this was a great example. And I'm really curious to be able to get to spend more time out there and see just how fine scale are these differences. Because maybe we're even under estimating what we're seeing at 100 meters if our scale of measurement isn't small enough to really understand where is the peak, what it's associated with to really understand those dynamics. If we only look at the surface waters, which we often only do, we're missing a huge part of the picture.
Becky Carmichael
[28:41] I got a whole bunch of questions right now. I'm just kind of exploded. So one, it's kind of, I'm wondering how much phytoplankton can an organism eat? So how big does that particular patch have to be to sustain one individual. Particularly say, such as the whale that you mentioned, but then also with what you're describing, you not only... I can see the satellite is picking up the spatial, the horizontal spatial concentration, but then this vertical concentration and the irregularity of that vertical concentration of knowing how deep that mass is going. This even... This really further complicates how you're measuring them. So in this instance, is this another... Would this be an example of where you're not only using a satellite to measure that space, but then potentially dropping some of those bottles that you described earlier at multiple locations?
Malinda Sutor
[29:44] Yes, and using lots of different instruments that work at different scales. This is really kind of the basis for a lot of the ocean observing systems that have been developed and are being developed. It is using this whole nested approach. I mean, we can't... I mean, a lot of us... I mean, although we hate to probably be on a ship, you know, every day for a whole year. But a lot of us would love to have that kind of access to the ocean to be out there continually dropping things down into look below the surface and into the depths. And that's where you have to use these kind of strategies to say, can we get out there and make some of these measurements, relate them to what we can measure continually from satellites or other things, so that we can, you know, make some assumptions? And a lot of this goes back to utilizing a lot of these important ecosystem models, if we can get a better handle on some of the data, in particular, a lot of the plankton data. And this goes not just for the ocean, but even for like the estuaries. So I'm working with some people here in Louisiana who have worked on the food web models for the Barataria and the Breton Sound estuaries, And there's just not a lot of data on the plankton. So I've been contributing my plankton data, and we're working on kind of filling that little hole. But that's kind of where you want to go to, is that you want to be able to say, yes, this is a wonderful precise measurement, and we do need to get out there and understand things in detail. But we know we can't do that at the same frequency or for the same duration that we can with other kinds of things. So if we can relate these measurements and begin to understand and predict, if we're seeing this with the satellite, the mate, then this is probably what's happening deeper down. That would be wonderful. You know, we want to be able to relate things and then also be able to relate back to the models, so that we can effectively... That's the way a lot of our management is going with big ecosystem based models. And so that's where, you know, I've done some work where we looked at if we changed our sampling resolution of the plankton, how that affected the kind of calculations we made higher up for trophic level processes and models. And if we were off on our abundance, because our measurements were to coarse, maybe 10 meter vertical bins versus five meter vertical bins to figure out what we estimated the abundance to be. We were off by about 50%, in some cases on the biomass of plankton, when we put that into an equation to say, okay, now let's calculate things like if we use these abundances we have, and we can make calculations. You asked about how much does it takes to sustain a single organism? Well, it's one of those scientific answers where I'm gonna say it varies, Becky, so much. It's hard to say. But we can make some calculations based on lab experiments that, you know, a certain zooplankton, say can eat this many phytoplankton. We're going to make some assumptions. So we do a calculation about grazing. If we're using abundance numbers that are off by 50%, now we're off by 80 to 100% on that calculation, and that only goes up in these models. So that's kind of one thing we're hoping is if we can spend some time getting, you know, down into the details on the fine scale, we can make inferences that can be used to have better predictive models, and also to relate to the kinds of things we can measure more frequently and on a broader scale.
Becky Carmichael
[32:57] And the other thing I am excited about is you'd mentioned, you know, the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. So were some of these measurements that you took, were they prior to the oil spill? Do you have like, pre and post to look at the changes in these abundances of these phytoplankton? Because as you're saying, you know, while these are small, you need that fine scale measurement and that does move up the food web. I would imagine that you might see, as others have seen changes in not only species, but also the abundance of those species.
Malinda Sutor
[33:34] Right. And in the offshore waters of the Gulf of Mexico, the answer is largely, no. We don't have a large amount of data on plankton in those waters prior to the spill. There's a kind of a concept that has been talked about quite a bit called changing baselines. How do you know if the baseline has changed if you don't know what it is to begin with? And I think we do have that issue in many areas and, to some extent, with the oil spill. There's a lot of data collected through a program with the National Marine Fisheries called sea map. And that's a program that's been going on since the 1980s. But its aim was always to do surveys for larval fish to then, you know, say here's how many of these different species are out here, so here's how we're going to manage those fisheries this year. And so a lot of the plankton has never been analyzed from those samples. I actually was funded to begin to analyze that data, and it is mostly from the coast of Louisiana, but it's an amazing time series. And I was funded to analyze a lot of that, because a lot of the physical samples were stored in a warehouse at the Gulf Coast research laboratory that was hit in Hurricane Katrina. So many were lost, but many were saved. And thankfully, a lot of them had been sent other places for archiving. And so I was funded, along with other colleagues here at LSU, to bring a lot of those physical samples here and digitally archive them to make them more of a to other scientists, and also just finally analyze the plankton in these samples because they've largely been untouched. If they weren't a commercial species, they weren't the priority, you know, to be to be looked at. So there really is... When we have a big event, like this oil spill, it really shows how we're suffering from a lack of putting money and resources into basic research, in terms of understanding the ecosystem, not necessarily for, you know, commercial purposes or other kinds of things, but just to understand how it works, predict what will happen if there are changes, and maybe what we'll predict is, you know, if things warm up this much, maybe things won't change as much. You know, we really don't know. And it may not be all doom and gloom, but we won't know unless we kind of get a better handle on those baselines. So with the oil spill, the kind of tact we've taken is trying to look for what samples there are, even if they're in somewhat different areas, and then we had cruises that we continued afterwards. So if there is perhaps... If there was a large effect or even a minor effect, if there was some kind of rebound, will we see a difference in the years after the spill versus that year. And those are data that are still being analyzed and samples that are still being looked at. But yeah, it was it was a tough problem.
Becky Carmichael
[36:18] So with with where you are right now with your research, what are you most excited to start looking at next?
Malinda Sutor
[36:27] Um, well, I have a graduate student, Jessica Tolan, who has just joined the laboratory group. And she's actually going to be looking back at some of the samples we collected during the oil spill. One thing... And this is, I guess, kind of the the fun thing about science and why, you know, it's so important. One thing I kind of missed out on during part of the oil spill is I did so much administration, I came out of the lab a little too much. And being in there, sitting at the scope, looking at things, that sometimes when you see something... It's like that creative spark. It wasn't the project you set out to do, but you notice something, and it takes you down this other path. And one thing that some of the people in my lab who were sorting samples noticed is they said, you know, when we were sorting samples from these stations that were like closer to the oil spill and happened earlier in time, they looked a lot more messed up... That was kind of the catchphrase... Than these other samples. And we didn't really see the difference until.. Because we sorted some of those and we sorted some of these... It was when we came back to them, we saw that contrast. And so once that kind of qualitative observation had been made, we said, okay, now we need to set something up and see... Let's actually look at this in a quantitative way. And we're still working through the samples initially, it does look like what we saw, are a lot of copepods that were dead, potentially, upon collection, but we're trying to be conservative in what we're calling dead, making sure that it's not just... These are also organisms that just like a lot of other insects, you know, will molt, like crabs will molt as they grow, a lot of crustaceans, you know, they will do that. So it's not just a molt, you know, we have to see tissue within. We have to make sure they weren't bitten. So we're still working out a lot of those details. And we're doing that with other expert colleagues, were sending them images and saying, give us your opinion here, because we want your independent assessment of what we're doing. And that's something so important in science. So it's great to have colleagues doing that. So Jessica is going to begin to look at more of the samples that we hadn't been able to analyze yet to fill in some of those spatial and also temporal gaps, to say, is there a pattern here? Are we seeing a lot more mortality in the copepods, you know, in a pattern that could be explained. We can't get to exact causation. Because of course we can't... There's a lot of analyses we can't do. We can't say exactly, if they truly were dead on collection, why? But if that pattern is there, whether it's because of exposure, because of starvation, you know, or other kinds of stressors, it's still important information and can lead to maybe other people moving on for some laboratory experiments to say, "Okay, what could have been the causes for these kinds of patterns we see". So it's really important, you know, even though sometimes your research feels like, Well, I didn't quite answer the full question. The point is to get it out there, because then other people can use that information and their own particular talents to add on, you know, to the whole base of knowledge. So...
Becky Carmichael
[39:31] I also think that what you might find is you think, well, this is this is just a small part of the question. It's still a question in itself. And without that, that puzzle piece, and that puzzle piece placed, you know, exactly in the right way in the right alignment, you can't carry on with any other questions, or even know that there was a question to begin with about that particular area. So that's really exciting. I think it's also exciting that this is work that still is being done on this particular event, because I would imagine we're still seeing the effects of this particular event, considering that the plankton are that bottom part of the food web, and so that only moves up.
Malinda Sutor
[40:12] That's right. And even, you know, even if the end of the day we say, you know, it didn't look like there was a massive effect in the offshore Gulf of Mexico. We also went out there and took so many samples. The Gulf of Mexico had never been sampled like this before, and so it's just a wealth of information about what even exists in the offshore Gulf of Mexico. I have colleagues who are coming in from out of town to copy a lot of the digital plankton sample data to utilize for a separate project they're doing to look at modeling of some of the deep sea carbon and things going on in the offshore. And so that's a wonderful collaborative arrangement where, you know, I'm happy to share my samples. We're going to work together, but, you know, the efforts that we went through for that collection, and the money that was spent can continue to support scientists and their efforts in other related areas.
Becky Carmichael
[41:08] I do know you've been involved with women in science, can you tell us a little bit about that? Do you feel comfortable telling us a little bit about that group, and maybe what your involvement has been?
Malinda Sutor
[41:17] Well, I can tell you, there's a wonderful group going here now on campus that I am proud to have helped in terms of being an advisor, but I have not been able to make it to as many meetings as I would like. In the past, when I was a graduate student, we started the AWIS, the Association for Women in Science chapter here at LSU, but it kind of fell away. And, you know, once a certain group leaves and there's not momentum, but the group right now, I really encourage people to check them out. They're now an official LSU group, and there's a group of graduate students, which it's a student group. It's supposed to be run by them, and they are doing a fantastic job. So I've been happy to help them where I can and contribute where I can. But they've been doing all kinds of great, you know, either large scale, kind of organized meetings, a lot of resources, a wonderful newsletter, and just also providing a lot of opportunities for smaller meetings to get to know other women in science here at LSU in a less formal setting. And so I encourage people to check them out.
Becky Carmichael
[42:21] I also think that some of the speakers that they've had have been really remarkable. And it's been a nice way to familiarize yourself with both faculty as well as grad students so they can have that interaction. No, I agree. It's good to have, again, it's a support group. It's something, you know, coming together and learning from each other. Can you go back into your work with the Navy, because you did, you know, at one point, you had received some funding, like a defense grant. This to me connects and gives even more emphasis on why this type of research is important. Why basic research is important because it has different applications.
Malinda Sutor
[43:01] Yeah, no, that's true. The Navy funding was when I was a graduate student, and you know, I was brought in on a grant that others got. And then after that, a little bit after I finished my postdoc, I was able to also work with some people that had some additional funding. But yeah, the Office of Naval Research is a very interesting funding engine. They're not a huge one, but they were certainly willing to take risks on very basic research, because there were other potential benefits. And, you know, they have a whole level, you know, I worked with people who were, you know, had filing cabinets with combination locks, instead of, you know, security clearance, blah, blah, blah. So they worked on the kinds of things... We did stuff where they call it "assessing the battle space". But, you know, there were higher levels to it, like "transitioning to weapons", which I was never involved in. But yeah, the whole idea of basic research funding there, there are numbers of organizations, you know, outside of the Navy, the National Science Foundation and Noah and a lot of these... But it certainly becomes harder and harder. And I think you hear a lot of scientists in all different disciplines saying, it feels like you can't get something funded unless you already know the answer. Like you've done so much preliminary work, that you've kind of already proven it. And I think that was one of the neat things that the Office of Naval Research offered, was a little bit more ready to take a risk and say, you know, you show me enough here, that I'm going to give you some money, and let's see where this goes. And if it goes somewhere, then let's see where that goes. You know, and there's... One of my son's was reading a lot about, you know, past scientists, and we're talking about funding. He's like, well, seems like these guys just had like the royal family, basically, paying their bills. I was like, I know. Wouldn't that be nice. I mean, I'm sure there were trade offs there that weren't as great. But yeah, the funding models for what's basic versus applied, you know, has certainly been shifting, I think, in in lots of disciplines. And just the lack of funding overall, you know, for a lot of this kind of research has been hitting people.
Becky Carmichael
[45:14] Yes, we're really at risk for not having those pieces answered, not understanding how things are functioning. and if we don't know all the pieces of the system, we can't move forwards. And we can't be putting those into our models. We can't be... We don't have the predictive power. And for the Navy, I thought that was interesting that, you know, because some of the plankton are bioluminescent, you know, there's some security issues here as well, that we're not having answered if we don't know those concentrations and those locations.
Malinda Sutor
[45:48] Yeah, no, that's... I mean, as you say, it's assessing the battle space, which is like understanding your environment, so they just have a different lens through which they wanted to understand the environment as well as the basic understanding of it.
Becky Carmichael
[46:01] Malinda, do you have any last advice that you would want to impart on anyone listening? Potentially somebody who is considering, you know, taking those next steps? Either they're entering the university, or potentially they're going on and they want to do a graduate degree? What kind of advice would you give them?
Malinda Sutor
[46:23] Yeah, I mean, I guess... I give people the advice... I was really lucky, I found out, in graduate school to have the broad, solid biological background I had based on the fact that I wanted to go on in biology. And so a lot of students will come and ask me about specifically being an oceanographer, a biological oceanographer. And my advice is to get a biology degree, not necessarily an oceanography degree, because when I went to undergraduate school and got to higher level courses, I'd had physiology, I'd had developmental, I'd had cell, and so there were some students who came in with a lot more oceanographic knowledge. But when we got to some of these courses, I was really glad that I had that broad background. It made me, I think, a better student and a better scientist. I think the other advice is, I kind of look back at times, you know, maybe in my earlier career where I felt... And I was actually thinking about this listening to the results of the Olympics, and there's the wonderful skier, Mikaela Shiffrin, and I'm certainly not saying I'm in the same league as Michaela Schaeffer in any way, shape, or form in my career versus, you know, her and skiing. But she didn't even medal in an event she was favored to get the gold in and when she said after where she said, You know, I beat myself. And there's a lot of times when I look back, and I realized when something went wrong, or if you know, somebody, especially maybe a mentor that I respected, was harsh in their criticism, I let that just kill me. And there were a lot of times when I looked back, and I was like, wow, you know, it wasn't that bad. Why did I... I beat myself by allowing that to get to me, and it stalled me or it made me not do certain things. And I was talking actually, with somebody I went to graduate school with not too long ago, and it also made me wish that I had interacted more and shared more, not that I didn't have a lot of friends. But I think we were hesitant to share our failures and our worries. And we just got talking these many years later, and I related some things to her. And she just was like, Well, my God, what did they expect of you? I mean, think about everything you were doing then. And it was, you know, and she related her own story to me. And we kind of said, I wish we had done that in graduate school or even just after because I think we would have felt a little we would have had a better dose of reality, I think, to realize, you know, we hadn't screwed up as bad as we thought. We didn't need... That criticism was not necessarily leveled in the right way. And, you know, and we both said, Yeah, there's probably things we might not beat ourselves up so much had we shared more with each other, and giving each other those reality checks. So that's some other advice I would give is making sure you have a good strong cohort, you know, of colleagues and people and friends that you can give those reality checks to and to not be afraid to share those things.
Becky Carmichael
[49:18] Now, I think that, you know, having, again, having that support system, being able to take in critique, and sorting through that critique onto what's the most important things that you need to be applying, and what might be the fray, that you just need to just kind of push aside. But then also the realization that you're among a group of people that have very similar interests, that are of similar caliber and intelligence, and you're all going and asking these really, maybe complicated, questions. It's easy to feel that when you have a mistake, that it can be a bigger failure than what it is, but to know that... Just to start talking to each other, and kind of being that supportive group. Is there anything else that you would you wanted to share that we didn't touch on today?
Malinda Sutor
[50:09] I don't think so.
Becky Carmichael
[50:10] Okay. So Malinda, I really want to thank you again for sitting down with me. This has been exciting. I'm probably going to have a lot of questions that I'm going to come back to you about the plankton because now I might my head's going on different disturbances in different ecosystems. But I do want to thank you. It's been a it's been a pleasure today.
Malinda Sutor
[50:31] Well, thanks for the opportunity to do this podcast and let the LSU and wider community know more about what's going on here on campus. And yeah...
Becky Carmichael
[50:41] Thank you.
Experimental was recorded in the KLSU Studios here on the campus of Louisiana State
University and is supported by LSU's communication across the curriculum and the College
of Science. Today's interview was conducted by me, Becky Carmichael, and produced
by Kyle Sirovy. Theme music is (inaudible) by PC three. To learn more about today's
episode, subscribe to the podcast, ask questions, and recommend future investigators,
visit cxc.lsu.edu/Experimental