Will Ambrose – News

�ֲ��ý Club of Antarctica, and the professors who got them there

Emily McConville — Fri, 25 May 2018 14:41:40 +0000

To do research at the extreme north or south of the planet, you need a good enough project to get funding from the National Science Foundation or another government agency. You also have to be organized, independent, and technically excellent.

“You have to be able to work alone, be flexible, have a plan and be willing to change it,” says Professor of Biology Will Ambrose, who studies life on the Arctic Ocean floor. “That’s what I tell my students.”

And they listen.

Before they attached video cameras to whales, drilled through 15 feet of ice to lakes below, or tracked ancient glaciers, the �ֲ��ý alumni who conducted Antarctic research in recent months benefited from the same education available to all �ֲ��ý biology and geology majors — one that involves plenty of fieldwork and close collaboration with professors who involve students in their own research.

�ֲ��ý Professor of Biology Will Ambrose (center) and Kelton McMahon ’05 (right) ride with Gro Harlaug Olsen of the University of Tromso through Kongsfjorden in Svalbard, Norway. (Courtesy of Kelton McMahon)

“I had the opportunity to conduct some really amazing cutting-edge research with world-class researchers,” says Kelton McMahon ’05, an assistant professor of oceanography at the University of Rhode Island who traveled to Antarctica in 2016 and plans to return next year. “That is not common in a lot of universities for undergraduates.”

McMahon, who’s developed chemical tools to answer biological questions, started studying at the intersection of biology and geochemistry at �ֲ��ý. For a marine ecology course taught by Ambrose, he was assigned an independent research project.

Several of Ambrose’s former students, including Ari Friedlaender ’96, Doug Krause ’99, and Carolynn Harris ’11, have gone on to conduct research in Antarctica. For Ambrose, gaining the skills to work independently is critical to success as a scientist.

Professors Michael Retelle (left) and William Ambrose on the island of Ingøya, Norway. (Randall Hyman)

“My philosophy has always been that by the time students get to be seniors, they have to be functioning like a first-year grad student, or close,” he says. “�ֲ��ý students are bright, and that’s how I treat them.”

McMahon’s interest in aspects of geochemistry also led him to take a course with Professor of Geology Beverly Johnson. He worked with both Ambrose and Johnson for his marine ecology project, which concerned the diets and movements of a killifish species in a Maine salt marsh. That turned into McMahon’s first published scientific paper.

Johnson, who also co-advised Carolynn Harris, is used to working closely with students.

Professor of Geology Beverly Johnson (right) joins her environmental geochemistry students to study the water quality of Lake Andrews. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ��ý College)

“They drive the research that I do,” she says. “They come in and often have their own questions, and are eager to get involved in some of the questions I’m pursuing for my own research.”

Working closely with her students benefits both her and them, Johnson says. The students’ work turns up geochemical data that both student and professor can use — and because the data must be carefully collected in a specific way, students learn technical skills that can serve them well in graduate school and beyond.

Students also help Johnson think about her own research in new ways.

“Students bring so much to a project, they really do,” Johnson says. “They have different ways of thinking about things. They have different experiences at �ֲ��ý than I had as an undergraduate, so they’ll bring in what they learned from other classes. I consider them more collaborators and colleagues.”

“It’s training the next generation of scientists, if not polar scientists.”

Both Ambrose and Johnson again advised McMahon for his senior thesis, on ice algae and phytoplankton in the Arctic Ocean. He did fieldwork in Svalbard, a Norwegian archipelago above the Arctic Circle. It’s an area where scientists can see up close the rapid effects of climate change on the polar regions, and it’s a popular destination for �ֲ��ý students and faculty interested in polar science.

One of them is Professor of Geology Mike Retelle, who studies the movements of glaciers on the islands and usually brings students with him on his trips. While �ֲ��ý undergraduates work within the scope of Retelle’s ongoing research, they design and execute their own projects.

“They help with the preparation before they go into the field, and they see the project right through the end,” Retelle says. “It’s how field science is done. It’s not a canned experiment.”

The opportunity to work directly with students was what drew Retelle to �ֲ��ý in the first place, he says.

“It’s fun seeing them experience something you’re so passionate about,” he says. “Importantly, it’s training the next generation of scientists, if not polar scientists.”

Professor of Geology Mike Retelle poses with Allie Balter ’14 and Greg de Wet ’11 at a field site in Svalbard, Norway, in 2013. Balter, now a graduate student at the University of Maine, conducted research in Antarctica in recent months. (Courtesy of Greg de Wet)

One of Retelle’s first students to catch what he calls the “Arctic bug” was Brenda Hall ’90. Now a professor in the School of Earth and Climate Sciences at the University of Maine, she studies glacial history and paleoclimatology. She’s made more than two dozen research trips to Antarctica.

As an undergraduate, Hall traveled with Retelle to Canada’s Resolute Island to research lakes.

“He’s really good at explaining things in the field especially,” she says. “One of the things I like about fieldwork is that it’s fun, and Mike really managed to make the work interesting. That’s something that I’ve kept with me.”

Retelle later mentored Hall during her graduate school search and connected her with faculty at UMaine, where she earned a doctorate. Now herself a teacher and adviser to students — including Allie Balter ’14, who traveled to Svalbard with Retelle as a �ֲ��ý student and went to Antarctica with Hall this year — she brings both undergraduate and graduate students into her research, early and often.

Brenda Hall ’90 and UMaine undergraduates Laura Mattas and Tyler Pollock take notes about an Antarctic boulder they’re about to sample. (Courtesy of Allie Balter)

“Getting students involved in research early is really critical,” she says. “Mike did that with me, and I do that with my own students.”

After his own Arctic research experience, Kelton McMahon wrote a senior thesis that was also published as a scientific paper. He’s since collaborated with both Ambrose and Johnson on several projects as he moved through graduate school at the MIT-WHOI Joint Program in Oceanography, postdoctoral positions at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and now in his faculty role at the University of Rhode Island.

Working with his advisers was “a phenomenal opportunity to think transformatively, to learn how to think like a scientist,” McMahon says.

“It gave me an incredible leg up as I got to graduate school — I had done oceanographic cruises, I’d published multiple papers, I’d presented at conferences, all because I had been able to work with these professors.”

Maine aquafarmer Matt Moretti ’06 flexes his mussels on Casco Bay

Adam Tokarz '06 | Photography by Josh Kuckens — Wed, 30 Nov 2016 15:44:25 +0000

Maine native Matt Moretti ’06 has always loved the ocean.

“From the beginning, I’ve been interested in the sea and the way organisms function, in a biological sense,” he says. “And while I had that interest, it was always a nondescript, undefined kind of love for natural processes. It wasn’t fully formed.”

At �ֲ��ý, Moretti’s passion began to take shape as he majored in biology and took marine biology courses, amassing knowledge that would eventually support a stint at the New England Aquarium, a Northeastern master’s program in marine biology, and global sojourns to far-flung ecosystems like Mo’orea in the South Pacific, where an encounter with French Polynesian shrimp farmers turned on a lightbulb.

Moretti’s mussels operation on Custom House Wharf in Portland includes, at right, his working boat, La Cozze, and his houseboat, at left.

“I realized the traditional ocean research track wasn’t what I wanted to do [with my life],” he says, so after his time in Mo’orea and Catalina, as part of his master’s work, “aquaculture presented itself as a tangible something I could do, not just be interested in.”

Moretti returned to his home state, eager for experience and work. He found it on an oyster farm, where he cultivated his love for aquaculture.

And then he learned that a Casco Bay mussel farm was for sale.

Son and Pop Shop

In 2010, Moretti and his dad, Gary, bought Bangs Island Mussels.

For some, mixing business and family would be an instant recipe for disaster, but Moretti appreciates his business arrangement.

Moretti and his father, Gary Moretti, pose for a portrait at the Bangs Island Mussels processing facility on the Portland waterfront.

“Dad’s given me a lot of freedom to do things in the business that I wouldn’t have had in a more traditional relationship with a business partner. He puts a lot of faith in my ability to help make things happen.”

He pauses.

“We have a lot of trust in one another, I suppose. He always has my back, and I always have his.”

Early Bird

On harvest days, which occur two or three times a week throughout the year, Moretti and his team begin at six o’clock; for five months of the year, that’s before the sun has risen.

They meet at a marina warehouse, the home of Bangs Island Mussels land operations, located on a wharf off Commercial Street in downtown Portland.

The supplies for the day are lowered into an idling boat, La Cozze, Italian for “The Mussel,” by a small crane over the cargo hold. Crates packed with ice, empty “totes” (large plastic bins), and a silvery stainless-steel sorting table are arranged on the deck.

Then, the boat shoves off, carefully minding Loretta, the harbor mascot, a partially-blind seal who makes her home in the calm waters of the marina, before setting course due east.

It will take slightly less than an hour to reach the first raft.

Moretti ’06 steers La Cozze out of Portland Harbor toward Clapboard Island in Casco Bay, the site of the day’s mussel harvest.

Grit-Free Grub

You can cultivate mussels any number of ways. Moretti uses the Spanish style, in which thick, coarse ropes, each seeded with mussels, hang suspended from rafts that float in the cool waters of the Casco Bay.

It takes the mussels about 18 months to mature. All the while, the filter-feeding shellfish feed on the nutrients within their ecosystem, giving Bangs Island Mussels a distinctive flavor profile, says Moretti.

Bangs Island Mussels grow on ropes that hang from rafts, and each rope is about 35 feet long.

“It’s not dissimilar to wine, where the same type of grape will taste different depending on where it’s grown, the specific region of earth, and its surrounding climate.”

Unlike some of their bivalve brethren, the mussels don’t come into contact with the sandy bay bottom, so they are grit-free, creating a more enjoyable experience for the eventual diner.

Plus, because the rafts are protected with nets, the mussels aren’t in danger of being eaten by crabs or starfish. With the lack of predation, the mussel’s shell remains thinner, allowing the meat to grow thick, sweet, and plump.

Moretti has 10 rafts on his aquatic farm, along with a processing barge, “and we can have 400 lines on one raft alone,” he says.

Phase 1

Once the team reaches the farm, the work continues. First, they use their boat to pull the barge — which houses all of the processing equipment — into position next to one of the rafts.

After reaching the harvest site off Clapboard Island in Casco Bay, the crew prepares the barge for harvesting.

Next, the team begins to pull lines, attaching the mussel ropes to a medieval-looking pulley system on the barge that drags the lines through a tiny hole, releasing the mussels from the rope like beads from a broken necklace.

As the mollusks spill onto the deck, they’re moved into a large pile with colorful plastic shovels, the Crayola red and yellow standing in sharp contrast to the mud-soaked planks of the barge. Moretti and his workers spray the mussels, both to wash off mud that collects despite their perch above the ocean floor and to keep them cool and fresh.

A pulley and winch pulls a mussel-encrusted rope onto the barge for processing.

The mussels are then spun through the stainless-steel declumper and grading wheel, which help weed out the smaller mussels from the market-grade fare.

The hum of the hydraulic motors running the declumper forbids any conversation below a hearty yell. Instead, the team works with a quiet cadence, using hand signals when necessary.

Once the mussels are carefully hand-sorted, they are placed on ice and loaded onto the boat.

On the barge, Moretti (left) feeds the clumped mussels into a machine that breaks their byssal threads and does an initial sorting. Crew member Adam Shapiro (right) collects the separated mussels.

Duck Tales

“Aquaculture on the ocean, like we do it, basically takes two jobs with very unpredictable elements — farming and fishing — and puts them together,” says Moretti.

“We’re in the open ocean, vulnerable to a lot of elements at play that we don’t have control over. We try and mitigate those risks as much as possible.”

After they’re declumped, cleaned, and sorted by machine, the mussels are hand-sorted by crew members Kirstina Littig and Daniel Dunham.

While heavy winds and torrential storms can spell trouble for raft-style mussel farms, it’s a certain duck-billed deviant that poses the biggest (and perhaps most annoying) threat.

“Eider ducks are the bane of my existence,” says Moretti, chuckling softly. “They’re incredible mussel eaters. They can eat their body weight in mussels in a single day.”

Moretti and his crew spend a large amount of time and energy attempting to passively deter the ducks from eating their mussels by deploying protective netting that hangs below the waterline around the rafts.

Good fences make good neighbors…and tasty mussels grown to term.

Sorting It Out

The harvest is delivered back to the warehouse by 3 p.m., where the second shift waits to begin their day’s work.

Back at the Bangs Island processing facility on the Portland waterfront, workers process and prepare the harvest for delivery to eateries near and far.

Under the watchful eye of Gary, who manages this second phase of the harvest, the Bangs Island team members continue the “wash, rinse, repeat” mantra executed on the barge.

The mussels are fed through a variety of sorting and debearding machines, and are subject to more inspection and hand-grading before they’re packed on ice, ready for the distributors.

On average, the team can process 2,500 pounds of product in a single day.

Building a Responsible Business

From an environmental perspective, mussel farming is a very low impact way of producing food compared to other farming systems. And Moretti’s proud of that fact.

“We wouldn’t get into a business that had a negative effect on the environment,” says Moretti.

“Our ocean farming practices go back to our core company goals: to provide the finest quality seafood in a completely safe and sustainable manner,” says Moretti.

As active filter feeders, mussels improve local water quality by “removing phytoplankton, which in excess can reduce water quality,” explains Professor of Biology Will Ambrose.

Mussels also remove carbon from the water but whether that helps make seawater less acidic — a claim made by some aquaculture supporters — isn’t proven, Ambrose says, noting that “the carbonate system that controls seawater pH is very complicated.”

Moretti and his father believe strongly in employing environmentally safe farming methods. “We don’t add anything artificial or foreign to the system to help grow the mussels,” says Moretti.

“Our ocean farming practices go back to our core company goals: to provide the finest quality seafood in a completely safe and sustainable manner.”

Spreading the Love

Today, Bangs Island Mussels are distributed nationally, from Atlanta restaurants to Denver eateries and everywhere in between.

Close to home, one of Moretti’s local buyers is self-taught culinary wizard Andrew Taylor ’03, an award-winning chef and co-owner of three Portland restaurants, Eventide Oyster Co., Hugo’s, and The Honey Paw.

Bangs Island mussels are featured in the New England Clam Bake at Eventide.

At The Honey Paw, Taylor uses Bangs Island mussels in dishes like a Vietnamese masa crepe (fried mussels, shrimp and tomatillo sambal, and maple dipping sauce) and at Eventide in a “New England Clam Bake”: mussels, clams, lobster tail, potatoes, salt pork, and a hard-boiled egg nestled into a bed of rock seaweed.

“Having Matt harvesting mussels less than a mile away and bringing them straight to our restaurant the day they’re out of the water — from a quality perspective, you can’t get better mussels than that,” says Taylor, whose �ֲ��ý food network also includes Eric Peters ‘86, proprietor of Norumbega Oyster Co. in Damariscotta.

“Then you add the additional benefits of supporting local agriculture, local businesses, keeping it all in everybody’s pockets in Maine. We feel really great about that, too.”

Moretti poses with one of his clients: Andrew Taylor ’03, chef and co-owner of three Portland restaurants, including Eventide Oyster Co.

Eventide has “always supported us with our mussels,” says Moretti, who counts that support to include his new venture into sugar kelp. “They enjoy taking a chance on some local, high-quality seafood, and they’ve been fantastic partners.”

Despite his national reach, Moretti feels a certain level of responsibility and privilege contributing directly to the Portland public.

“We employ people who live here,” says Moretti. “We buy as much as we can locally and enjoy sharing our mussels with the Portland community. I absolutely love that.”

Biologist Will Ambrose appointed National Science Foundation program director

Kent Fischer — Tue, 23 Jun 2015 20:24:03 +0000

A distinguished career researching Arctic climate change has led Professor of Biology William Ambrose to a one-year position at the National Science Foundation leading the Arctic Observing Network program.

Professor of Biology Will Ambrose has been appointed program director, a one-year position, of the NSF’s (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ��ý College)

As an NSF program director, Ambrose will have authority over $12 million in research funding that in large part defines how scientists study climate change in the Arctic.

The program directorship, a one-year appointment with the potential for a second-year extension, is a powerful opportunity to help set the direction and strategy of Arctic research on a national scale, Ambrose said.

“I’ll be managing all the research that the program funds,” Ambrose said, “soliciting proposals, evaluating them with external reviewers, deciding with my NSF colleagues which projects get funded, and overseeing funded projects.”

It’s a great opportunity, he said, “to make a broad impact on Arctic science by helping set NSF policy.”

The that gather data and information on the environmental conditions in the Arctic.

Data from the AON enables researchers, governments, and advocates to better understand the wide-ranging, significant, and rapid environmental changes occurring there.

�ֲ��ý College professors Michael Retelle, at left, and William Ambrose on the island of Ingøya, Norway. (© Randall Hyman)

Because appointments of this type typically go to scientists at research universities, Ambrose’s selection speaks to his compelling body of Arctic research and the strength of the natural sciences at �ֲ��ý, said Dean of the Faculty Matt Auer.

“Will’s command of both short-term and long-term observations of environmental change make him an ideal candidate to serve as the director of the NSF’s Arctic Observing program,” Auer said.

As a biologist and oceanographer, Ambrose has made a name for himself among Arctic scientists by looking for clues to climate change in the shells of certain types of clams, and he and �ֲ��ý colleague Michael Retelle, professor of geology, recently received a three-year, $337,228 NSF grant to pursue research in this area.

“A remarkable range of expertise.”

Together, they are analyzing environmental changes that have been captured in clam shells over the course of a millennium. By studying changes in clam shells, they are able to plot fluctuations in sea temperature where the Barents and Norwegian seas meet.

“Will studies how recent and ongoing changes in the environment affect bottom-dwelling marine organisms,” Auer said. “And by studying the hard parts of the shells of clams, he also measures changes to benthic (ocean floor) communities over hundreds of years.

“That’s a remarkable range of expertise and the right combination to help NSF shape a program dealing with a region where climate change is especially pronounced.”

“�ֲ��ý makes this possible by providing financial support for student research and by requiring seniors complete a thesis before graduation.”

For the last year, Ambrose has been in Norway on sabbatical at the University of Tromsø’s geology department studying .

Ambrose, who started his Arlington, Va.-based appointment on June 15, said the NSF job would not have happened without the research assistance provided by his �ֲ��ý students and the support he has received from colleagues.

An NSF director, Ambrose explained, must have an active research program and a strong record of NSF funding and scholarly publication.

In his case, “I have outstanding colleagues in geology and anthropology with whom I interact and co-write many proposals,” he said.

�ֲ��ý students enter the equation by “doing much of the research work,” he said, work that �ֲ��ý actively supports through “financial support for student research and by requiring seniors to complete a thesis before graduation.”

Don’t think that Ambrose is trading in his hip waders exclusively for a desk job.

His NSF appointment allows him to spend up to 20 percent of his time conducting his own research, although he acknowledges he’ll likely have to cobble together research trips in conjunction with weekends and vacations.

He also anticipates the appointment with AON will greatly influence his teaching and present new opportunities for �ֲ��ý students.

“I will be able to teach the newest research in Arctic science and climate change,” he said. “Typically, NSF proposals are several years ahead of the published work. I also expect to make many contacts in the field that I can use to help place students in appropriate graduate programs.”

Of clams and climate: what bivalves can tell us about Arctic environmental histories

�ֲ��ý News — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 17:10:50 +0000

The annual academic publication Polar Research in Tromsø included an article focusing on Arctic research conducted by �ֲ��ý biology professor Will Ambrose and his students, including Greg Henkes ’08. Written by Michael Carroll, who has co-authored research articles with Ambrose, the piece discusses how bivavles are becoming helpful in deciphering baseline, historical climate conditions in the Arctic. The topic was also featured in �ֲ��ý Magazine, in its Spring 2008 issue issue.

Read the article on Arctic research included in Polar Research in Tromsø .

Of Climate, Clams, and Colleagues

�ֲ��ý News — Sat, 01 Mar 2008 20:39:56 +0000

In Kongsfjorden on the west side of Svalbard, Will Ambrose (facing) and Kelton McMahon ’05 haul a dredge to collect Serripes groenlandicus and other clam species for McMahon’s thesis in 2004. Photograph by Glenn Lopez, SUNY–Stony Brook.

Professor Will Ambrose, a bearded biologist specializing in Arctic sea-floor ecology, is a pioneer in the science of deciphering the past — including past climates — by studying the annual hard-tissue accretions of organisms such as mollusks.

As an expert in sclerochronology, Ambrose has discovered a link between Arctic clam growth and regular shifts in the region’s climate. In short, Arctic clams grow more rapidly during regimes of warm and wet weather and less during cold and dry regimes. This sensitivity to climate change, says Ambrose, makes the humble bivalve a “sentinel of climate change.”

While Ambrose is collaborating on no fewer than five clamshell research projects at the moment, the scientific paper that detailed the initial findings of a correlation between climate change and Arctic clamshells appeared in Global Change Biology in September 2006.

Seen here is the cross section of a small portion of aSerripes groenlandicus shell, near the umbo, or hinge. The lines indicate annual growth: dark lines for slow winter growth; light areas indicate fast summer growth. For an image showing the complete shell, click the image above. Will Ambrose has discovered a correlation between growth and climate shifts. This image is a composite of 18 images produced by the College’s new Imaging and Computing Center using a Nikon SMZ 1500 stereo microscope. Collected in 1926, the shell’s actual length is 2.5 inches.

The paper emerged from work done three years earlier, when Ambrose dispatched divers to the bottom of a high Arctic fjord in the Svalbard archipelago, a popular Arctic research site about halfway between the Norwegian mainland and the North Pole. From the ocean bottom, the divers returned with four Greenland cockles (Serripes groenlandicus).

After encasing the shells in epoxy and slicing them apart, Ambrose and a team of scientists, including Kelton McMahon ’05, analyzed the growth bands. First, the team found that growth bands were indeed deposited annually. Then the team was able to correlate annual differences in shell growth with a measurement of Arctic weather oscillations known as the Arctic Climate Regime Index.

“What makes the work exciting,” says Ambrose, interviewed in his cluttered office on Carnegie’s third floor, “is that this is the first time in the Arctic that we’ve been able to track a large-scale climatic oscillation and see that large-scale regional event reflected in animals living on the bottom.”

While scientists have for decades analyzed growth lines in shells (Ambrose and others call them “trees of the sea”) in order to reconstruct past environments, the intensity around climate-change research has “really made the field of sclerochronology take off,” he says.

In this hot field, Ambrose’s research is distinctive for its location, on the Arctic continental shelf. “A lot of the work has been done at lower latitudes, mostly because it’s harder to get clams in the Arctic and there are simply fewer people available to help,” he says. “That’s why we’re ahead of the ball.”

If it’s true that Arctic clams grow faster in warmer weather (and grow faster when there’s less of a seasonal ice pack, another signal that Ambrose saw hints of), a simplistic response might be, “Great — fatter clams for walruses to munch on.” But, explains Ambrose, fat clams won’t offset the problems walruses are having due to less pack ice to rest on. And less ice will also affect tiny creatures inside the ice that are the first link in a food chain for polar cod, seabirds, and seals. And so on, throughout the Arctic food web.

These Serripes groenlandicus clams were collected in Storfjord at a site last visited by 19th-century Russian explorers. Photograph by Greg Henkes '08.

In the end, changes in water temperature and salinity (due to runoff from melting glaciers) and increased sea levels, leading to erosion and turbidity, will all take their toll on the Arctic ecology. “Ecosystems operate at the interface of physics, chemistry, and biology, with both complementary and contradictory interactions,” Ambrose writes in a forthcoming article predicting that “regional, and perhaps global, biodiversity will suffer.”

Until recently, Ambrose researched other organisms of the benthic community, such as bloodworms along Maine’s coast. A simple matter of funding helped bring bivalves into focus, as a �ֲ��ý grant (from the Philip J. Otis Endowment) and an external one (from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute) helped purchase a pricey Isomet low-speed saw for preparing shell cross-sections. “Very expensive,” Ambrose says.

In researching the biological response of Arctic bivalves to climate change, Ambrose has depended on the interests and expertise of colleagues and students at �ֲ��ý and abroad.

Geology professor Beverly Johnson, for example, has been invaluable in co-advising biology students so they can learn to use the College’s stable isotope ratio mass spectrometer, a tool to help identify the age and origins of molecules in various materials. Johnson herself has used the instrument to look at amino acids in dinosaur eggs, and it can likewise be used to tease out the chemical components of clamshells.

“I work with Will to understand how modern systems work,” says Johnson, “and then go back to old shells, using the geochemistry of shells from 125,000 years ago to reconstruct the environment.”

Ambrose also depends on Matt Duvall, who directs �ֲ��ý’ new Imaging Center, to create elegant microscopic images of his clamshell sections that Ambrose calls “just incredible.”

Geology professor Mike Retelle, another Svalbard regular who specializes in reconstructing climates from lake sediments, has collaborated with Ambrose on researching climate-change information from fossilized Ice Age clams.

Beyond the sciences, Ambrose, Johnson, and Retelle belong to an informal North Atlantic Study Group on campus that also includes archeologists Gerald Bigelow and Bruce Bourque, historian Michael Jones, and political scientist Áslaug Ásgeirsdóttir. What started informal — an interdisciplinary coffee klatsch — has given rise to “North Atlantic Studies,” a thematic grouping of �ֲ��ý courses, known as a concentration, under the College’s new general education requirements. “We represent an area of study, rather than just a bunch of us sitting around having coffee,” Ambrose says.

“It’s a truly special group,” Retelle adds. “The richness of discussion is such that the boundaries between disciplines disappear. The walls of the box dissolve. Will is a big part of that. As a model for an undergraduate institution, Will has really raised the bar.”

Ambrose himself is quick to point out that “students here are the ones driving the bus in terms of getting the work done.” As he speaks, Greg Henkes ’08 of Chapel Hill, N.C., is downstairs in the environmental geochemistry lab cutting shells and extracting organic material. Henkes’ senior thesis involves a study of 130 years of climate change in the Barents Sea and Svalbard using a historic Russian collection of Serripes groenlandicus. He will present his findings to an American Geophysical Union conference in San Francisco.

Greg Henkes ’08, one of Will Ambrose’s thesis students, took this photograph at 3 a.m. on June 3, 2007, as the research shipLance heads through sea ice in Storfjord in the Svalbard archipelago, about halfway between the North Pole and Norway.

“It’s pretty incredible to be able to do this at �ֲ��ý,” says Henkes. “It’s the way science is going,” says Ambrose of the collaborative nature of scientific enquiry, noting his international partnerships with colleagues at the Norwegian Polar Institute and the research firm Akvaplan-niva. “People aren’t doing their own little thing anymore.”

“That’s the way science should be done,” emphasizes Kelton McMahon, co-author of the Serripes groenlandicus paper. “In certain circles, it is. But a lot of people come from departments that don’t share data because they feel funding is in direct competition. �ֲ��ý takes a very progressive approach to interdisciplinary research.”

McMahon is now working on his Ph.D. in a program co-sponsored by MIT and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. His contribution to the clamshell research has been to use two gizmos — a New Wave Research UP213 laser ablation system coupled to a Thermo Finnigan Element 2 single collector field inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometer — to measure the chemical components of shell samples. Ambrose et al. used changes in the ratio of strontium to calcium to establish that the external lines of the Greenland cockleshells were, in fact, annual growth lines. “If it wasn’t for Kelton getting us access to those machines,” says Ambrose, “the paper wouldn’t have been anywhere near as good.”

As he sits in his Carnegie office discussing his work — Ambrose also hopes to extend his sclerochronology research to coral in part because “they live much longer than clams” — he is eagerly awaiting a new shipment of Svalbard shells that he hopes will solve a quirk in his findings. Until recent years, Ambrose found that annual clam growth was high in years when the extent of Arctic ice pack, as measured each March, was low. But over the last several years, “growth didn’t track ice cover the way it did before. Something happened, but we’re not sure what,” he says. “Are the last four years unnatural? That’s why I want those new clams. It’s another four years of data that will help establish some baselines.” And baselines will help provide more answers, which will probably just beget more questions. It’s the wayscientific inquiry works. “People like simple answers,” Ambrose says. “Nature doesn’t.”

By Edgar Allen Beem

Freelance writer Edgar Allen Beem wrote about the in the Fall 2007 issue of �ֲ��ý Magazine.

Kroepsch Award honors excellence in teaching

�ֲ��ý News — Wed, 19 Jan 2005 15:13:03 +0000

�ֲ��ý College faculty members William Ambrose, of Poland, and Rebecca Herzig, of Lewiston, have been named this year’s recipients of the Ruth M. and Robert H. Kroepsch Award for Excellence in Teaching.

�ֲ��ý students and recent alumni nominate Kroepsch Award recipients on the basis of their outstanding performance as teachers.

Ambrose is an associate professor of biology. Herzig is associate professor in the women and gender studies program.

Ambrose’s research interests include issues affecting food supplies for organisms living on the Arctic Ocean floor and, of particular interest to Maine residents, the environmental impacts of commercial harvesting of marine worms such as bloodworms.

“The wonderful thing about Dr. Ambrose is, he facilitates our problem-solving,” wrote one of his nominators. “He allows us to find our own answers and I believe this is where some of the most important learning takes place.”

Ambrose has an A.B. degree from Princeton and a doctorate from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He started at �ֲ��ý in 1994.

Herzig holds the only full-time faculty appointment in the Program in Women and Gender Studies at �ֲ��ý. She teaches a range of interdisciplinary courses on science, technology and medicine, as well as core courses in the WGS program.

She is currently completing two books: Suffering for Science: Will, Reason, and Sacrifice in Late Nineteenth-Century America (Rutgers University Press) and The Nature of Difference: Readings in the History of Science, Race, and Sex, co-edited with Evelynn Hammonds and Abigail Bass (MIT Press).

“I always left class amazed at the insightful conclusions we had reached as a group, and at the intellectual integrity of our discussions,” a former student of Herzig’s told the Kroepsch selection committee. “This kind of collective academic achievement was possible because Professor Herzig had motivated us to read, write and think at a very high level.”

Herzig earned her B.A. in American cultural and environmental studies in 1993 from the University of California, Santa Cruz, and her doctorate from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1998, the year she arrived at �ֲ��ý.

Kroepsch honorees are selected from the nominees by a committee of previous recipients. The annual award is funded by an endowment established in 1985 by the late Robert H. Kroepsch, a member of the �ֲ��ý class of 1933.