Articles by Stuart Jacobson

Credit: Courtesy of Kendall Clements" /> Credit: Courtesy of Kendall Clements Surgeonfish aren't as dedicated to life-saving as their name implies - quite the opposite, in fact. While sample-gathering in the Seychelles in May 2001, marine biologist J. Howard Choat wrongly assumed that he had killed a surgeonfish (genus Naso). When he took the fish off the spear, one of its razor-sharp caudal knives sliced open his right palm, severing two tendons. He received timely emergency care, b

Credit: Courtesy of Linda Snook" /> Credit: Courtesy of Linda Snook On some workdays, Milton S. Love happily sinks to the bottom of the sea in a contraption the size of a telephone booth turned on its side. With only a clammy mat to lie on, for a break he gets to sit upright while trying not to bump his head on the three-foot high ceiling. Through a tiny hole, Milton spends a couple of blissful hours counting fish, speaking aloud the names and sizes he sees as a video camera rolls. I

For oceanographers Jess Adkins of California Institute of Technology and his then-postdoc Kim Cobb (now at Georgia Institute of Technology), the trouble began when they hired a well-connected local to handle logistics and navigate bureaucracy while they collected samples from caves in Malaysian Borneo. Adkins and Cobb were collecting drip water, bedrock and stalagmites for the Pacific Tropical Climate Study, which they hope will help integrate climate data with geochemistry. Such

Credit: © Ric Frazier Productions" /> Credit: © Ric Frazier Productions Victoria Orphan wanted to be a marine biologist ever since kindergarten. She even wrote it down in a Dr. Seuss book called My Book About Me. It still sits in her childhood bedroom, which she had painted to resemble a deep-sea scene. At the University of California, Santa Barbara, Orphan studied marine biology and was headed in the direction of big-game ecology when she took a course with Ed DeLong,