When I told my parents I was moving back to Monhegan for the third time to pursue my lobster license, my dad just shook his head and uttered what he had many times before, “you have one heck of a resume, kid.” He wasn’t wrong. After graduating from UMaine, my now husband and I set […]

Even though I knew from a pretty early age that I wanted to be scientist, I couldn’t quite name it as that. I knew I loved animals of all kinds, and the ones that lived in water were particularly interesting to me. I didn’t know how to become a scientist, the only scientists I knew […]

Ocean and seafood were integral parts of the region where I spent my childhood. Growing up in Tianjin, China, a large port city on the west coast of the Bohai Gulf, I was naturally drawn to the sea. The proximity to the ocean meant that access to a variety of delicious seafood was a regular […]

It’s hard to tell when I first fell in love with the ocean, it’s been part of my life for as long as I can remember. I was raised, and currently live, in Boothbay, ME, a community where hard work is the expectation. I started working at the age of nine, helping my father with […]

Living in coastal Alaska for the majority of my life let me work and play on the ocean from a young age. Like a lot of budding marine biologists, I loved tidepooling, snorkeling, and getting out on boats as much as possible. My interests began to shift when I went off to college to get […]

The University of Maine (UMaine) stands as a leader in marine sciences, a position bolstered by the collaborative efforts of UMaine’s Marine Aligned Research, Innovation, and Nationally-recognized Education (MARINE) Initiative. Recently, UMaine MARINE welcomed Dr. Katrina Armstrong as a Postdoctoral Researcher. Armstrong plays a crucial role in managing and advancing the initiative, contributing to the […]

Working with Maine Sea Grant’s Marine Extension Team since 1999, I’ve sat around tables with coastal community members at town halls and church halls, coffee shops and pizza shops for more than two decades. More recently those gatherings were relegated to a laptop screen. My preference has always been for in-person conversations where the in-between […]

Heather grew up in Gorham, Maine and received her undergraduate degree in Biology with a concentration in Evolution and Ecology at Clark University. She worked as a naturalist and educator for nearly a decade in Maine, West Virginia, Florida and California. She received a Master’s of Science in 2016 from San Francisco State University where […]