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4 ways to visit Stone Lab

CFAES’s Stone Lab, located at Put-in-Bay on Lake Erie, is offering public tours of its Gibraltar Island, Aquatic Visitors Center and South Bass Island Lighthouse at various times and days this summer and fall. Find details and the schedules.

You also can visit Sept. 8, when the lab hosts its 20th annual Friends of Stone Lab Open House.

Especially in summer, Stone Lab is home to teachers, students and scientists exploring Lake Erie, its water, and what lives in and around it. (Photo: Stone Lab open house, 2016, Frank Lichtkoppler, Ohio Sea Grant, via Flickr.)

Watch: What people mean to water mean to fish

CFAES scientist Suzanne Gray explains her research connecting water quality, aquatic diversity and human activities in the video above. It’s her lightning-round talk (6:36) from CFAES’s Annual Research Conference. How do fish — from bluegills in the Scioto River, to walleyes in western Lake Erie, to cichlids in the Nile River basin — respond to rapid changes in their water caused by people?

Continue reading Watch: What people mean to water mean to fish →

Today: ‘To stand at the edge of the sea’

(Photo: Hawksbill turtle, iStock)

Today, June 8, we celebrate World Oceans Day.

Even in Ohio, of course, we’re connected to the oceans. By Lake Erie, the Ohio River, our local watersheds, farming practices, food choices, plastic use, energy sources, and on and on.

Why celebrate, honor and care for the oceans? Here’s the eloquent, wise Rachel Carson in her 1941 book Under the Sea-Wind: “To stand at the edge of the sea, to sense the ebb and flow of the tides, to feel the breath of a mist moving over a great salt marsh, to watch the flight of shore birds that have swept up and down the surf lines of the continents for untold thousands of years, to see the running of the old eels and the young shad to the sea, is to have knowledge of things that are as nearly eternal as any earthly life can be.”

CFAES’s celebrity snakes are back tweeting

Warm weather’s here, and the rattlesnake stars of the @TimberTweets feed — Jimbo, Hope, et al — are back, active and tweeting. Follow their rarely seen daily lives in the woods of southern Ohio. It’s all in the name of research being done by CFAES’s Peterman Lab. Fun fact (unless you’re a rodent or a tick): Timber rattlesnakes eat rodents that carry Lyme disease ticks. (Photo: iStock.)

Wetlands expert to keynote Stone Lab program

Mažeika Sullivan, director of CFAES’s Wilma H. Shiermeier Olentangy River Wetland Research Park, will keynote this year’s Stone Lab Winter Program on Feb. 19 in Columbus. The program is an educational and fundraising event in support of Stone Lab, Ohio State’s Lake Erie island campus.

Six guest speakers, a silent auction (including an antique microscope and Ohio State football tickets), a cash bar, Stone Lab merchandise sales and more are on the program’s agenda. Admission is free and open to the public. Find details and a link to RSVP.

Sullivan and some of his students talk about the importance of wetlands, and of the park specifically, in the 2014 video above, which was shot in and near the park.

Sullivan, among his efforts, is trying to develop a new diagnostic tool for harmful algal blooms in rivers and streams.

Feb. 1 in Wooster: ‘The Science of Culture’

The next Wooster Science Café features CFAES’s Nathan Crook, pictured, assistant professor of English and agricultural communication at Ohio State ATI in Wooster.

Crook, whose publications include the book A Culinary History of the Great Black Swamp: Buckeye Candy, Bratwurst and Apple Butter, will present (“in plain English!” the event flyer says) “The Science of Culture: Understanding Who We Are, What We Do and Why We Do It” at 7 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 1, at Spoon Market and Deli, 144 W. Liberty St., in Wooster. Admission is free and open to the public.

The Wooster Science Café series is being sponsored by CFAES and the College of Wooster. (Photo: Ohio State ATI.)

This talk is rec’d for fish fans

Florida International University’s Jennifer Rehage presents “Understanding the Dynamics and Sustainability of Recreational Fisheries: Patterns, Drivers, Space and Time in Bonefish (Albula vulpes) in South Florida” from 4 to 5:30 p.m. Feb. 8 in 164 Howlett Hall, 2001 Fyffe Road, on Ohio State’s Columbus campus. Learn more.

Her talk is part of a seminar series hosted by CFAES’s School of Environment and Natural Resources.

For background, read Global FlyFisher’s quick treatise on bonefish biology. (Photo: A totally cool-looking bonefish, iStock.)

‘We may be grossly under-accounting for methane in our existing climate models’

From an Ohio State press release today: “A study of a Lake Erie wetland suggests that scientists have vastly underestimated the number of places methane-producing microbes can survive — and, as a result, today’s global climate models may be misjudging the amount of methane being released into the atmosphere.” (Photo: One of the sites used in the study, Old Woman Creek National Estuarine Research Reserve, near Huron, Ohio, by Jordan Angle, courtesy of Ohio State.)

‘Penguins are my passion’: Environmental Film Series continues Nov. 6

“The Penguin Counters,” which follows an expert team documenting Antarctic penguin populations, gets a free public screening from 7 to 8:30 p.m. Monday, Nov. 6, as part of Ohio State’s ongoing 2017 Environmental Film Series.

“Penguins are my passion,” Ron Naveen, leader of the team, says in the film’s trailer. “Penguins are indicators of ocean health, and they’re ultimately going to be the sentinels of change.”

Continue reading ‘Penguins are my passion’: Environmental Film Series continues Nov. 6 →