Greetings from Down Under

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Greetings from down under! I’ve just arrived in Sydney to work with one of my all-time top science heroes, Dr. Emma Johnston, at University of New South Wales (UNSW). It’s all thanks to support from the National Science Foundation and the Australian Academy of Science, through a program they jointly fund called EAPSI – East Asia Pacific Summer Institute.

Twitter post following rocky landing in Sydney
My Twitter post after landing amidst Sydney’s 100-year storm

Of course, it’s not at all summer here in Australia. My approach into Sydney Airport was among the most exciting aviation experiences I can recall due to a 100-year winter storm that was pounding the coast of New South Wales. Upon deplaning, I discovered a usually fair-weather city deep in the throes of winter weather chaos. City buses were rerouted, sirens of emergency vehicles chirped persistently in the distance, and Hassan, my Uber driver, had to turn around on three different occasions to avoid downed power lines.

Of course, my first reaction as a wise American tourist was to instantly flock to the water’s edge to watch. Here was the scene above iconic Bondi Beach in East Sydney:

Zaza Silk (pictured) lost her swimming pool and her mother’s ashes as the sea gobbled up her yard and home. Photo credit – top: © Seven/Sunrise, bottom: Peter Rae.

Harrowing stories from the storm’s victims have since emerged. Storm surge and wave action seized up to 50 horizontal meters of shoreline in a single night in some locations, wreaking havoc for residents and businesses.

Of course, the fact that the sea poses such a risk to coastal communities (both in Australia and around the world) is a small part of why I am here conducting research. I study the artificial structures we build to protect shorelines from seawater inundation, also known as shoreline armoring. As climate change raises sea levels and human populations migrate towards the coasts (Neumann et al. 2015), the need for shoreline armoring is more critical than ever. Yet, we must balance this need with the potential negative consequences of armoring. Previous research suggests that artificial structures such as seawalls and breakwaters alter the composition of marine ecosystems (Bulleri and Chapman 2010). These changes could influence the goods and services that marine ecosystems provide to coastal communities, such as pollution processing and recreational fishing.

Over the next few months, I will work closely with researchers at UNSW to examine how marine trophic (feeding) relationships compare between natural and armored shorelines in Sydney Harbour. Sydney is the epicenter for research on urban marine ecosystems, and researchers here have unparalleled knowledge of the species that live on artificial structures locally. This knowledge will enable me to use stable isotope analysis and next generation sequencing to identify the position of each species in the food chain and its original source of photosynthetic energy. By comparing these characteristics between organisms living on altered and natural shorelines, we will gain insight into how the structure and function of marine communities may be influenced by shoreline armoring.