 Hello and welcome to the OIS podcast, bringing you the latest in science and tech from the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University. My name is Lucy Dickey, and for this episode of the OIS podcast, I speak to marine science students Michael Izumiyama and Billy Moore. They're in their first year of their PhDs and have just returned from a two-week research expedition to New Caledonia. We talked about their research, their favorite dive sites, and when they first became interested in the ocean. First up is Michael. I've been interested in the ocean probably since I can remember. I used to live, when I was younger I lived in Japan for a little bit next to this fishing port, and we have this fish processing plant that we used to carry all their loads in, and that's when I first just started staring at fishes and things like that, and that was when I was really young, maybe kindergarten or so. Have you always wanted to work with tropical marine ecosystems? In the beginning I didn't want to work in traffic, actually that was kind of funny, but just because the environment that I grew up in, we didn't have tropical reefs, and I loved what it was, and I felt like a lot of people study tropical reefs, so I wanted to study something that was local that I was really familiar with. But once I started getting more opportunities to dive in these tropical reefs, I just realized how beautiful they are, the biodiversity, the water temp is really warm, so you don't have to wear thick wetsuits, things like that, so they've just captured my attention, I've loved them so far. Cool, and why did you decide to come to OIST? I mean Okinawa is right next to the ocean, OIST is right next to the ocean. I remember the first week I came here all I did was swim, because it's right there, so it's in a great location with beautiful reefs and a lot of great fish and great opportunities. And so now onto what you're going to be researching for your PhD. What are you looking at over the next few years? So the main focus of my project is actually looking at these CO2 seeps in tropical reefs, where from volcanic seeps carbon dioxide is getting released into the water, and that causes an acidic environment that's similar to something future predicted oceans with this ocean acidification. So what I'm looking at is how fishes, those reefs actually do have fishes and coral growing in them, just like unhealthy reef, but the water itself is acidic, so I'm looking at how fishes adapt to this future condition of ocean acidification, and seeing if there's any population structure differences, or how do they actually adapt to it. So you're kind of like looking into the future of coral reefs? Basically. Cool, so what's the coolest experience you've had whilst diving? That's hard. I think one of my favorite reefs that I have actually dove in, I was helping out a friend who was doing some fellowship at the Riki University in Okinawa. They were actually at the Irioma to Marine Station, and that was probably one of the most beautiful reefs I've ever dove. There's lots of sea snakes everywhere, which was really cool. I mean, that was one of the first times I've ever seen so many sea snakes, and I thought it was kind of cool just diving with sea snakes. Yeah, sounds awesome. So are you particularly interested in sea snakes, or was it just like a new experience? Just a new experience. You know, because I didn't come from diving in a lot of tropical reefs, everything was kind of new when I was diving out there, and then I just saw, I don't know, probably 10, 20 sea snakes, which at first kind of spooked me just because I was like, I'm not used to this many snakes in the water, not even on land, right? So it was really cool. And what's your favorite kind of marine creature? I mean, I love fishes in general. It would be hard to pick one fish, but if it was like the family of fishes, I think flat fishes, like soles and halibut and things like that, that would be my favorite family of fishes. Why is that? They're just so cool. When I used to fish a lot, that was one of the target fishes that I loved catching, and I just think it's really cool how when they develop, they have eyes on both sides of their head, but as they grow, it switches on to the other side. That's just something that always fascinated me. You've just returned from a research expedition, which sounds amazing. Could you talk for a little bit about where you went? Definitely went to New Caledonia, which is a small island near New Zealand, a little off New Zealand. It's a French territory, so everybody speaks French there, which was really cool. And we're in this place called Boracay, which is a... It's about an hour from the airport, the main airport in Nomeo. It's a cool site where there's a mangrove forest, and what happens is usually in mangrove forests, it's just a silty bottom, but there's actually a coral reef that's right inside that mangrove forest, and what happens at low tide when the water comes out? Because of the soil composition, the water that's left in the forest actually gets acidified and then pulls into the coral reef, so that reef itself gets subjected to this slow acidic situation twice a day, and it's every day. So it's a really cool, really interesting site that we do research in. And what were you specifically looking at? In that reef, it's a healthy reef, and what's really interesting is in that reef there's actually fishes that are present outside the reef, just a few hundred meters away in these healthy, regular coral reefs in open water. So there's the same species of fish inhabit inside that mangrove forest where they're subjected to low acidic conditions, and then also that exact same species lives outside. So we wanted to see what the differences were between fishes inside the reef, or we called it the future site, and then outside in the control, which is the present site. And did you see any differences while you were there? So the structure of the reef itself is a little bit different. There's a lot of the corals you see outside are also in there, but they're a little bit more different. Some of the corals are a little bit more brittle, but that might be due to either acidity or just the current flow and things like that. But in terms of the fish in there, you see a lot of fishes that you see outside, which is really amazing, and it's not just one or two fishes, there's a ton of them, just a healthy reef inside that really cool space. That's not very cool. How long was the expedition for? So our expedition was scheduled for two weeks, and then what happened was the last few days got cut short because of a cyclone that came in. So with that we did get to go into town and kind of experience the city life also, which was nice too. Yeah, so you got like a good balance. Yeah. And could you describe what regular day looked like while you were on the expedition? Definitely. So we'd wake up around 5, 36 o'clock in the morning, and this all depends on the tide. So the tide does switch from day to day, but usually it'd be like 5, 36 in the morning. So we'd go for a little breakfast and then drive to our site where the research vessel comes out with a small boat to pick us up to take us to the main research boat. Then we'd suit up, get ready, get our gears ready, and go out to the mangrove site, which depending on the tide, we want to get there at low tide. Two hours before low tide is actually when the pH swings to about two hours after. But what happens is when the tide goes out and it's low tide, you can't get in because access just becomes blocked with the coral reef popping up. So we'd get there around maybe 7, 8, 9 o'clock, do our work for about 2 to 4 hours, and then wait for the tide to come back up, go back out to the boat, have lunch, and do the same thing again. And did you find anything unexpected in your trip? In terms of in the reef, I was surprised when I saw these apex predators come to the mouth of the lagoon site. So you had like these trivales that are large fish that are chasing all these little fish into the mouth and things like that. That was really cool. Also, it seemed like a lot of the, the huge problem with fishes is that fishes do get spooked when people are, there's strong hunting pressures on them. So outside in the regular reefs where people actually do some spear fishing and things like that. Soon as you go in, any big fish will hide from you. But inside this lagoon site, because it's well protected, people don't really go in there. These fish are just, there's some large fish just staring at you, looking at you like, Oh wow, what are you doing here? Kind of thing. So it was really, it was really nice seeing that environment with a healthy ecosystem in there too. Yeah, quite a unique experience, I suspect. Definitely. And so what's next for your PhD project? So right now, there's not much field work that we could do, but the plan is there's two locations in Okinawa, in Japan itself. There's one in Okinawa, it's Io Torijima, which is you have to go by boat and it's a small island that they used to mine sulfur out of. And there's a CO2 vent in that island, which has a similar reef with CO2 bubbling into it. And then also there's another one in the Shinkai Islands, which would be another site that we'll try to do within Japan. And hopefully if we can, our goal is to go back to the New Caledonia site and also Papua New Guinea has a similar site with CO2 seeps. So my goal is to look at three to four sites that have these CO2 seeps and look at the population structures of those fish. What's your favorite place in Okinawa to dive? To dive, actually I haven't done a lot of diving on the main island. I've done it a little bit in the past in Idio-Mint island, which is a really cool place. If you ever get to go there, it's beautiful. So that island, I've dove a little bit more than here, but for here I just snorkeled around and it's been really pretty. Yeah, really shallow enough. I did go out to the local spots here like Apogama, which is really cool. Right now you can hear the whales, which is awesome. Even snorkeling, if you just go down a little deeper and you hear the reflection off the drop-offs, you'll hear the whales coming and calling out. So it's really fun. Do you think you'll get the chance to go diving more? Oh definitely, yeah. I think it was just when I first started here, I didn't have enough time to do it, so I'll be doing a lot of diving for my research on here. That's another project that I'm doing. We're looking at population structures of clownfish and anemonefish. What would you say to anyone who was thinking about doing marine science? Would you have any advice for them? I mean, if you love the ocean, if you love... For me, when I first started school, I wasn't a big fan of school work and the traditional way things were taught. I think that's because I just wasn't passionate about it. So for people who want to study marine science, if you're passionate about it, it's not a chore anymore. For me, it's not a chore to read these papers. It's not a chore for me to write these reports and papers and things like that, because it's just something I'm really passionate about and I care about. So it just makes life a lot easier. If that's what you're doing for your work, I feel like if you love it, then you should give it a try. Next, I spoke to Billy Moore. He's from the UK but was drawn to marine science through an internship at the University of Western Australia. He's especially interested in how climate change will impact coral reef ecosystems. I completed an internship in Australia during my undergraduate degree and this is where it was kind of... Even though I was already undertaking a marine biology degree, this was where I really became kind of thinking, I'm definitely going to pursue a career in this. What did you do your internship in? So I worked at UWA and it was kind of a similar topic to what I study now. It was essentially looking at the effects of ocean acidification on corals and coral in algae. So similar to this trip I've been on recently, we went to a certain field site that has extreme conditions and what we did was kind of investigate whether corals and coral in algae in these extreme conditions are able to survive in the future and how are they surviving in these extreme conditions. So that was kind of really what set me on this track of climate change studies and coral reefs. Why did you decide to come to Ocean Hour at least? Well, being from the UK, whilst the oceans are nice and the areas around are nice, there's not a lot in terms of coral reefs because it's not a tropical area. So getting the chance to come to Ocean Hour where there are literally coral reefs on your doorstep essentially surrounding the place where you live, it makes conducting the research a lot easier. So yeah, this was one of the main reasons for me in terms of wanting to pursue coral reef research and this environmental change research, having coral reefs essentially on your doorstep and being able to access them and conduct research very close to home was one thing. But yeah, then also the draw of oyster was a very nice thing for me. So the kind of opportunity to design which classes I take and have a bit of input into the project I complete. So that was a big draw for me as well. Yeah, it must be really nice to be able to like walk out of the uni and into your field site. Yeah, essentially like people that I speak to here at oyster go in snorkeling and dive in recreationally around Ocean Hour and whilst I do that as well with my friends, that is essentially a part of my job kind of. So yeah, it's very nice to be able to do that so easily here rather than having to undertake these large field trips which are good but they can also be expensive, hard to plan so being able to just go to reefs around an Ocean Hour make conducting field work very easy. Do you have an idea of what you're going to be researching over the next few years as part of your PhD? So I have a rough idea currently so at the moment I'm in my first year and that means I'm completing rotations between different lab groups but at the moment I'm in the lab of Professor Ravassi so this is a marine climate change unit and this is the group I've just essentially completed my rotation with and it seems like I'm probably pretty much definitely going to be joining this lab and the likely area of research within this unit that I'll be studying is kind of looking at things like I've done in the past so the effects of environmental change particularly over warming so maybe heat waves or acidification on coral reef organisms so this is in the marine climate change unit this is particularly focused on coral reef fish and how they respond to either increased frequency of heat waves or perhaps acidification. This is likely what I'll be studying but it's still not completely defined yet so it's nice that I have the chance to sit down with Professor Ravassi and discuss this is what I want to do this sort of process which is very nice at least. And I bet it must have been an amazing opportunity to find out that you were going on this research trip down to New Caledonia when you were still in your first year? Yeah it was very unexpected actually so completing these rotations obviously we're told we undertake quite a short research project that we do for a few months so when I spoke to Professor Ravassi and he said there's the opportunity to come to New Caledonia with us learn a lot of new techniques which can be very beneficial work with a lot of scientists from around the world which is quite a unique experience and then collect some data, bring it back and this will be the basis of your rotation it was kind of unexpected but yeah it was a great opportunity for me to actually go out there and get some hands-on practical experience and kind of get more experience doing the sort of research that I would do for my actual PhD so if I joined his lab this sort of field where we did in New Caledonia is what I will continue to do for the next four or five years so yeah it was very nice it was a very good trip. And with this two week trip could you sort of describe what one day looked like like if you had a favourite day whilst you were on the trip what was it like so most days we would we stayed at a kind of campground that was off of the research cruise off of the research ship sorry and what we would do we would wake up essentially go to a small boat in dock where we would then be transported to the research ship once we got onto the ship we would kind of make a rough plan of what we were going to do in terms of when we were there we had two sites we visited or three sites so we had control sites which were normal conditions that are found throughout the world and we would have a future site so this site had conditions that were representative of the future under climate change so this included lower pH, higher temperatures and lower oxygen concentrations so we would make a plan to in the morning we visit the future site and we collect some fish so we would essentially prepare this plan we would then kind of prepare all of the gear load all of the gear that we need for sampling diving snorkeling etc onto the boat we would then travel to the site and when we were at this site there would be people diving in the water collecting fish then there would be people snorkeling that would transport the fish that were collected to the boat there were then people on the boat that were dissecting the fish involved extracting the brain liver, gills from these fish storing them in for later analysis basically so yeah so we would go to the travel to the site do this and essentially come back and repeat again in the afternoon so this is what most days look like and in the evening we would have dinner before returning to our ground so in terms of a favourite day the days were quite similar but that's not a bad thing in the fact that we've been snorkeling on these nice reef environments so for me every day was very nice and every day I was learning new skills that I'm going to use in the future so yeah that's what a normal day kind of looked like but I wouldn't say there was a specific day that stands out over all of the others perhaps at the start of the trip we were these were kind of exploratory days is what we call them so we were trying to identify what fish species are there and kind of just exploring the reef essentially so this was quite a more relaxed introduction into the trip but these days were quite nice to actually firstly see the reefs that we're going to be exploring so yeah whenever you can complete marine fieldwork there's always challenges because you're kind of at the mercy of you know the weather the tides also we were part of a large research cruise so maybe 20 people all from different universities so everybody is conducting their own work so these things all bring challenges so there's always these challenges within marine fieldwork and yeah we certainly kind of encountered some so at the future site so this was the site that we were really interested in that had the extreme conditions these conditions were created by the tides so at low tide is when you find the really extreme low pH conditions high temperature conditions and this is a good thing because this is how we obviously study this site and that's what creates these conditions but the problem is trying to get a boat into a low tide coral reef when the water depth is you know less than a meter is tricky so but it's not tricky it's pretty much impossible so there were some days when we couldn't visit this site so we had planned to go to the future site and the control site every day but because of the tides towards the end of the trip we had to cut this short essentially which wasn't a problem because we still got all of the samples we needed but it would have been nice to have a little bit more time there and also when we were there towards the end of the trip there was a tropical cyclone which you can't really plan for so because it was a long trip so all together it was two weeks so right at the start of the trip we didn't know that this cyclone was going to hit you know when it was planning we had no idea and this made us cut short our time on the research cruise by maybe it was we had to leave two days early or something which again wasn't a problem because we already had our samples that we needed but yeah so things like this are kind of expected and challenging but you deal with them and kind of adapt essentially and did you see anything really cool while you were out snorkelling and diving whether any really cool fish or corals that really stood out? So the entire future site actually was a really cool thing to see because as I mentioned the conditions there were really extreme and harsh it's a harsh environment so to see any corals there let alone the kind of extensive formations that we've seen and the diversity of corals so to see this itself and the fish there was very interesting to me but in terms of just general cool marine organisms when we were at the control site we saw I think I saw a turtle and I also saw a couple of sharks like black-tipped reef sharks so this was really cool for me to see it was very interesting to me and there were a lot as well it wasn't just one I seen multiple of these black-tipped sharks so it was very nice Not afraid of sharks then? No not afraid of sharks but if you are at first you look twice but then once you realise it's a kind of harmless reef shark you're okay Cool Do you have a favourite dive site around Okinawa? There are a lot of amazing sites around Okinawa so since I've been here I've visited a couple I like to snorkel at a site called Apogama this is quite close to Oist it's about 10 minutes away and this is a very nice reef where there's diversity of fish diversity of corals and it's quite easy to access quite easy just to walk down there with your snorkeling gear and jump in the water with a friend and have a look around so this is one of my favourite sites but there's also one I investigated the other day Diving is called Grilla Chop so it's quite a strange name it's due to a rock formation but I dove there and it was an interesting site as well there were some interesting things to see coral, fish, cuttlefish turtle What's the best part about doing a PhD in marine science? There are multiple things that I enjoy about it but obviously the field work and trips like the one to New Caledonia are pretty unique to marine science almost perhaps some other field to do these sort of trips but yeah I think for me being able to conduct this field work and then come back and see the data and analyse the data is very interesting to me And finally What's your dream job? What does it look like post-oist? Post-oist so kind of what I'm doing right now essentially so when you're a PhD student you essentially do the same thing as you maybe do at post-doc level or maybe not professor level but the idea is still the same you know you identify an area that you want to research you come up with a plan of how you're going to research it you then go out and do the field work collect the data analyse the data etc so yeah I think just kind of carrying on down the academic track where you perhaps go into a post-doc position and then go into a more senior research position and then into a professorship position that's the sort of thing I would like to do at the moment because yeah it seems very interesting to me Awesome, well thank you for chatting with me Thank you very much for having me Thanks for listening to the podcast It was recorded and edited by me Lucy Dickey Thanks especially to Michael Izumi Yama Billy Moore and the rest of the team at the Marine Climate Change Unit If you enjoyed the episode subscribe to get more as soon as we release them See you next time