Today the Mobile Register has a profile of Dr. Monty Graham, a Senior Marine Scientist at the Dauphin Island Sea Lab. Dr. Graham is a world renowned authority on the jellyfish. It's an interesting article about a fascinating creature and the man who studies them.
From his "about me" page on the Dauphin Island Sea Lab web site:
My research program is broadly aimed at processes that influence the production and distribution of coastal marine plankton. The principal area of research that I am involved with is the ecology and biology of gelatinous zooplankton. Current research activities in this area are all related to the potential response of gelatinous zooplankton predators to short-term (i.e., seasons) and long-term (i.e., years) changes in nutrient inputs from adjacent watersheds. Three main areas of activity include
- feeding, growth and metabolism of jellies that utilize patchily distributed prey,
- reproduction and fertilization dynamics of jellies, and
- behavioral adaptations of jellies that act to optimize growth and reproduction.
The King of sting: Local marine scientist has devoted his career to the study of the mysterious, gelatinous creatures known as jellyfish
Most people avoid jellyfish. Monty Graham isn't one of them. The marine scientist has devoted two decades of research to the gelatinous creatures, traveling the world in a quest to uncover their mysteries.
He's so fond of jellies that his wife paid to have an image of a billowy sea nettle tattooed to the back of his leg.
"It was an anniversary gift," Graham said recently, grinning as he crunched through the white sand on Dauphin Island's east end. "It took about an hour."
The likeness extends across several inches of flesh above his ankle, and was created by a downtown Mobile tattoo artist about 10 years ago.
His fascination began about a decade earlier, back in the 1980s, when many of his colleagues didn't consider the spineless, brainless organisms to be a fast ticket to big-budget research grants.
Graham said his advisers and peers found jellyfish to be too esoteric. Instead of being arcane, though, the Kentucky native saw the sea life as a way to help explore, among other things, how marine ecosystems function in the face of changes in water quality.
"Really, they're a major component of our marine system," Graham said. "Compared to what we know about organisms that live in estuaries, we know very little about these animals."
A senior marine scientist at the Dauphin Island Sea Lab since 1995, he earned a doctoral degree in biology from the University of California Santa Cruz in 1994. He's traveled to Croatia several times in recent years, building relationships with foreign scientists and conducting research in the southern Adriatic Sea.
Graham, also an associate professor of marine sciences at the University of South Alabama, received a grant from the National Science Foundation to develop an Adriatic Institute for Marine Environmental Complexity. The institute, with branches at the local sea lab and two other labs in Europe, seeks to encourage collaborative research across the natural and social sciences.
"In Croatia, we're really exploring how populations (of jellyfish) become isolated and evolve," Graham said. "Jellies were among the first multi-cellular organisms here, yet they still hold their original body plan."