Robin Fales, PhD

Such an interesting color for Fucus, I've always seen more olive green

Climate adaptation - including cooling - isn't a luxury. It's harm reduction and a moral imperative.

The point is to do it in ways that don't make the problem worse, e.g., ramping up renewables to limit emissions, using high efficiency heat pumps (plus sealing/insulation), increasing shading, etc.

A busy month visiting Brittany twice! First to help @rubygeorge.bsky.social set up a new limpet experiment 🐌🌱. Then again for the International temperate reef symposium #ITRS. Thank you to the @malacsoc.bsky.social and the Estuarine and Coastal Sciences Association for funding my attendance!

We're Recruiting! — Blue Carbon Canada

We're Hiring for 8 Positions!! Interested in conducting research on nature based solutions in Canada's coastal ecosystems? Blue Carbon Canada is recruiting 3 PDFs & 5 PhD students for Sept. 2025 in partnership w @wwfcanada.org www.bluecarboncanada.ca/were-recruit... Open to int'l scholars Pls repost

Congrats!!! 🎉👏🥳🦎🐟🦈

Warming Seawater Temperature and Nutrient Depletion Alters Microbial Community Composition on a Foundational Canopy Kelp Species Microbiome composition on the canopy kelp Nereocystis luetkeana in the northeast Pacific Ocean is affected by warming temperatures and nitrogen limitation. Following experimental manipulation of temp...

✨ New paper alert! ✨ We found that the #kelp #microbiome is disrupted in a warming ocean! 🌊🌡️ #Temperature had a larger effect than #nitrogen. Thanks to lead author Nichos Molnar, Robin Fales @intertidaleco.bsky.social & Cathy Pfister! enviromicro-journals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Happy #PhycologyFriday
My students ran sea urchin herbivory experiments this week and I saved some of the left over kelp for them to use for seaweed cyanotypes

Excited to announce that I have accepted a role as founding Chief Editor at Ocean Ecosystems, a new journal in the Nature Publishing Group! It focuses on high impact research on marine ecology, physiology, and biological oceanography. check it out here oceanecosystems.biomedcentral.com

Grades submitted! 1st semester as an assistant professor officially done ✅ I'm grateful for all the support from friends and colleagues this semester

On the left an image of a PhD student undertaking fieldwork on a rocky shore in Portugal, part of the international fieldwork opportunities within this project. The rest of the image lists supervisors, affiliations, and the application deadline (available through link in post).

Re-upping this PhD opportunity in marine ecology, applying a trait-based approach to seaweed carbon dynamics. Includes exciting opportunities for international fieldwork and open to applicants worldwide tinyurl.com/bdhs3aac

Applications are now being accepted. Also, grad students can apply for a Croasdale Fellowship to help defray costs for “attending a phycology course at a marine biology station”! Apps close Jan 1 so hop on it! www.psaalgae.org/croasdale-aw...

All the bull kelp in these artsy presses were entirely lab-grown grown in closed-system recirculating culture doi.org/10.1111/jpy....
#phycologyfriday #phycology #nereocystis #nereocystisluetkeana #bullkelp #aquaculture #mariculture

#PhycologyFriday *Postelsia palmaeformis* (sea palms) in northern California from our summer 2024 seaweed surveys

Please add me!

🙋‍♀️

Welcome! I'm Robin, a new Asst Prof at Soka (small liberal arts college in CA). I'm developing new classes in enviro sci focused on ecology with CUREs. I'm a researcher setting up my lab on marine foundation species (seaweed) and climate change. I also love 😺🌲🦉🍪☕ 📚🐉. Let's keep the intros going!

A rocky reef at low tide, with ocean & cliffs in the background. The reef is covered with gold-colored seaweeds that are translucent and glowing in the morning sunlight. The seaweeds look like little, elongated balloons, but they are filled with saltwater, not air. If you squeeze them, the water jets out through tiny pores. When I was younger, I sometimes picked this seaweed from the rocks & use it to squirt other kids.

An intertidal #seaweed meadow, glowing in the morning sun. These are in the genus *Halosaccion* - “salt sacs” - & the seaweeds’ bodies (“thalli”) are hollow sacs that fill w/ water when the tide is high then slowly leak the water at low tide to reduce stress via evaporative cooling. #MarineLife 🦑🌿

So excited for my friend and collaborator to be starting her lab in California too!

@fishguy.bsky.social and I will be running a bioimaging course at Friday Harbor Labs this winter! Hands-on experience with CT, SEM, histology, photography, and more. 10 weeks, 15 credits, and scholarships are available. Priority applications are due in October.

fhl.uw.edu/courses/appl...

Flier advertising hiring of a research scientist for the NW Climate Adaptation Science Center at the University of Washington. Background shows turquoise waters with long, golden strands of kelp.

Come join our team!!

The NW Climate Adaptation Science Center is HIRING a research scientist to coordinate the NW Regional Invasive Species & Climate Change Network and to lead our annual Actionable Science Deep Dives!

Review begins 6/10/24. More info ➡️ bit.ly/44ActQO

Please share widely! 🌎🧪

Hannah & Carmen arrange seaweed specimens on light tables in a darkened lab.

How do we move toward generality in linking intertidal biodiversity to ecosystem functioning? Seaweed functional trait measurements! We use light tables to measure traits such as surface area & perimeter. #PhycologyFriday @intertidaleco.bsky.social @hannahhall.bsky.social @jngriffy.bsky.social

Two researchers on a Southern California rocky shore are using a pulse-amplitude-modulated (PAM) fluorometer to measure photosynthetic efficiency & rapid light curves associated with seaweed canopies. The instrument is an oblong box with a screen & light-activated buttons on it, & a long probe runs from the instrument to the seaweed being measured. An orange cone - typically used for marking sports fields for practices - marks the sample location. The sky is blue, and the low-tide rocky reefs are covered with the brown seaweed Silvetia compressa.

How do intertidal seaweed canopies facilitate species living under them? Here, lab members measure photosynthesis rates of rockweeds & the red algae beneath them to study how the canopy affects temperature & desiccation stress. @intertidaleco.bsky.social @hannahhall.bsky.social

Dr. Robin Fales is wearing sunglasses and standing by a large, brightly glowing tote. She is reaching into the tote with a sensor to measure irradiance.

Dr. Robin Fales (@intertidaleco.bsky.social) is setting up the portable sun - a chamber we will use to measure nutrient uptake and photosynthesis rates for seaweeds. @hannahhall.bsky.social #PhycologyFriday

If you see this, post kitty

Our awesome lab tech demonstrates how to photograph a seaweed using a light box to estimate projected surface area.

Looking at overall shape of the seaweed specimen.

The seaweed has been cut into pieces so they will all lay flat for photographing.

Seaweed, cut & illuminated from behind to facilitate digital estimates of surface area

Trait training! Now that our permits are approved, it’s time to measure the traits (characteristics linked to function) of all the seaweeds. First step: teaching the protocol to our awesome crew of undergrads! #PhycologyFriday

Robin & Lauren pose with the elk kelp’s pneumatocyst, the gas-filled float that suspends the seaweed in the water column.

Robin holds the pneumatocyst, while Hannah, standing ~30 feet away, holds the kelp’s holdfast.

*Pelagophycus*!!!! The blades have been lost from this huge elk #kelp individual that we found in the drift earlier this week, but I had no idea they grew this large. In the 2nd photo, Robin is holding the pneumatocyst & Hannah is holding the holdfast. @intertidaleco.bsky.social #PhycologyFriday

#PhycologyFriday

Interactive effects of temperature and nitrogen on the physiology of kelps (Nereocystis luetkeana an... Kelp forest declines have been linked to warming ocean temperatures worldwide. Ocean warming rarely occurs in isolation, so multiple stressor studies are necessary to understand the physiological resp...

🚨New publication 🚨 Co-first author team with @brookeweigel.bsky.social This work aimed to understand the interactive effects of temperature and nitrogen on kelp physiology, we found that temperature is a really important stressor for both bull kelp and sugar kelp doi.org/10.3389/fmar...

Low-zone seaweeds and surfgrass at Shaw’s Cove, Laguna Beach, California.

#PhycologyFriday

Laying out transect tapes on a rocky shore. The researcher in the foreground, high on the shore, feeds out the tape, while a second researcher stretches the tape across a wave-swept intertidal reef.

Sunday seaweed surveys! #algae @intertidaleco.bsky.social @jngriffy.bsky.social