We wanted to highlight a recent podcast feature on Rene Martin, a PhD student within Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and the Biodiversity Institute. It focused both on her research on lanternfish and hashtag campaign #Sundayfishsketch. Check out her website (https://lampichthys.com) and her beautiful fish prints (https://www.inprnt.com/gallery/lampichthys.com/) to learn more!
Rene Martin:
On March 1st I talked with Nick Kramer, a Kansas District Fisheries Biologist and host of the Fisheries. We talked about my research on lanternfishes, deep-sea fishes that use bioluminescence as camouflage and communication. Lanternfishes migrate to the surface of the ocean every day to feed and are thought to be the second most abundant vertebrate on the planet. We briefly went over my work on lanternfish evolution and additionally talked about a deep-sea trawling expedition the Smith lab undertook in 2016 off the coast of California near San Diego.
Nick had us switch gears to talk about the #SundayFishSketch, which I initially started as an accountability hashtag. I posted every week with the belief that someone else one twitter was waiting to see my weekly sketch, and I would gain practice in the process. The hashtag was open for anyone to participate and gained traction over time. As of last week, we had our highest participation yet, with 39 sketches posted. Over the last two years this hashtag has brought a community of scientists, artists, and the general public together in the love of art and fishes.
I do some additional outreach work at the Natural History Museum at the University of Kansas, engaging the public with specimens of deep-sea fishes and describing their unique morphologies, behaviors and reproductive strategies. Our graduate student association has also brought our research to the public by having science events at restaurants, parks, and libraries.
Check out the podcast here: https://fisheriespodcast.podbean.com/e/028-deep-sea-lanternfishes-and-sundayfishsketch-with-rene-p-martin/
KU-EEB Outreach 