Suhey Ortiz. We would like to thank all whom helped make this event possible and all those who participated and showed up.

September 10, 2015

This past semester was our first symposium highlighting student and faculty research within CIMA. The event was the culmination of near-ly a year of preparation and involved the volun-tary work of people within AECiMa as well as faculty, Sea Grant and departmental heads/chairman. After opening remarks from the organ-izers, UPRM-DMS fac-ulty and alumnus (Dr. Ernesto Weil, Dr. Hec-tor Ruiz and Dr. JJ Cruz Motta) gave oral presen-tations about their re-search and careers lead-ing up to their current positions. Student oral

presentations began with talks from: Rolf Vieten, Jaaziel Garcia, Adail Rivera, Daniel Martinez, Carlos Garcia and Mari-anna Careli. These presentations encom-passed research on ma-rine sponges, cave sys-tem, sea grass, physical and chemical properties of waves, and bathymet-ric monitoring. Finally, the symposium conclud-ed with a student poster session from: Luis Pomales, Erick Garcia, Nick Hammerman, Brenda Soler, Jeremy Kravitz, Estefanía Qui-ñones, Natalia I. Ramí-rez Irizarry, Ruben Gar-cia & Carolina Rodri-guez, Adail Rivera, An-gela M. Ferra Elias and

First Research Symposium a Success

Student Association of the Department of Marine Sciences, UPRM

Fall 2015 Volume 1, Issue 2

AECiMa Fall Newsletter M.S. & Ph.D.

Defenses:

Diana Beltrán, Ph.D.

Alexandra Galindo, M.Sc.

Yariela Gumá, M.Sc.

Myrna Santiago, M.Sc.

Inside this issue:

Grant Writing 2

Come Pez Leon 2

Scuba Dogs 2

Tres Palmas 3

Meeting 3

Pincho Sale 3

Seminar Series 4

CIMA Clean Up 4

Achievements 5

Publication List 6 Presenters and attendees listen to

ongoing research within CIMA.

Director Dr. Otero gives opening

remarks.

September 3, 2015

The Proposal Develop-

ment Unit (PDU) of UP-

RM’s Center of Research

and Development offered

DMS students a work-

shop on how to success-

fully search and submit

proposal opportunities.

Executive Officer Kara

Fore led the workshop along-

side student colleagues. Poten-

tial funding sources and op-

portunities where discussed,

followed by a briefing on how

to submit a proposal with

higher chances of being ac-

cepted. PDU is also available

to students who want to re-

view thesis proposals, thesis

or projects.

Rojo. Two trash picking teams were set up, with one group comprised of divers whom swept the shallow ocean floor look-ing for any bits of marine debris. This group’s ef-forts were mirrored by a second team whom walked on the adjacent beach front and picked up floating or washed up garbage. We were pleased

September 19, 2015

AECiMa par-ticipated in the annual Scuba Dogs Beach Clean-up. This year the event was held in Playa Buye within Cabo

to note that while the visi-bility was poor during the dive, the reef did not have much trash at all. We left Buye cleaner than when we first arrived. Again thank you very much to those whom orchestrated the activity and to those AECiMa members whom took their time to help out.

Grant Writing Workshop teaches career

skills

Scuba Dogs Beach Clean Up at Buye

AECiMa assists at ¡Come Pez León!

tivities included face painting, lionfish fillet-ing, general outreach and enjoying the local music and food. The vibe was positive and every-one whom attended thoroughly enjoyed the day, by the mid-dle of the afternoon the entire plaza and associated parking

lot were full of people enjoying the festivities. A big thank you to the or-

September 13, 2015

Members of AECiMa participated in the Lion-fish Derby in Gyuanilla Plaza. Several of our stu-dents were active divers and removed roughly 100 lionfish from adjacent docks and piers around the Gyuanilla plaza. After the diving, several other members joined in the festivities there after. Ac-

Page 2

AECiMa Fall

Newsletter

Students learn how to develop proposals.

Rebecca & Chelsea dissect lionfish.

Face painting was a hit!

During the course of the Fall 2015 semester AECi-Ma and Sea Grant PR worked together to or-chestrate the Tres Palmas Field Surveys. The col-laborative efforts brought together scientists, stu-dents and the general public for a series of meetings and workshops geared to inform, educate and prepare participants for field surveys. The sur-veys themselves will be geared to assess fish/coral assemblages, as well as other benthic organisms.

The goal is these surveys will re-assess the effec-tiveness of the Tres Pal-mas Marine Reserve and determine if boundaries are adequate in maintain-ing ecosystem health, or if new management needs to be considered. The ac-tivities this semester in-cluded general meetings and workshops to teach the protocols necessary for conducting this inves-tigation. AECiMa stu-dents also participated in a field practice at a local cayo. The hope is that the

qualifying exam will be conducted at the begin-ning of the Spring 2016 semester. Thank you to the organizers: Dr. Michelle Sharer, Dr. Hec-tor Ruiz, Luis Rodriguez, Mr. Chaparro, the entire of Sea Grant, AECiMa members whom partici-pated, Dr. Ernesto Weil, Dr. JJ Cruz, Dr. Ernesto Otero.

carrying out future

activities such as a

Marine Science

Day and Research

Symposiums.

October 20 &

November 24, 2015

Two pincho sales were

carried out at the Marine

Sciences Department at

the main campus

(Mayagüez, PR). The

DMS pinchos are now

famous all around cam-

pus! We raised roughly

$300 each time and those

funds will be used for

Preparing to Survey Tres Palmas Marine Reserve

Successful pincho sale fundraiser

Student / Faculty Meeting ignites interest The discussion brought forth perspectives from new and veteran students as well as new and veter-an professors. We used the input from this meet-ing to set up downstream activities and events with-in AECiMa. For instance, the thesis seminar series, beach clean-ups, student surveys about classes/departmental organiza-

tion/perceived problems and sponsored seminars were all byproducts of this meeting. We hope to have another student fac-ulty meeting next semes-ter with the same inten-tions.

October 15, 2015

We conducted a successful meet-ing between Ci-Ma students and DMS faculty, with the inten-tions of clarifying the current state

of the department as well as informing both parties of their vested interests.

Fall was a

very active

semester for

AECiMa and

all DMS

students!

See student

achievements

on Page 5

Page 3

Students sale pinchos at main

campus

Students and faculty attend the meeting.

November 5, 2015

With the intent to revive the seminar series events that where regularly held at DMS, the first of the seminar series was held at the Magueyes classroom where Nick Hammerman and Miguel Figuerola presented their thesis pro-posals, while Chelsea Harms-Tuohy and Phillip Sánchez practiced their talks to be presented at conferences later on. Stu-

dents and professors assisted on giving feedback. Do you want to sign up for the next one? Let us know!

Thesis Seminar Series- We will be continuing this seminar series next semester with the hope of having one per month.

Further Outreach- We plan to have outreach activities for students within the Geological, Biological, Chemical and Phys-ical departments at UPRM, with the goal of enticing future students to join the department or just to inform interested peo-ple about our work.

Tres Palmas Surveys- We will be continuing this effort next semester with the ultimate goal of carrying out all surveys by the middle of the spring.

Marine Science Day– We plan to have another MSD in which we highlight the re-search done here to prospective students & general public.

Further Fundraisers- We also plan to have another pincho fundraiser, so if you like pinchos please attend and enjoy.

Do you have ideas? Send us an email at aeci-maupr@gmail.com

Seminar series helps prepare students for

conferences & defenses

Upcoming AECiMa Activities for Spring 2016

AECiMa cleans up Magueyes one professor helped in picking up trash from the adjacent mangroves and even removed many dis-carded PVC pipes and old research equipment. As a result, as you walk down from the botero you will notice the mangroves near the pathway are very clean and we hope to keep them this way. We hope that during our next

Magueyes Clean-up we will have more partici-pants, remember this is our research station and let’s work to keep it clean. Thank you to those whom attended.

November 22, 2015

Members of AECiMa conducted a second beach clean up for this semester, though this time we de-cided to do it

at our own research sta-tion. Three students and

Page 4

AECiMa Fall

Newsletter

Nick Hammerman prepares

to give his talk.

Phillip Sanchez presents his conference talk

Miguel, Nick and Luis with

their trash treasures.

Evan Tuohy (Ph.D. candidate) assists with Dr . Clark Sherman’s National Geographic-funded project to

core mesophotic reefs in La Parguera to characterize these mesophotic reef structures and accretion. The pro-

ject is scheduled to be completed in early 2016. Diving is at depths of 50m using closed-circuit rebreathers.

On August 20th, 2015 the Sultana R/V set sail to the Caribbean Time Series (CaTS)

for the first time since 2013. This endeavor provides an observing station for documen-

tation of the magnitude and periodicity of basin-scale phenomena affecting regional

waters. Research at CaTS focuses on characterization and understanding of seasonal

and inter-annual variability of near-surface and sub-surface seawater features in the NE

Caribbean Basin as affected by seasonal riverine intrusions and by anthropogenically

driven climate change. This cruise was organized by students Erick García and Angela

Ferrá (M.Sc. students) under supervision of Dr. Corredor.

Masters student Adail Alberto Rivera Nieves became the first college student recog-

nized by The Hydrographic Society of America ( THSOA ) . The award was received for his thesis , titled

“Unstructured Implementation of Three - Dimensional Circulation Model for San Juan

Bay Estuary”, research under Dr. Miguel Canals , from the departments of General

Engineering and CIMA.

Luis Pomales (M.Sc. student) spent a week in Saba with Mr . Julio Morell as invit-

ed researchers of the program Sea & Learn during October. He deployed two

CariCOOS home-made shallow drifters and two AOML SVP drifters from the Global

Drifter Program. He also participated in the recovery and the refurbishment of two

autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) at the end of the 3rd consecutive mission of

the collaborative project between CariCOOS, UPRM, RSMAS and AOML/NOAA

that looks to fill the gap of ocean data collected for the understanding of the ocean role

in tropical cyclones and the improvement of available hurricane intensification fore-

Chelsea Harms-Tuohy, Evan Tuohy, Martha Ricaurte

(Ph.D candidates), Phillip Sanchez and Jesús Rivera (M.Sc.

students) all presented their fisheries related projects at the

68th Gulf and Caribbean Fisheries Institute Conference in

Panama on November 9-13, 2015. Chelsea and Evan were

sponsored by PR Sea Grant.

Grisel Rodriguez (Ph.D. candidate) presented at the

Network of Aquatic Mammal Specialist of Central Ameri-

ca and the Caribbean workshop that is part of the Society

for Marine Mammalogy Biennial Conference in San Fran-

cisco on December 12, 2015. Her topic was the genetic

structure and diversity of the bottlenose dolphin (Tursiops

truncatus) population off Puerto Rico.

Student Achievements & Activities for 2015

Conferences & Workshops Attended by CIMA students

Page 5

Volume 1, Issue 2

Equipment used on

the CaTS cruise in

August.

Jesús Rivera, Martha Ricaurte,

Chelsea & Evan Tuohy by their

posters at GCFI.

Luis Pomales works

on the AUV

President:

Nick Hammerman

Vice President:

Erick García Secretary:

Mariel Cruz

Treasurer:

Geraldine Gomez

Facebook: /aecimaupr

Twitter: @aecimaupr

E-mail: aecimaupr

@gmail.com

Rolf Vieten (Ph.D. Candidate) is investigating climate over the last 10,000

years in the Caribbean. He won the first price for oral presentations during 30th An-

nual Symposium of Caribbean Geology. He was part of the organization committee

of the Summer School of Speleothem Science held in Oxford, United Kingdom.

There he presented a poster supported by Sea Grant PR and the International Asso-

ciation of Sedimentologists.

Nick Hammerman (M.Sc. Student) attend-

ed the Genomics Workshop in Mayaguez dur-

ing November 30—December 4, 2015.

Luis Pomales (M.Sc. Student) presented a

portion of his thesis research at the MTS/IEEE

OCEANS15' Conference in Washington DC in

October.

Erick García (M.Sc. Student) presented at

the 27th conference HENAAC STEM Career

Conference (sponsored by " Great Minds in

STEM " ), held in Pasadena , CA from 14 to

18 October 2015. He was sponsored by PR

Sea Grant.

AECiMa

Beltrán D, Schizas NV, Prada C, Appeldoorn R (2015) Isolation and character ization of twelve mi-

crosatellite loci to study connectivity in the yellow jawfish Opistognathus autifrons. Conservation Genet-

ics Resources DOI: 10.1007/s12686-014-0419-x

García-Hernandez JE, Reimer JD, Hoeksema BW (2015) Sponges hosting the zoanthar ia-associated

crab Platypodiella spectabilis at St. Eustatius, Dutch Caribbean. Coral Reefs . DOI 10.1007/s00338-015-

1364-4.

Guma-Cintron Y, Bandyopadhyay A, Rosado W, Shu-Hu W, Nadathur GS (2015) Transcriptomic

analysis of cobalt stress in the marine yeast Debaryomyces hansenii . FEMS Y east Research 15 (8): fo-

v099. DOI: 10.1093/femsyr/fov099

Lucas MQ, Stat M, Smith M, Weil E, Schizas NV (2016) Symbiodinium (ITS2) diversity in the cor-

al host Agaricia lamarcki (Cnidaria: Scleractinia) among shallow and mesophotic reefs (20 - 70 m). Ma-

rine Ecology (in press)

Tuohy E, Nemeth MI, Bejarano I, Schärer MT, Appeldoorn RS (2015) In situ Tagging of Nassau

Grouper Epinephelus striatus Using Closed-Circuit Rebreathers at a Spawning Aggregation in Puerto Ri-

co. Marine Technology Society Journal 49(1): 115-123

Student Publications in 2015

Printed by:

Luis at the conference in Washing-

ton DC.

Erick presents his poster at the HE-

NAAC STEM Career Conference