Mapping The Barents Sea - An Interview with Dr. Marie Porter
BY ALLY HUGHES
Can you tell us a little bit about yourself and your path into oceanography?
I grew up nowhere near the sea! As I was finishing college and thinking about going to university, I don’t think I’d ever really thought about marine science being a thing that anyone did, never mind physical oceanography. I did however really enjoy physics and was very lucky to have a teacher that recognised that and encouraged me to pursue the subject further and to work out what really interested me. After lots of discussion I decided on meteorology as I was particularly interested in climate science. While researching university courses I came across a degree in Meteorology and Oceanography at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, England and it really appealed to me. I took this degree with an interest primarily in meteorology until my physical oceanography module with Prof. Karen Heywood. Karen offered me a dissertation and passed on an advert for a summer placement for Practical Oceanography at the Scottish Association for Marine Science (SAMS). I got the placement where I had an opportunity to go on my first research cruise and this combined with my enjoyment of my dissertation laid the foundations of my love for physical oceanography.
After my undergraduate I was offered a PhD project at the University of Aberdeen, Scotland focusing mostly on land terminating glaciers. This project did however have an extra detail in that it was looking to the ocean for an explanation of the glacial behaviour.
My background in meteorology, glaciology and oceanography lead into a postdoc in physical oceanography and has proven a great backdrop for being involved in a range of very interesting projects.
Photo credit: Marie Porter
What does a typical work day look like for you? (If this varies significantly, could you give us a taste of tasks you get to do as part of your job?)
I don’t think I can successfully define a typical day at work, but at the moment I am teaching a course on the Fundamentals of Marine Physics as part of the University of the Highlands and Islands Marine Science degree and this takes a lot of my time. I am also working with colleagues across the World to bring our work together in the form of scientific papers and proposals for future work.
When I am on field work my days really are 24-hours. While we are on the ships we have to make the most of every minute, particularly when we have good weather. Data is always being collected and when it’s not directly for your work then you have to help others. It’s a really exciting time and part of the reason I pursued observational oceanography over modelling. We see the numbers coming in and start analysing straight away so we can see what is happening in the ocean beneath us. We are all very careful to make sure we get enough down time though; the good atmosphere requires everyone to be happy and well rested.
After these trips my focus moves to data analysis. I work with autonomous robotic instruments which collect data every 5 seconds for months at a time, which means a LOT of data to look into. I feel like a detective sometimes, pulling apart the mysteries that my robots are telling me.
What is Arctic PRIZE and why is it important?
Arctic PRIZE is part of a massive programme called Changing Arctic Ocean funded by the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) in the UK and the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) in Germany. Our role within this programme is to investigate how the phyto- and zoo- plankton at the ice edge in the Barents Sea (north of Norway) are reacting to changes in the structure of the water column, driven by changes in heat, salt, ice cover, wind and light.
This is important because the Barents Sea is an important pathway for water which travels into the Arctic Ocean and so changes within it will be reflected further north. The Barents Sea is also one of the areas of the World’s oceans reacting most rapidly to climate change and so acts as a precursor to what we might expect to see throughout the rest of the Arctic.
What is your role within Arctic PRIZE?
Arctic PRIZE has a large biological and chemical component, but my role is to provide the people doing this work with a picture of what the ocean that they are studying looks like. As a physical oceanographer I use information about heat, salt, tides and currents to understand the structure of the water column and how it is changing through decades, years, seasons and days.
What has been your experience as a woman working in oceanography?
Throughout my career I have been surrounded by female role models, from advisers and more senior scientists to my peers and students around me. I have always had male bosses but they have always treated me as an equal and I have felt included in all discussions. I think I have had a particularly privileged experience especially when it comes to field work. On one Arctic cruise, the entire physics team was female, and that wasn’t engineered, it just turned out that at that time the best people for the job were women.
There have been times when I have been very aware of the gender bias at meetings, but have always felt welcome and part of the group. When I look at my peers, I see many good, strong women progressing through oceanography and I am sure that these biases will be corrected.
Marie pictured with gliders (Photo credit: Emily Venables)
Do you have a favourite toy (piece of equipment/analysis tool/software) for studying the ocean? What is it and why do you like it?
My favourite toy (although if you catch me on a bad day I will not say good things about it) is a glider. These autonomous robots use buoyancy engines to very efficiently zig-zag through the water column, collecting profiles while they transect across seas or oceans. These gliders collect all sorts of data from temperature and salinity to light and the colour of the water. We set the gliders off on missions which we control from the safety of our phones and laptops, while they take on transects that we couldn’t hope to complete otherwise. Thanks to gliders we can build up impressions of how our oceans change between seasons and importantly we can start to fill in a big science gap – what the oceans look like in the winter. The gliders allow me to collect data in places and at times of the year when it would be difficult or even impossible, which means I am seeing things that simply couldn’t have been seen before we started using them.
You can learn more about Arctic PRIZE on their website or the Scottish Association for Marine Science website, and follow Dr. Porter on Twitter @MariepPorter.