Adrienne Hollister

Report of GLOMAR PhD student Adrienne Hollister about her participation in the online Ocean sciences Meeting 2022 from 24 February - 4 March 2022

I attended and presented a talk at the Ocean Sciences Meeting from 24-Feb to 4-March. This conference originally scheduled for Honolulu Hawaii but was moved online due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. I gave an oral presentation in the session OB23 “Large Rivers”, where I presented my manuscript “Distribution and Flux of Trace Metals (Al, Mn, Fe, Co, Ni, Cu, Zn, Cd, Pb and U) in the Amazon and Pará River Estuary and Mixing Plume”. Several members of the recent M174 Amazon research cruise (which I participated in last year) also attended this session and presented on Amazon estuary data. In addition, I attended other sessions (or watched pre-recorded talks) related to estuaries and trace metals, including TH33 (GEOTRACES 2021 Intermediate Data Product), CT03 (basin scale distributions of trace elements and isotopes), CB07 (estuaries at hot-spots for microbial C and N cycling), CT09 (biogeochemistry of particles), CB16 (biogeochemical coupling in estuaries and coastal waters) and CT10 (sources, sinks and cycling of trace elements). Finally, I attended a small-group Q and A session with an NSF chemical oceanographer (“Meet your program director”).

The online platform made it a bit more challenging than an in-person conference to network with people, but also provided more flexibility. For example, even though there was a fairly large time-zone difference, I was able to watch pre-recorded video presentations, and then attend Q&A sessions on only the ones that interested me the most. In particular, I benefited from the discussion during the OB23 Large Rivers session, where I got some good paper recommendations and had a chance to discuss topics more closely related to my estuary research (using both the Zoom chat function and verbal discussion).