Fort Johnson Seminar Series

Seminar Schedule 2025

• January 13

  Jason Doll - Francis Marion University

  Great Pee Dee River Striped Bass

  Abstract: Striped Bass Morone saxatilis has been a historically important sport fish
  in the Pee Dee River system and continues to be a popular target species by many
  recreational and charter anglers in the winter. However, very little is known about
  their life history in this system. Early genetics work suggests that there is no unique
  Pee Dee River population but rather a mixed ancestry from the Santee-Cooper and
  Cape Fear/Roanoke Rivers. Spring electrofishing surveys in 2017 and 2018
  suggested the population was small and a new stocking program was established
  in 2019. This presentation will discuss three projects that have occurred through
  collaborations with Francis Marion University and SCDNR Freshwater Fisheries.
  The first project identified movement patterns of stocked phase 2 fish in their first
  year at large. Here we identified potential nursery areas and locations that should
  be protected to encourage successful recruitment. The second project describes
  the movement of adults over multiple years. This individual based model found that
  movement patterns vary considerably across individuals and not all adult fish
  migrated upriver in the spring when spawning typically occurs. The final project is
  ongoing and will discuss efforts to estimate the population size of Striped Bass in
  the Great Pee Dee River.

• January 27

  Aubrey Anthony - Resilience Coordinator, South Carolina Aquarium 

  RICE in the Lowcountry: Citizen Science as a Vehicle for Climate Resiliency

  Living in the Lowcountry, we're all well-acquainted with one aspect of our changing climate—rising tides and the flooding that comes with them. We all have flooding stories that occupy our minds each & every King Tide, but many don't know what to do about it.  The South Carolina Aquarium's resilience coordinator, Aubrey Anthony, will lay out how the SCA's Resilience Initiative for Community Engagement, or RICE, aims to combat this dilemma by employing citizen science, as well as incorporating local culture, to connect community members with the tools to facilitate solutions-based conversations around climate resilience.

   

• February 3

  Joseph Ryan - Whitney Laboratory for Marine Bioscience, University of Florida

  What comb jellies can tell us about cell types in the last common ancestor of animals

  Comb jellies (ctenophores) branched off from the rest of animals around 850 million years ago. This long history of independent evolution has led to a wide set of unique features at the level of tissue, cell, and genome. Much interest has been focused on this uniqueness and some have pointed to these differences as evidence for convergent evolution of features like neurons, muscles, mesoderm, etc. This seminar focuses on shared characteristics with other animals and makes the case that the last common ancestor of animals had neurons.

• February 10

  Chris Bradshaw - Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission

  Conversion factors for select species along the Atlantic Coast

• March 3

  Nick Castillo - NOAA NCCOS

  TBD

• March 17

  Anders Goksoyr (VIRTUAL ONLY) - University of Bergen (Norway)

  Marma-Detox; Whales and Polar Bears in a Petri Dish: Decoding Marine Mammal Toxicology Through in Vitro and in Silico Approaches

• March 24

  Julia Byrd - SAFMC

  Supporting Fisheries with Citizen Science: The South Atlantic Fishery Management Council’s Approach

• March 31

  Susanna Hopkins - The Nature Conservancy

  TNC's Coastal Resilience Program

• April 28

  Susan Richardson - University of South Carolina

  Capturing a more complete picture of PFAS and uncovering important unknown contaminants in drinking water