A Glimmer of Good News

Amidst the rising fears of COVID-19 and the ever-changing regulations state and national governments put in place, there has been some good news for Adrift Lab.

  • PhD student Megan Grant was awarded a prestigious Holsworth Wildlife Endowment for her project on seabirds as a vector for nutrients and pollutants on islands. The Endowment is funded by scientist Bill Holsworth and his wife Carol and is partnered with The Ecological Society of Australia. Now in its 31st year, the Endowment continues to be a source of significant funding for post-graduate students in a variety of environmental and ecological fields.
  • MSc student, Jacqui Glencross, used her brilliant project management skills to organise a last-minute field expedition before the travel bans prevented much-needed data collection for her thesis. Together with Jennifer Lavers and Honours student, Emma Nichols, the team raced off to Bruny Island (on a Saturday!) to record the number of shearwater chicks in marked burrows.
  • PhD students Catarina Goncalves and Peter Puskic, submitted their highly anticipated thesis chapters on international plastic policy and sublethal effects (respectively).

“I’m stoked, to say the least. My lab work at RMIT was recently cancelled along with my second field season on Lord Howe Island because of COVID-19, so I really needed a bit of good news! The Holsworth WIldlife Endowment will ensure the analyses that underpins my PhD thesis chapters two and three are now secure, and I look forward to seeing the metals and nutrients results from the lab later this year.”

— Megan Grant

This good news comes as the annual Lord Howe Island field season has been cancelled. This has hit the Adrift Lab team hard, including Drs Jennifer Lavers, Alexander Bond, and Ian Hutton, who aimed to collect the 20th year of data in their long-term (otherwise uninterrupted) dataset. The cancellation of the 2020 field season also has important ramifications for PhD students, Peter Puskic and Megan Grant, who were due to complete their 2nd and final field data collections in April. While this is extremely disappointing for Adrift Lab, we understand the importance of the measures put in place to protect the beautiful people on Lord Howe Island. To everyone out there, stay safe and look after yourselves.