Life at Stanford normally conjures up images of students bustling about on our sylvan campus against a backdrop of sloping hills.

But for a group of Stanford students at the Hopkins Marine Station in Monterey, the waters of the scenic peninsula have replaced classrooms on the Farm.

Founded in 1892, the Hopkins Marine Station is a marine biology facility that functions as a research and educational branch of the Department of Biological Sciences at Stanford. The station provides students with a unique opportunity to observe and research the marine world first-hand.

However, due to the distance between Stanford and Hopkins, there arises a need to give these students the same cultural and intellectual stimulation that the main campus provides.

This need has been recognized by the Hopkins Marine Station Graduate Student Organization (HMSGSO), which consists of all graduate students in residence at the Hopkins Marine Station.

“The group was created by the students to coordinate activities and provide community support that cannot be gained from opportunities on the main campus due to the distance,” says fourth-year biological sciences doctoral student Heather Galindo.

Galindo, who is doing full-time research at Hopkins, says that many people at Stanford are not even aware of their existence.

This is what inspires many of HMSGSO’s endeavors.

“The HMSGSO makes up a significant portion of the Department of Biological Sciences at Stanford and every year provides important contributions to the field of biological sciences,” Galindo says.

She adds that Hopkins gives both graduate and undergraduate students the chance to “conduct state-of-the-art research — both in the lab and in the field — along with access to faculty members that you just can’t find on the main campus. The efforts of the HMSGSO are aimed at improving our visibility on and connection to the main campus, improving life for graduate students in residence at Hopkins and making contributions to our surrounding community through outreach.”

According to Galindo, the HMSGSO has organized events such as the Hopkins Open House in 2003, weekly station-wide student seminars, academic and career-building workshops and educational outreach activities.

And in early November last year, the student group Students for Collaborations on Ocean Research and Education (SCORE) — which consisted of four core members of HMSGSO — hosted an interdisciplinary Oceans Research Colloquium at the marine station.

“Although a large number of laboratories at Stanford are conducting world-class research on marine, coastal and estuarine conservation problems, no formal forum currently exists in which Stanford graduate students with common ocean-related interests and research goals can interact,” a SCORE publication says.

The colloquium aimed to address this problem by initiating relationships between research laboratories so that future avenues of permanent communication could be made possible.

Galindo says that future outreach activities “include tentative plans for another Hopkins Open House and educational activities with groups...that visit our campus each year. We are also on the lookout for opportunities to bring additional career and academic workshops to our community.”

The Hopkins Open House lets the public view research and visit the marine station, which is usually restricted to University faculty, students and station personnel.

In addition to research, Danna Shulman, a second-year biological sciences doctoral student, says that undergraduate courses are also offered at Hopkins.

“Some excellent teaching faculty offer several really stellar courses each quarter, and undergrads who come down to Hopkins to take one or more of these classes are housed within walking distance of the marine station,” she says. “It’s a neat opportunity for us to have some undergrads around, and for some lucky undergrads to see a gorgeous part of campus they normally wouldn’t be exposed to.”

So, what is it like for Stanford students to be living on the Monterey Peninsula, 90 miles south of the Farm?

“Living in Monterey is outstanding for folks who like the outdoors, especially the water,” says Christian Reilly, who had his biological sciences doctoral degree conferred this month. “In my free time I do a lot of surfing, and I do a lot of hiking with my dog and new daughter.”

Galindo admits that it can be difficult at times, but believes that despite the spacial isolation, Hopkins fosters a close-knit community among its residents.

“There is no permanent housing for graduate students at the station so all students live off campus,” Galindo says. “Although the distance from Palo Alto does create both academic and some personal inconveniences, the Monterey Peninsula is a beautiful small-town environment with lots of opportunities for those who like to be outdoors.”

Since Melissa Adams, a doctoral student in marine microbial physiology and ecology, is being co-advised with an advisor at Hopkins and on the main campus, she says she feels she has the best of both worlds. She spends the majority of her time at Hopkins and visits the Stanford campus every other week.

“I hope to learn techniques and take more microbial courses on main campus that I can transfer to the station in order to initiate research on marine microbial life,” she says, adding that the “main campus is also a good source of seminars as well as student interest groups.”

Biological sciences student Carrie Kappel, who completed her Ph.D last month, says that Monterey is a beautiful place to live, and those with active lifestyles enjoy hiking, diving, surfing and biking right outside their front doors.

“We’ve been especially blessed by the amazing community of people at the marine station,” she says, adding that “people here look out for each other — there are always helping hands around whether you’re moving houses, beating your head against some statistical analysis or looking for someone to watch your dog.”

Kappel sums up the sentiments echoed by many graduate students at the Hopkins Marine station:

“It’s a pretty special place.”

Research at the Station

With nine labs, the Hopkins facility enables students to carry out an array of marine biology research.

“There are currently 21 graduate students in residence at Hopkins with four more set to come down from the main campus in the spring,” Galindo says. “These 25 students comprise a significant portion of the 110 total graduate students in the Biological Sciences Department, with research interests spanning from molecular, cellular and developmental biology to ecology, evolution and biophysics.”

Young giant squid

“We’re lucky to be located literally next door to the Montery Bay Aquarium,” says Shulman. “So some students and lab groups have collaborated both with the aquarium and with the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI), which is located about half an hour up the coast.”

Shulman, who is specializing in integrative/organismal biology, works in the Gilly Lab at Hopkins.

“One of the big projects in the Gilly Lab is on the jumbo — or Humboldt — squid, Dosidicus gigas,” she says. “Gilly has been on numerous expeditions to tag and release these animals. The tag records time and depth information which is transmitted via satellite, so we can learn about the squid’s behavior and migratory patterns.”

Shulman says that in June 2005, she went on an MBARI cruise with her advisor “to catch jumbo squid off the back of the boat and bring them on board for respirometry experiments,” which involved measuring the rates of breathing and oxygen consumption at a variety of temperatures and oxygen concentrations.

According to Shulman, this helps researches learn about squids’ metabolism and provides insight into how active they can be at the depths recorded by the tags.

Shulman adds that her own research is likely to be focused on the early life history of the jumbo squid — namely, the biology of young squid.

“Dosidicus hatchlings...are very small and we know very little about them,” she says. “They can sometimes be caught in plankton nets, but I would like to raise them in laboratory conditions to observe their behavior and development.”

Intertidal environments

“I am currently beginning a collaboration — advised by Prof. George Somero of Hopkins and Prof. Chris Francis of the geosciences department — to investigate microbial physiology and diversity in the rocky intertidal zone,” Adams says.

“My research is aimed at elucidating the taxonomic composition and physiological adaptations of microbes in the rocky intertidal environment, where organisms face extremes of temperature, salinity and oxygen availability,” she continues.

She says that the broader implications of the research include achieving greater understanding of how microbes work in ecological dilemmas, such as climate change.

“A side interest of mine is comparative physiology,” Adams adds. “I hope to go to Antarctica one day to study microbial life in this extreme environment and investigate how fluctuating temperatures may affect bacterial composition in polar regions.”

Humans and ecology

Kappel specializes in marine community ecology and conservation biology and works at the Micheli Lab at Hopkins. Her dissertation research was part of the Bahamas Biocomplexity Project.

“This is an interdisciplinary project that involves ecologists, oceanographers, economists, sociologists, geneticists and mathematical modelers, all aimed at understanding the coupled human and natural dynamics of marine reserve network design for the Bahamas archipelago,” Kappel says.

She continues, “the Bahamas is in the process of establishing a network of no take marine reserves, which may eventually protect as much as 20 percent of their marine environment. However, they have little baseline data upon which to base scientific design of this reserve network.”

Kappel explains that the project — which involves marine habitat mapping, detailed fish, invertebrate, and algal surveys, sociological surveys, and analytical and Geographical Information System (GIS) model development — ”will put critical information and decision support tools in the hands of managers and decision makers in the country.”

Fishes’ night vision

Reilly’s thesis was titled “Thermal Noise Effects on Low-Light Sensitivity and Effects of Sensitivity Variation in the Retinae of Rockfish (Genus Sebastes)”.

“I worked on night vision in fishes, and the effects of temperature changes and light pollution on the ability of fish to use their night vision to relate to their environment,” Reilly says. “In my mind, it was close to the perfect combination of laboratory neurobiology, and field scuba collections and observations.”

Reilly explains that he is interested in how differences in vision relate to differences in lifestyle.

“Rockfish are a neat group of fish — there are over 100 species, and they segregate the environment in all different ways — depth, latitude and, especially interesting to me, by diurnal and nocturnal activity,” he says.