- Nyssa Silbiger
- University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Since I can remember the ocean has always intrigued me. As s 5th grader my elementary school took a class trip to Key Largo where we learned about mangroves, seagrasses, and coral reefs first hand. After this excursion, I was one of the twenty other kids that just knew I wanted to become a marine biologist. Unlike many of these other students who at the time thought being a marine biologist meant that you got to play with dolphins all day, I was truly captivated by in the inner-working of the ocean. Even more so I fell in love with coral reefs and all the organisms within them. A few years later, sea camp, snorkeling trips to the keys, and several marine and ecologically based classes fueled my passion for further understanding coral reefs.
I obtained my bachelors of science from Florida State University in biology with a minor in chemistry and a certificate in marine resource ecology. While at FSU I completed a couple research projects focusing mainly on marine invertebrate biology in both Key Largo and Apalachicola Bay, Florida. One project looked at host specificity in cleaner shrimps and sea anemones in the middle keys while the other investigated carapace color change in response to temperature in fiddler crabs in the Florida Panhandle. Post-graduation from FSU I accepted a temporary position with a USGS/NOAA funded project examining seagrass communities in Everglades National Park (from Miami, Florida to Florida Bay).
Presently I am working on my master’s degree at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Over the past year, along with taking interdisciplinary oceanography courses, I began examining how bioavailable nutrients being excreted from sponges on coral reefs are affecting surrounding organisms such as algae and corals in Key Largo, Florida. I believe this work is very novel and something that has potentially been overlooked for years as an important nutrient source in Caribbean coral reefs. Using the Aquarius Reef Base site at Conch Reef has been a wonderful study system for this work and I am so lucky to have the opportunity to work here with this amazing crew. When I am not diving with sponges on Conch Reef I also really enjoy diving recreationally, surfing on the coast of North Carolina, and playing tennis.
