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Julie Liss My interest in marine science started during my sophomore year of High School. A transfer student from Chicago, Illinois, I was thrown into the first available science class; Mrs. Lisa Dickinson's Marine Biology course at F.W. Springstead High School in Spring Hill, Florida. I was the only Sophomore in a class of Juniors and (mostly) Seniors. I came home from school terrified that I was not ready for the material and that I would fail the class. I decided to give it a try and ended up not only loving but absorbing every ounce of the material. That year as well as the two following years, I spent a week at the Marine Resource Development Facility on Key Largo. There, I had my first snorkeling experience on habitats including seagrass beds, hardbottom shoals, mangrove channels, and coral reefs. Everything from algae to shrimp to zooplankton fascinated me, and I knew that this was the field I wanted to work in. After graduating from High School, I earned my B.S. in Marine Biology at the University of Tampa. During my junior year at UT I took a Marine Botany course with Dr. Kevin Beach. The topics covered, as well as the hands-on experience in the field and laboratory, drew my interest more than any other topic had. As a research assistant to Dr. Beach, I participated in several field studies, including research on Halimeda and Dictyota on Conch reef in 1999 and 2000. I am currently a M.S. candidate in Biology at The University of Central Florida in Orlando. My thesis title is: The Ecophysiology of Drift vs. Attached Gracilaria tikvahiae (Rhodophyta) in Mosquito Lagoon (Indian River Lagoon), FL. I will be studying the accumulation and composition of drift algae in the Lagoon as well as differences (if any) in growth and photosynthesis of naturally occurring attached and drift G. tikvahiae. My field research begins this fall and I intend to graduate in December 2002. This year I join the research team for my first saturation mission. I can't help but wonder if I'll be the first aquanaut with blue hair?! :)
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