Rock Talk Seminar Series

Our Rock Talk Seminar Series is a long-standing and well-loved tradition at SML. Historically, faculty members and guest speakers would gather with students on Appledore Island's rocky shoreline (giving the Rock Talk series its name) to present on a wide range of topics related to natural history, ecology, biology, and more. To stay connected with our community following the pandemic, we transitioned our Rock Talks to a hybrid format and have featured guest speakers from across the world.

Please note: All Rock Talks begin at 8pm on Tuesdays.

Introducing our 2026 Rock Talk Speakers

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Conservation Media: Case Studies in Strategic Filmmaking for Birds

a large flock of white and grey birds in flight

The field of science communications—whether as a topic in the media or as teams within organizations—tends to follow the frontline of research, while an academic (often ecological) mindset leads what we broadly think of as “conservation.” But what value can visual storytelling have on the frontline? We’ll review and screen a collection of brief case studies, exploring how compelling visual storytelling—when strategically positioned for the right audience—can move the needle for conservation outcomes in uniquely powerful ways.

Andy Johnson is a conservation multimedia producer, with a background in ornithology and public policy. After studying Hudsonian Whimbrel migration, he joined the Center for Conservation Media at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, where he worked for over a decade building partnerships, producing short films, and coordinating campaigns to advance conservation strategies on the ground, across flyways. He currently works as the Senior Video Producer at the National Audubon Society, continuing similar strategic visual storytelling efforts across Audubon’s broad network in the Americas.

The Unseen Niche: Birds & Airspaces Across North America

Earth’s lower atmosphere is a vital ecological habitat, home to trillions of organisms that live, forage, and migrate through this space. Despite its importance, it is rarely treated as a primary habitat for ecological study or conservation prioritization, making it one of the least explored environments on the planet. Yet this aerial habitat functions as a global conduit for the movement of biomass, weather, and inorganic materials. Addressing fundamental ecological questions about its spatial and temporal dynamics is key to understanding its role in shaping ecosystems.

man leaning on desk with taxidermy birds on it

Kyle Horton is an Associate Professor in the Department of Forestry and Natural Resources at Purdue University, where he leads the Purdue Aeroecology Lab. His group studies the movements of airborne organisms and their use of the lower atmosphere as habitat. Dr. Horton earned his M.S. in Wildlife Ecology from the University of Delaware and his Ph.D. in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology from the University of Oklahoma, and he was a Rose Postdoctoral Fellow at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. His research combines weather surveillance radar and advanced computing to understand bird flights behaviors, forecast bird migration, and guide applied conservation efforts. Dr. Horton has worked to advances in aeroecology, highlighting new insights into bird migration, the development of ecological forecasting tools, and emerging conservation challenges such as light pollution.

TBA

Microscopic but Mighty: The Microbes that Drive Coastal Ecosystem Function

This presentation will explore the ecology of microbes—the often invisible but essential organisms that drive key processes in coastal ecosystems, including nutrient cycling and organic matter decomposition, with important implications for ecosystem resilience and restoration. Using examples from salt marshes, this talk will highlight the diversity of microbial metabolisms, how microbial communities respond to environmental change, and how modern molecular tools are advancing our understanding of microbial ecology in coastal environments.

Dr. Ashley Bulseco is an Assistant Professor in Coastal Microbial & Ecosystem Ecology at the University of New Hampshire. Her research focuses on understanding how the millions of microscopic organisms (bacteria, archaea, fungi) that inhabit salt marsh sediments drive ecosystem function and how they respond to environmental change. Ultimately, the goal of Ashley’s lab is to leverage microbial information as a tool to learn about ecosystem health, especially in relation to services we value them for such as nutrient filtration and carbon storage.

TBA

Seabird Sentinels: Making Use of Marine "Canaries in the Coal Mine"

Seabirds are often described as sentinels of marine ecosystem health. As a highly visible top predator, they can reflect in ocean productivity and lower trophic levels as well as large-scale environmental impacts, such as pollution, fish stock collapse, and warming oceans. They are relatively easy to monitor, as they gather in large numbers at predictable locations both at sea and on land, the latter when they congregate at colonies during breeding. Techniques have been developed to estimate their populations and track their diet, productivity, physiology, and behavior, and long-term seabird monitoring potentially reflects ongoing changes in the marine environment. In this talk, I will present stories from monitoring rhinoceros auklets in the U.S. Pacific Northwest that compare and contrast colonies in terms of prey communities, exposure to anthropogenic contaminants, and resilience in the face of an unprecedented marine heat wave.

Dr. Thomas Good is a Research Fishery Biologist for NOAA Fisheries at the Northwest Fisheries Science Center in Seattle, WA. He has more than 35 years’ experience studying marine birds. He received his M.S. in Zoology from the University of New Hampshire, where he studied foraging and diet of Herring and Great Black-backed Gulls in New England rocky intertidal habitats, and his Ph.D. in Systematics and Ecology from the University of Kansas, where he studied hybridization between Western and Glaucous-winged Gulls on the Washington coast. His connections to the Shoals Marine Lab date back to the last century; in the early 1990s, Tom was a visiting researcher studying neighbor aggression and chick productivity in Appledore Island gulls, and in the late 1990s, he co-taught Field Ornithology with Sara Morris, where he infused the course with more marine bird topics. Born and raised in Maine, his love of intertidal critters and gulls began during summers spent “Downeast.”

Tom’s present work focuses largely on the California Current Large Marine Ecosystem, where he studies the intersection of seabirds and West Coast fisheries, including how avian predators impact threatened and endangered Pacific salmon and how to quantify and minimize seabird bycatch in U.S. West Coast groundfish fisheries. He also monitors and promotes seabirds as indicators of the marine environment in his capacity as seabird lead for NOAA’s California Current Integrated Ecosystem Assessment and their annual California Current Ecosystem Status Report.