West Coast pink shrimp are a staple in classic dishes such as shrimp scampi and shrimp fried rice. Roughly 56.8 million pounds (or 7,322,122,984 individuals) of West Coast pink shrimp were caught by fishing vessels off the coasts of California and Oregon last year. While this is a largely impressive number, harvest sizes can vary from year to year typically coinciding with fluctuations in global weather patterns. However, despite the large size of this industry and repeatable patterns, relatively little is known about West Coast pink shrimp populations and why they can change so drastically from year to year.

As many of us learned in high school biology, there are uni-cellular organisms, like bacteria, and multi-cellular organisms, like us! Our guest this week is Brysyn Goodson, a Ph.D. student at Oregon State University, who is trying to understand how multicellularity evolved on Earth. Brysyn and his colleagues use yeast - one of the most well-studied systems in science, to try and wrestle these types of big questions.

Various species of kelp inhabit Oregon’s subtidal waters, providing food, nutrients, and shelter for an array of marine organisms. One such species, bull kelp, can be seen by divers towering over 50 feet above the seafloor as it grows rapidly, reaching for sunlight. Those not willing to brave the cold Oregon waters may stumble upon one during a beach walk — its leathery, green body resembling an oversized, thick whip after being torn from its holdfast by a recent storm.
Our guest this week is Anna Dworetzky, a new PhD student whose research focuses on bull kelp. Anna is particularly interested in the holdfast — the root-like structure that anchors bull kelp to the seafloor. Anna plans to dive at sites stretching from California to Alaska to examine four genetically distinct bull kelp subpopulations, investigating how holdfast structural complexity relates to attachment strength and the communities of organisms living within them.