By Science Writing Intern Paige Bellamy
There are whirrs and beeps, mouse clicks and machine groans throughout the airy lab. Wiry plants line the window sills, and creased, jam-packed notebooks are stacked on the shelf above the black lab bench. Hands wrapped in blue latex gloves reach for a small white box. A microtube top opens with a quiet pop, and a pipet dives into the tube to extract DNA for analysis.
This tube is one of over 1,200 collected by Nadya Mamoozadeh, a Virginia Sea Grant (VASG) Graduate Research Fellow, and PhD candidate at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science (VIMS). She has spent the last four years amassing a collection of DNA samples from the far corners of the globe in the hopes of informing marlin management in the near future.