By Emma Fass, Summer Science Writing Intern
Katharine Sucher has always had an interest in environmental and conservation issues, but she also excels in skills geared more toward communication. To her, science communication is the best of both worlds because it offers her the opportunity to both explore and promote science.
Katharine joined Virginia Sea Grant this June as a Staff Writer, focusing on a very relevant topic to Virginia: the history of oysters. She is looking back over the last 10 years of issues and oyster research and is hoping to write a series of stories on how disease, research, and restoration have developed over time in Chesapeake Bay. She says connecting the dots is both critical to the story and an exciting way for her to approach the project.
“Especially in the 1980s, but even into the early 2000s, the oyster population was decimated,” she says. Despite the decline, Virginians still have oysters to eat, thanks to aquaculture. Oyster aquaculture of native triploids (oysters with three sets of genes and now the preferred breed for aquaculture) increased ten-fold from 2005 to 2009, owing to equipment investments made by growers for the study and their exposure to native oysters during large-scale studies. Now 90% of oysters planted in Virginia are triploids, supporting an industry with a $14.3 million economic impact for the state. Sales of cultured oysters by Virginia growers have made the commonwealth a leader in East Coast production—39.8 million.
Katharine says she is excited to trace the efforts that prompted this development and how scientific research has lead to changes in policy and new decisions which affect the oysters of today. “Even after just starting my research, I found that diseases were introduced to the Bay as early as 1959, and so much has happened since then.”
While understanding scientific jargon may pose a challenge to some, Katharine learned to overcome this with her prior work experiences with VASG. Last year, she worked as a Summer Science Writing Intern learning the communication skills she needed to be able to identify tricky language, pull apart research, and understand how best to communicate science to non-scientists. She continued her work by becoming a Student Correspondent during her senior year at William & Mary, where she majored in English and minored in marketing.
“Working with VASG provides me with some really great resources to conduct my research such as a scientific database which makes it easier to access scientific research.” She adds that, “the expertise of the people that I work with has been really helpful.”
As Katharine continues working on her timeline of events to wrap her mind around oyster history, she foresees this project resulting in multiple articles for VASG.
“Oyster articles are everywhere,” she notes, recognizing the need for her articles to bring something new to the table. “I’m going to see where my research leads and figure out what the story is.”
Katharine will complete her project in December and hopes to continue a career in science communication or public relations. She would like to continue working with environmental issues, potentially with an environmental agency.
