Five Questions With: Carrie McDonough

Carrie McDonough, a graduate student in the University of Rhode Island’s oceanography program, talks with Providence Business News about her popular oceanbites blog, which features information on oceanography research and the ocean world. / COURTESY CARRIE MCDONOUGH
Carrie McDonough, a graduate student in the University of Rhode Island’s oceanography program, talks with Providence Business News about her popular oceanbites blog, which features information on oceanography research and the ocean world. / COURTESY CARRIE MCDONOUGH

Carrie McDonough, a graduate student in the University of Rhode Island’s oceanography program, talks with Providence Business News about her popular “oceanbites” blog, which features information on oceanography research and the ocean world. Since she first posted in September 2013, she has gained more than 10,000 Twitter followers and 500 Facebook fans, and science writers and teachers in kindergarten through grade 12 use the site for educational materials and story ideas.
PBN: Where did you get the idea for your blog?
MCDONOUGH:
During my first year of graduate school, I met a group of graduate students from Harvard who run a website called astrobites.com, which translates research papers in astrophysics for broad audiences. Along with members of astrobites, I started brainstorming about starting similar sites for other fields of research. I realized that oceanbites would be a great fit because more and more people are very curious about ocean exploration and ocean research. I imagined that oceanbites would be a great way to raise public awareness of the crucial role our oceans play in feeding us and keeping us healthy, as well as the serious environmental threats the oceans face today.
PBN: How often do you post? Do you ever have difficulty coming up with topics to write about?
MCDONOUGH:
Currently, oceanbites has 24 writers who are all graduate students and post-doctoral researchers from institutions around the world. Each writer posts once a month, so there’s a new post by a different writer each weekday. We’ve found this is a great way to keep the site updated with fresh content without taxing any one writer’s hectic science-filled schedule too much.
The oceanbites staff is full of enthusiastic researchers with tons of great ideas. Generally, our posts summarize recent research papers related to oceanography, along with special features on fieldwork adventures and conferences. As long as scientists keep publishing exciting new findings, we’ll never run out material!
PBN: Are you surprised that you have gained such a following, especially since you started it not too long ago (September 2013)? What do you think people like about it?
MCDONOUGH:
I have been extremely surprised by the enthusiasm of our readers and our writers. I think the site really taps into an eagerness to connect from both sides of the scientist – non-scientist gap. Non-scientists – especially teachers looking for interesting material for the classroom, journalists and high school students – are eager to get information straight from the experts, and online resources have made this easier than ever before. We post on a very wide range of ocean-related content, and there’s more depth and breadth than what a traditional news source is able to cover. I also think that the readers pick up on our own enthusiasm for our research, and I’m thrilled we’ve been able to get people excited about oceanography!

PBN: What interested you in oceanography and marine science as a career? What is your plan after grad school?
MCDONOUGH:
Ever since I was in high school, I’ve been very interested in studying pollution, and how humans are impacting the Earth. Understanding the ocean is crucial to understanding the global repercussions of pollution – if you want to know how contaminants travel from industrial regions to the Arctic, or how carbon dioxide emissions impact Earth’s climate, you need to understand the physics, chemistry and biology of marine environments. The oceans are a unifying force, in that they’re our global oceans, and a better understanding of how they work leads people to realize how connected we are to one another, regardless of what continent we live on.
After graduate school, I’d like to pursue research studying the environmental impacts of chemical pollutants. I’m especially interested in how these pollutants impact human health. I think it’s extremely important to continue interweaving public outreach into my research, because the only way we’ll ever change the current state of our environment is by educating consumers and influencing policy, so I also plan to continue writing for broad audiences and providing venues for other scientists to do the same.

PBN: What do you hope people gain from reading the blog?
MCDONOUGH:
I hope the blog increases our readers’ appreciation of the complexity of the ocean, as well as its fragility. Additionally, I hope we are increasing awareness of what it means to be an oceanographer. When I was a high school student, and even as an undergraduate, I wasn’t really aware of how many different types of things oceanographers can study. I hope we’ll help future generations of aspiring scientists understand the vast array of different opportunities available for all different types of people under the umbrella of oceanography.

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