“I wasn’t sure which direction I was going to take my honors thesis or if I was going to stay at all, because I didn’t feel inspired…but then I got this opportunity.”
Senior oceanography major Maya Moran is talking about the month she spent on a research vessel in the Arctic Circle studying sea ice formation. Maya is an undergraduate researcher in marine geologist Emily Eidam’s lab. One of Emily’s projects looks at how sediment gets embedded in sea ice as the ice freezes, and if that helps ice to freeze or not.
The work, a collaboration with physicists and engineers at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and University of Washington, aims to answer a suite of questions related to the fall freeze-up along the Arctic coast of Alaska.
One undergraduate student from each institution got to go on the field work expedition; Maya was proud to represent Oregon State on the team.
Maya had already helped build some of the turbidity sensors that are necessary to collect the relevant data so taking the instruments out on the boat and putting them in the water was a full-circle moment.
Maya readily acknowledges it was special to be on this expedition as an undergraduate student.
“Research days at sea are pretty valuable for an undergrad, and it's so rare.”
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The R/V Sikuliaq is the only ice-capable academic research vessel in the fleet right now, and Maya reels off crew names as if they’re celebrities. Not only did she acquire a unique experience to add to her resume, but she made connections.
Spending 24/7 on the water with 40 scientists and crew members for four weeks means you get close: you sit down to eat every meal together, you bond over seasickness and you play cards together in the evenings. Maya took the initiative to learn everyone’s path as a scientist, and learned something important: “Everybody has done it in a very different way.”
Choose oceanography
Maya’s path started near the water, where she grew up outside of Seattle. She has always spent a lot of time on boats, fishing and crabbing with her dad and her grandpa as a kid.
“Being on the water is just where I feel the most at home,” she says.
She chose Oregon State because of its proximity to the ocean. A campus visit gave her a gut feeling that this was her spot.
Her path hasn’t been without its forks. Maya arrived at OSU as an environmental sciences major, but the classes didn’t feel aligned with what she wanted out of college.
“I like to deep-dive into one subject…my mind really, really enjoys digging into my curiosities and finding things.”
She switched to the oceanography major because of the focus on math and processes. It’s no surprise that Maya’s favorite class has been chemical oceanography.
She leveled up while on the research vessel, learning invaluable lessons that couldn’t be found in a classroom like recovering oceanographic instruments, working safely on a large boat and solving mechanical issues in real time.
“As an undergrad, you’re not taking classes about thesis writing or how to ask a successful scientific question. We’re not in the weeds yet of knowing how to code,” she says.
Much of field work, she found out, is figuring out how to deal with the numbers.
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Maya has been working toward this experience for years now. A few summers ago, she officially started working on commercial fishing vessels in southeast Alaska.
Then, as a first year, she joined the NSF-funded Ocean Observatories Initiative, a federal program that deploys high-tech sensors in U.S. waters to monitor ocean health. With OOI, she helped build big oceanographic moorings: assembling, calibrating, making waterproof, adding biofouling resistance and more. Before joining the Arctic research expedition this fall, she was on an OOI recovery cruise that deployed buoys into the Pacific and recovered data collection devices.
She calculates that she has spent 200+ days at sea, on a variety of vessel types. It’s an important metric to put on your resume as a young oceanographer, and Maya is clearly well on her way.
“That’s been my most fun part of college is all this stuff that I would never have thought of with a purely academic-minded perspective,” she says.
Have big ideas
Despite the boat-load of experience (pun intended), Maya still didn’t have this fall’s adventure in mind when she joined the Eidam lab as an undergraduate student.
“I’ve been to the Arctic, which is crazy. No one gets to go to the Arctic.”
The research in which she’s now deeply invested is motivated by swift changes occurring in polar regions as the climate changes. Alaska’s North Slope is eroding aggressively, and the area is dotted with heavy industry, like big oil rigs, which leads to more sediment in the water as it freezes. Her honors thesis will answer a research question of her own about the composition of sediment materials; a chance to delve into the data that she helped collect, to be curious and to think about the bigger impact of what she observed while out on the water.
Her advice for students ready to start their research journey?
“Yes, it feels scary. Everyone says you have to walk up to your professors and start conversations… and I would just say, that’s what’s gonna get you places.”
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