We welcome Dr. Melissa Cronin to SMAST as the newest faculty member to join the Department of Fisheries Oceanography (DFO). We talked to Melissa recently to ask her about her journey to us, and what she’s most excited for and brought our conversation right to your inbox! Read on:
Who are you and how did you get here?
I go by Mel, but I respond to Mel or Melissa, and I will be an Assistant Professor in DFO. I’m super, super excited, and I will be building a lab that uses interdisciplinary approaches in the natural and social sciences to tackle pressing issues related to marine conservation, sustainability and how people can coexist with the ocean and the coast. Yeah, and I grew up in New England, so it’s really cool for me. It’s kind of like a homecoming, in some ways, to be coming back to the area.
What drove you to make a change and apply for this position?
I would say the most important thing for me in my career as a researcher, an academic and a mentor and teacher, is to be around people tackling real world, practical problems. It’s probably no surprise that my work is really applied, and it’s focused on what I see as the problem of how we can steward ocean ecosystems. Like how we can be not only just functional, but a useful and beneficial part of an ocean ecosystem. We, being humans. SMAST is very rare and unique in that it seems like that is like a common goal, or at least an interest among pretty much everyone there. The other thing is the area was appealing to me. Of course, it’s, as I said, like a homecoming, but I think it’s really useful to live experientially in a place that your work affects. So for me, for example, you know, like New Bedford is such an important fishery location, such an important landing site, basically, for lack of a better word, and I’m really interested in the experience of fishers as part of the solution to the problem of fisheries.
Lastly, I got a really excellent vibe from the community of students, faculty and staff at SMAST, and I really felt that my work would be supported there. You know, my work doesn’t always fit in a box neatly: ecology, social science, policy analysis. It’s hard to find an academic community that is understanding and supportive of that type of interdisciplinary work. And I felt just welcomed and intellectually welcomed when I did my interview. So that is very nice to hear, yeah and again, rare.
What kind of research are you excited to work on here and how can you contribute to developing newer areas of research at SMAST?
So my lab will tackle two major research areas of inquiry. The first is around how we can understand and reduce the impacts of industrial tuna fishing on threatened shark and ray species. We work really closely with fishers, observers, captains, crew, and even mechanics. We are developing a bycatch mitigation strategy in the form of a technology innovation led by fishers, implemented by fishers, designed by fishers. Hopefully with the help of a grad student, we can find solutions to understand areas of high bycatch and guide conservation interventions. The reason I think that’s innovative – of course, it involves fisher innovation and that in itself is innovative – but also these species, Manta and Devil Rays, are so incredibly understudied. So, it’s a really novel way to get biological data out of them.
The other area is around understanding and looking for solutions to another impact of industrial fishing, which is its impact on coastal, small scale fishing communities. In countries and communities all around the world, including in our country, the impacts of industrial or large-scale fishing on small-scale fishing communities and on the food security, employment, livelihoods that they provide is not well known. We will be working on identifying those areas of conflict and testing some potential solutions to reduce conflict in those areas. So, they’re kind of disparate areas of inquiry, but I think they actually do tie well together, because the overarching goal is to understand the true cost of industrial fishing for biodiversity and for human communities.
Can you speak to the role of collaboration in your work?
When you do fisheries, you must collaborate in order to have any kind of impact on the world, and we must work across disciplines, because fisheries is an incredibly interdisciplinary problem. There’s no way to holistically work on a fishery without thinking about the biological aspects, the ecological, the human and social and even political lenses that certainly impact the fishery and its impact and its sustainability. So, you know, it’s just a requirement, I think, for our fields. What I have learned being in an interdisciplinary sort of domain, is that you just can’t be an expert in everything. You must work with experts who really know you know what they’re talking about, especially when using methods that are kind of different than you’re used to.For example, I was really fortunate to work with a fantastic person who did policy analysis during my PhD. At the same time, I worked under a really amazing population geneticist for my genetics chapter. And I was really lucky to have this intense mentorship from each of those and others for my dissertation. I consider myself an interdisciplinary scholar, and I really don’t like to constrain myself methodologically. If I feel that there is a rigorous method to answer a question that I have, then I want to use that most rigorous approach. But at the same time, I think it’s so important to recognize the limits of your own knowledge and experience, and that’s why we must collaborate, you know, with the people who know it best.
How has your work as a journalist informed the way you conduct science or engage with people in this collaborative space?
From the very beginning of my scientific career, I was thinking already about what the impact of my work will be in the real world. That was very important to me, because as a journalist, I was always thinking about, what’s the impact of the story that I’m writing? You know? Like that’s kind of why journalists do what they do – because there is some impact they want to see in the world. The other thing that journalism taught me was that no one is objective. Like there’s this myth that journalists are objective (less so now people are sort of getting away from that), but there really just is no objective journalism, and I think that also applies to science. I don’t feel that there’s objective science. There are methodologically rigorous, defensible uses of the scientific method. But you know, the questions we ask are subjective. Why do we work on this topic and not that topic? So I think that that was a formative way to enter science. I was thinking critically about what kinds of questions do I want to work on, and what is the impact that I think my work will have five years down the line. So that really informed it. The other thing is, I think it has been useful in working with fishers in my journalism experience, because there is such a different language that’s used among fishers that is almost a foreign language to our academic jargon and our academic speech.
One more thing I’ll say is that fisheries and the field work of science, being a scientist, and my journalism experience have all really taught me to think about what is the human experience of doing science. And of course, for some people, we know that the experience of doing science, particularly field work, can be very negative and can lead to experiences of harassment, experiences of harassment, experiences of assault, experiences of bullying etc., that push them out of our field and we lose that talent, that knowledge, that person power. So I do think that there’s like a through line somehow, from my journalism career to Field Futures and diversity and equity in field work.
A lot of your work focuses on that human experience. When reading about some of the work you’ve done, I was really excited about the Fish Tales events you host. I’m curious how this event was born and the importance of spaces like that.
Going way back, like back into the vault– a long time ago, during my undergrad, a couple friends and I who were all writers and a couple poets, went to school in New York and everyone was artsy and we really wanted a place to share everyone’s work. We always would have these readings where people would come share their poetry, share their fiction, their prose, whatever. And we thought, oh, we have such talented friends. We want a place to showcase their work. So we launched this literary magazine called potluck, because we’d always have potlucks, and it did well. It was always kind of like a labor of love. I never made any money, but it was fun. And I really missed that during grad school, because I was in this kind of, you know, natural science program. I wasn’t getting my fill of live storytelling, live readings. I wasn’t getting enough poetry, I think, in my like system. So I started Fish Tales in 2017, and actually got AFS to cosponsor the first one. It was a huge hit. It’s super simple, the idea is not rocket science. We invite people beforehand, and those people are writers, scientists, graduate students, fishers, community members, people who like fish, whatever. They tell short stories. Usually there are five to eight minute stories somehow related to the ocean. And I just think they’re the most fun events, because it’s educational certainly, but it’s also much more so enjoyable and a moment of connection sharing these really raw personal stories. We don’t often get that as scientists, we have no venue to share the personal experiences that come with the human experience that comes along with being a scientist, yet we have such rich experiences often because we see these worlds that the public doesn’t usually have access to. They’re funny, they’re touching, heartfelt, sad, heartbreaking, tragic, and I think it’s a really nice way to merge art, communication and science. I absolutely plan to host some Fish Tales in New Bedford. I think it’s a perfect venue. You know, you have all the fishers, fishermen, scientists, public, lots of whale fanatics, I’m sure.
It’s interesting that you say that because I think people often self-designated themselves as either creatively-inclined or analytically-inclined, and I think that they go hand in hand. NHow would you respond to that?
I find that there are so many scientists that I know that are super creative, excellent artists, and I think there must be some neurological connection between the two interests and skills and like outputs of art and science. So any way to bridge them is really fruitful for lots of different reasons, but I think it makes us better scientists, to create. I think science is a creative endeavor in general. Like I think that you really need to think creatively to figure out science, to come up with an interesting question too, certainly. I mean, also we use so many artistic skills and figure making posters presentations, like there are so many, you know, when you see a really excellent talk or a really excellent poster, it’s usually because the visuals are awesome, but we never get training in that. So, yeah, there is no bad art. There is no bad creativity.
What’s a skill students should have that we don’t normally get to cultivate with academic work?
One thing I really suggest is to read widely outside of our discipline. Certainly in the Natural Sciences, to be familiar with the social science approach to their questions, because they might be really informative for the next steps in the research. Usually social science I find directing where the natural science might go. Read widely in the world, read literature, read poetry. I just think it’s really important to be culturally knowledgeable, culturally competent if we are to have the amazing privilege and responsibility of being a scientist, being a creator of new knowledge, we should be really making sure that our knowledge is broad – as much as possible. Again, with all the time of a grad student who has 1000 things to do.
Do you have any advice for people who are looking towards the next phase of their lives?
If there’s pursue opportunities that might not always seem central to the exact like scientific inquiry you’re interested in. They’re still worth pursuing, within reason. I’m not trying to tell people to do side projects, but just to say that there are lots of different career paths, and certainly for people who are not interested in an academic track, there are so many skills that can be useful. For management positions, for nonprofit positions, for government or consulting or whatever, some of these skills, like speaking to the public, like science communication, can be really, really valuable. So of course, the primary work is the most important. But I always like, if there are ways to take on some of these “soft” skills in a way that’s manageable to like the workload of a student, I think those can be really valuable. Yeah, I’m not sure I should say that, because you’re already so busy, but it’s not just me. Many people I know who I consider extremely successful have careers that are zigzagging through different experiences and different learning environments, and it’s just certainly not a linear path. So embracing that idea from the get-go, and not worrying about sticking to the most linear path can be a relief and useful and fun.
What’s something other than work that you’re excited about in this next chapter?
Living by the beach!