Natural History Wanderings

SF Gate reports

Brent Hughes, an assistant professor of marine ecology and conservation at Sonoma State University, is a self-proclaimed “algal nerd.” But last week, while speaking at a Garden Club of America event, he wasn’t just talking gardens or algae — he was talking otters.

Hughes’ dive into studying otters was accidental. While studying eelgrass at San Jose State University’s Moss Landing Marine Laboratories around 2008, he noticed the marine plant was actually starting to recover amid a large, normally destructive algal bloom.

Read more  A Bay Area scientist made a game-changing find — entirely by accident