Décima Lab

Dante is a 4th year PhD Student in Biological Oceanography hailing from Sebastopol in Northern California. He earned a BS in Earth Sciences-Ocean Sciences concentration and a BS in Marine Biology from University of California, Santa Cruz. After spending his final quarter studying abroad at the University of Queensland he returned to Sebastopol to work in the Coastal Oceanography Group at the Bodega Bay Marine Lab.

The intense California wildfires during Dante's first research cruise in August 2020 inspired his research interests in the effects of the wildfires on the marine environment. For his dissertation research Dante is examining how smoke and ash from wildfires may impact the carbon cycle and the pelagic planktonic community in the California Current Ecosystem. Dante is also a member of the Program for Interdisciplinary Environmental Research (PIER), seeking to collaborate with non-scientist experts, especially artists to make findings more accessible. Dante is also interested in integrating emerging molecular DNA metabarcoding methods with morphological and image-based methods of zooplankton through advanced statistical and machine-learning techniques, and using these tools to resolve environmental diversity patterns in the CCE.

Outside of research Dante enjoys physical activity especially running, yoga, skateboarding, cycling, and swimming and is a member of the Lane Zero Athletics Club where he competes in distances from 5k-marathon. Dante also likes to work his creative side through sourdough bread baking and art-primarily through pen and ink drawing. After a long lab day at SIO, Dante's go to refreshment is a dip in the Pacific ocean.

Anya Štajner is a PhD student in the Biological Oceanography program at Scripps Institution of Oceanography. She completed her undergraduate’s degree at the University of California, Davis where she studied Marine and Coastal Sciences with an Emphasis in Organismal Biology and Ecology. She did undergraduate research on teleost fish morphology as well as factors affecting the consumption rates of larval fish by juvenile velella velellas.

Currently, Anya studies zooplankton ecology focusing on pteropods (aka "sea butterflies) in the Southern California Current System as bioindicators for ocean acidification. Additionally, she is a co-coordinator and tour guide for Scripps Community Outreach for Public Education (SCOPE) and enjoys posting on her science-focused instagram account (@PlanktonPrincess).

Anna is an undergraduate pursuing a B.S. in Marine Biology with a Data Science minor. She previously worked at a Baylor College of Medicine in the Deneen Laboratory focusing on the IGSF3 gene in regards to Glioblastoma. With the work done in the Deneen Laboratory, she was able to be cited as an author on a paper published in Cell. In the Decima Lab, she works with CALCOFI samples by sorting for pteropods and other shelled zooplankton as well as using the Zooscan to process samples for community composition analysis.

Charlene in a BS/MS student in the marine biology program at Scripps Institution of Oceanography. She is in the process of finishing her undergraduate program at UC San Diego before moving forward with her master's in the Decima Lab. For her undergraduate independent research project, she utilized CCE LTER data to analyze trends in phytoplankton community structures in the California current. She is interested in salp bloom cycles and ecological modeling. Outside of the lab, Charlene enjoys scuba diving, hiking, and has a fledging butterfly garden.