Crisp sea air isn’t a match for the stink of stomach juices and half-digested squid, but marine biologist Michelle Staudinger doesn’t mind. When boats come in from fishing tournaments up and down the East Coast, she’s waiting on the docks, asking anglers to let her clean their catch for free in exchange for the stomach contents. On any given weekend, she says, “I’m usually elbow-deep into one or another of the East Coast’s pelagic fishes. I get a lot of compliments on how fast I can gut a tuna.” At University of Massachusetts Amherst, Staudinger surveys coastal fish and marine mammals to evaluate the predator-prey relationship over time. Besides relying on fishermen to deliver species that live far offshore, she waits for some animals, such as dwarf sperm whales, to wash up dead. She once necropsied a whale that had been shipped on a flatbed truck from Florida to Massachusetts. “Oh, yeah, it’s disgusting,” she says. “But we now have baseline data for looking at how ecology is changing as the impacts of climate change grow.” Illustration by Peter and Maria Hoey
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