Mia J. Tegner Memorial Research

Grants in Marine Environmental

History and Historical Ecology

Eric Hanauer

Goals of Tegner Grant Program

• Fund research to reconstruct past population or ecosystem states (historical baselines)

• Empower young natural and social scientists to conduct short-term, high-impact research directly relevant to conservation

“... no matter how well one understands kelp populations, any current program will fail to discern the ghosts of missing animals.”

(Dayton, Tegner et al. 1998)

Previous Tegner Grantees

• Drs. Catherine R. Samson and Graham J. Edgar - University of Tasmania in Hobart to study changes in marine habitats in SE Tasmania since European settlement by taking cores of in marine sediments;

• Angela M. Arnold of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore MD, to study the history of Chesapeake Bay food webs before overfishing for oysters and over-nourishment in Chesapeake Bay caused drastic ecosystem changes; and

• Dr. Peter Auster and Ivar Babb of University of Connecticut-Avery Point and Dr. Les Watling of the University of Maine, to study the historic distributions of deep-sea corals off New England before destructive bottom trawling became widespread.

Previous Tegner Grantees

• Joseph Roman - Harvard University in Cambridge MA, to use DNA sequencing to estimate populations of great whales before they were killed off by commercial whaling;

• Brian Wysor and Dr. Suzanne Fredericq - University of Louisiana at Lafayette, to apply DNA sequencing techniques to determine whether seaweed species off Panama are natives or recent invaders;

• Susanna Fuller and Susan Gass - Dalhousie University in Halifax Nova Scotia, to study of the status and distribution of deepsea corals and sponges off Newfoundland, Canada by interviewing fishermen about the abundance of these crucial structure-forming species before they were largely eliminated by bottom trawling;

25 JULY 2003 VOL 301 SCIENCE

Funding for Tegner Grants has come to MCBI fromThe Oak Foundation

2004 Mia J. Tegner Grants

• Deadline for proposals: January 15, 2004

• Requests up to $6,000• Individuals or teams from

academic institutions, NGOs, governments anywhere in the world

• Details www.mcbi.org• email lance@mcbi.org