{"id":73156,"date":"2017-08-02T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2017-08-02T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news-draft\/uncategorized\/gso-student-receives-national-science-scholarship-to-study-pollutants-in-food-chain-water-air\/"},"modified":"2017-08-02T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2017-08-02T00:00:00","slug":"gso-student-receives-national-science-scholarship-to-study-pollutants-in-food-chain-water-air","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/2017\/08\/gso-student-receives-national-science-scholarship-to-study-pollutants-in-food-chain-water-air\/","title":{"rendered":"GSO student receives national science scholarship to study pollutants in food chain, water, air"},"content":{"rendered":"

NARRAGANSETT, R.I., Aug. 2, 2017 \u2014 It all started with the\u00a0Little Mermaid<\/em>, the charming Disney movie about a mermaid who dreams of becoming human. Anna Robuck\u2019s endless childhood viewings led to an obsession for anything\u2014books, videos, toys\u2014about the ocean and its preservation.<\/p>\n

Now 29, Robuck is well on her way to protecting the global waters and its marine life as a doctoral student at the äçÐÄvlogÃâ·ÑBÕ¾\u2019s Graduate School of Oceanography. Robuck won the Dr. Nancy Foster Scholarship Program, a leading science organization that supports women in the ocean sciences. She was one of three recipients nationally.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is an incredible honor,\u201d says Robuck, who lives in\u00a0Newport<\/strong>\u00a0and grew up in\u00a0Chadds Ford, Pa<\/strong>. \u00a0\u201cI\u2019m elated. This scholarship allows me to pursue a lifelong passion\u2014preserving the ocean I love, and its amazing creatures.\u201d<\/p>\n

The third-year Ph.D. student will research how chemicals used as water repellants and flame retardants are contaminating air, water, sediment and animals at Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary, a popular whale watching spot at the center of Massachusetts Bay.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Anna Robuck caring for a bird at a wildlife refuge. Photo courtesy of Anna Robuck.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

To accomplish this, she\u2019ll focus on how contaminants get in the food web of the Great Shearwater, a common seabird off the Atlantic coast that rarely comes ashore, except during storms. The bird lives and feeds over a vast area so examining it provides information about the entire offshore environment.<\/p>\n

\u201cI want to paint a picture of what pollutants are out there, and how they might be traveling through the food web that supports the birds,\u201d\u00a0says Robuck. \u201cGreat Shearwaters are an ideal subject for this sort of work. They are top predators but still a manageable size. Studying them allows me to get all sorts of data about the top of the food chain and work my way down.\u201d<\/p>\n

Robuck, who already has preliminary samples from the birds at the marine sanctuary, will continue traveling to the area on a research vessel over the next few years. She\u2019ll examine live Shearwaters, caught with hoop nets, and dead Shearwaters, accidentally captured in fishing nets, to determine what they\u2019re eating and the types of pollutants in their tissue.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy research will clear up a lot of unknowns in this offshore environment,\u201d she says. \u201cMy work will help piece together who\u2019s eating who out there. If my results show contaminants in the birds, this says that chemicals from products we use daily are traveling through air and water miles and miles offshore. This could be cause for serious concern. We don\u2019t know how the chemical soup the birds are exposed to could be harming them.\u201d<\/p>\n

Awarded by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration\u2019s Office of National Marine Sanctuaries, the scholarship provides Robuck with $196,000 over four years. She also gets to use NOAA research facilities, and she becomes an ambassador for NOAA\u2019s marine sanctuaries division.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Nancy Foster Scholarship program is extremely competitive so it\u2019s gratifying to see Anna recognized in such a prominent way,\u201d says David Smith, associate dean of GSO. \u201cNOAA has made a wise decision investing in Anna\u2019s future. Not only is she passionate about her research she is also passionate about engaging people, particularly young people, in recognizing some of our most pressing environmental issues.\u201d<\/p>\n

The scholarship was established in memory of Nancy Foster, a former NOAA administrator, past director of the agency\u2019s National Ocean Service, and a well-respected marine conservationist. Congress created the scholarship after Foster\u2019s death in 2000 to honor her and increase the number of women and minorities in oceanography and ocean-related fields.<\/p>\n

Robuck joined the laboratory of GSO Oceanographer Rainer Lohmann in 2015 after receiving her master\u2019s degree in marine science from the University of North Carolina at Wilmington. Lohmann is an internationally recognized expert in marine pollutants, especially highly fluorinated organic chemicals that have been in rain-proofing materials and products such as firefighting foam and nonstick coatings for more than 60 years.<\/p>\n

Robuck\u2019s research is cutting-edge and timely: Scientists are only beginning to understand how these organic pollutants travel in the environment and how they\u2019re harmful to marine creatures, as well as humans. In fact, some studies link the pollutants to autoimmune diseases and kidney cancer in humans.<\/p>\n

While pursuing her master\u2019s, Robuck worked as a research assistant for the Lower Cape Fear River Program, a major environmental and water quality program in North Carolina. There, she learned that the health of human and animal communities is closely tied to the cleanliness of waterways.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think we\u2019ve even scratched the surface of understanding how important it is to have clean water,\u201d she says. \u201cThese chemical pollutants are invisible so it\u2019s kind of out of sight, out of mind. That\u2019s a risky attitude. We need to pay attention to what we\u2019re putting in our water. These chemicals can be very harmful.\u201d<\/p>\n

Outside the lab, Robuck spends her free time volunteering at the Wildlife Clinic of Rhode Island, diving, surfing and hanging out with Gypsy, her Doberman Pinscher. \u201cI\u2019m an outdoor person who loves the Earth and wants to see it flourish,\u201d she says. \u201cThat\u2019s what motivates me, that\u2019s what keeps me going.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

NARRAGANSETT, R.I., Aug. 2, 2017 \u2014 It all started with the\u00a0Little Mermaid, the charming Disney movie about a mermaid who dreams of becoming human. Anna Robuck\u2019s endless childhood viewings led to an obsession for anything\u2014books, videos, toys\u2014about the ocean and its preservation. Now 29, Robuck is well on her way to protecting the global waters […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":73159,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-73156","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-archives"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73156","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=73156"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73156\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/73159"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=73156"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=73156"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=73156"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}