[Lab news] Hannes & colleagues organize a Virtual Town Hall

23 June 2020. It’s been a remarkable day. A remarkable few months of preparation. But on this Tuesday in June, more than 250 people from all over the world logged in to a UConn WebEx Event organized by Hannes Baumann, Eric Schultz, Jacqueline Webb, Paul Anderson and Jon Hare. The event, billed as the “1st Virtual Larval Fish Science Town Hall” was of course a product of the strange and challenging times we live in right now. A consequence of almost a year of painstaking preparations for the 44th Larval Fish Conference in Mystic, CT … eclipsed by the COVID-19 pandemic that made having a physical science conference impossible.

Attendance-graph — Number of attendees per minute throughout the day. Science sessions were followed by 120-170 attendees worldwide.

The Virtual Town Hall gave 16 speakers from around the world the opportunity to communicate their science, while providing a forum for the community to interact. The Early Career Committee of the AFS Early Life History Section contributed as well, organizing a round table discussion led by Kelsey Swieca with Chris Chambers, Jackie Webb, and Peter Konstantidinis. Individual networking meetings – although hobbled initially by technology – were held after the meeting between senior and early career researchers.

And best of all – more than 40 people participated in a picture contest, contributing stunning images of larval fish or larval fish science.

For more information, speaker bios’s, talk titles, abstracts and even some video please visit the event website lfc44.uconn.edu

Some of our personal favorites among the best larval fish picture submissions

A35---Bartick---Ribbonfish-fb-1-of-1 — Mike Bartick | Ribbon fish

A32---Meldonian---Cyclopsetta-fimbriata-7-8-19-9932-final — Irene Middleton | A diver checks out a juvenile flying fish at the Poor Knights Islands in New Zealand

A25---Parkinson--29354-004-Molidae-A — Winner – Kerryn Parkinson | Mola sp – a larval sunfish collected off New South Wales, Australia.

A23---Monteiro---Tilefish_CNamiki — Gabriel Monteiro | Caulolatilus chrysops larvae cleared and stained. This specimen belongs to ColBIO USP biological collection.

A15---Walsh---larval-Bothus_20170615_photo-by-Har — Harvey Walsh | Bothus larvae sorted at sea from a bongo net tow collected during the summer of 2017 aboard the NOAA Ship Gordon Gunter.

A10---Murray---Pacific-Herring-embryo — Chris Murray | Wild Pacific herring spawn from Skagit Bay, WA (~72 h old). Note the flat edge of the egg where it was adhered to sea grass.

A05---Grande-H.-Acanthurus-coeruleus — Henrique Grande | Post-larval reef fish Acanthurus coeruleus Bloch & Schneider, 1801 collected in 2015 using light traps in the Bay of Tamandaré, Brazil.