Early Life History Section

44th Larval Fish Conference held virtually 24-26 June

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Groton, CT 24-26 June 2021. The long awaited and anxiously prepared virtual 44th Larval Fish Conference was held, featuring more than 240 participants from 28 countries. 58 scientific talks, including 3 keynote lectures were given via Cisco’s WebEx platform, whereas networking activities such as poster presentations, ‘Meet the Speaker’ events, and Mentor hours used the innovative Gatherly platform. The technology was working out well, the preparation paid off, and delegates were overall enthusiastic about this virtual alternative, which was forced on us by Covid-19, but may have shown us new ways and concepts to broaden the societies reach and equality.

The post-conference website is housed at https://lfc44.marinesciences.uconn.edu

Special thanks go to the scientific steering committee Eric Schultz, Jacqueline Webb, and Paul Anderson. Lauren Schaller, Anne Hill, Harley Erickson, and Kate Copeland from UConn’s conference services did a great job as well preparing and running parts of the events. Support came from NOAA’s Northeast Fisheries Science Center.

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

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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.
Network Mentors

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
A32---Meldonian---Cyclopsetta-fimbriata-7-8-19-9932-final
Suzan Meldonian | Cyclopsetta fimbriata, photographed in situ along Gulf Stream Current, SE Florida
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.