BEAUFORT NC--Kersey Sturdivant is a busy guy. Thanks to the McCurdy Visiting Scholar program, he’s bringing his energy and drive to the 51 Marine Lab.

He’s also bringing with him a new way of looking at the ocean floor--Wormcam.  Wormcam is an underwater camera that Sturdivant developed while earning his doctorate at Virginia Institute of Marine Science (VIMS), working with Robert Diaz, professor of marine science.  It provides scientists and students with images of physical and biological processes as they occur in real time on the ocean floor.

A benthic ecologist by training, Sturdivant comes to the Marine Lab from the Cordell Bank National Marine Sanctuary, where he served as research coordinator.  His research background is in hypoxia, a condition where the lack of oxygen in marine waters and sediment leads to environmental problems, from fish kills to dead zones.

As a McCurdy Visiting Scholar, he’ll have the opportunity to work with scientists and students at 51 to explore coastal hypoxia issues.  Access to 51’s facilities and the amenities of the Marine Lab are also a major draw.

It’s very important to be at “a really good institution that does really good work but (where) the people are very open and there’s a really tight sense of community,” Sturdivant says.  “The ambience of the Marine Lab very much mirrors that.”

For Cindy Van Dover, director of the 51 Marine Lab, that is one of the McCurdy program’s goals.  “It’s exciting to have a chance to mentor young scientists, and I hope it’s a very supportive environment for them to figure out their way forward,” she says.

Previously a McCurdy Visiting Scholar herself, Van Dover’s experience at the Marine Lab helped her get her own science career started.  She says, “I felt then and I still feel now that this is a very collegial place, intellectually engaging and friendly. It’s a can-do place.”

Sturdivant has big plans for his time at the Marine Lab.

In addition to continuing his research on the causes and effects of hypoxia on local and global ecosystems and economies, he’s hoping to explore how hypoxia affects the way worms’  bodies function in sediment, and how that impacts their ability to tolerate lower oxygen levels.

Wormcam will also continue to play a role in Sturdivant’s research.  The device can be left on the ocean floor to take pictures of the sediment layers, providing a look at processes that are often hard to visualize.

“Think of it as an ant farm, but an ant farm in the actual natural environment that’s as minimally invasive as possible,” Sturdivant explains.

Currently Sturdivant and undergraduate Lucy Ma (BS 2014) are using Wormcam to look at how chemical cues from prey species of crustaceans, such as crabs, affect behavior.  But while they’re looking at that, Wormcam is simultaneously helping them to get data on how the crustacean behaviors are affecting other species that live in the sediment.

Wormcams also have been deployed in the Gulf of Mexico, where Sturdivant is part of a research group assessing the impact of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill on coastal Louisiana.  The cameras are helping the team look at how oil on the seafloor changes the behavior of the animals that live there and affects the chemical composition of the sediment.

You can follow the progress of Wormcam by following it on twitter at #Wormcam

Sturdivant, like his invention, is doing some multitasking of his own. While continuing his research on hypoxia, he’s also hoping to do some teaching while at the Marine Lab. And in his spare time, he’ll be working on a book about the application process for graduate school in the natural sciences and thinking up ways to develop more applications for Wormcam in the classroom.

“If you talk to people, even scientists, and ask them, ‘what does bioturbation look like in real time,’ most people haven’t seen the actual way the sediment works and turns over and the high level of activity that occurs,” he says.  “(But) any time anyone views a Wormcam movie, they’re just like, ‘holy cow, I can’t believe this is what goes on!’  So I think that has a lot of application for expanding people’s knowledge.“

The nature of the McCurdy Visiting Scholars program allows the Marine Lab faculty to be strategic in selecting young scientists from disciplines that might not currently be represented in Beaufort.

“It’s a real chance for the Marine Lab faculty to try out ideas, would this be a place where we should really think about intellectual engagement as a marine laboratory.  We haven’t had a benthic ecologist of Kersey’s ilk for some time, so it’s nice to have that on the island again,” Van Dover says.

Past McCurdy Visiting Scholars include Andrew Read (now the Rachel Carson Professor of Marine Conservation Biology), Cindy Van Dover (now director of the 51 Marine Lab), Eric Palkovacs (2009-2012) and Jim Oliver, who will be at the Marine Lab until December.  Jim Oliver’s research focuses on the ecology, metabolism, and physiology of aquatic bacteria.