March 2022

March 2022 - Diversity, connectivity, abundance: Groupers’ past in the Mediterranean

Rachel Winter (ESR 13 - Groningen)

Autumn 2015, I was sitting in the back of the room, joining my advisor’s human osteology course to listen to a talk by one of her former students, Dr. Carrie Wright. Dr. Wright was a part of the LeCHE International Training Network (ITN) for her PhD and had returned to her alma mater that morning to talk about her doctoral work in stable isotopes. I was in the final year of my anthropology degree and starting to think about what kind of experience I wanted for postgraduate studies. Very quickly over the course of her talk I became certain that this, an ITN, was how I wanted to do my PhD.

Having studied in an array of fields for my undergraduate (anthropology and forensic science predominantly, with minors in biology and criminal justice), I have always valued multidisciplinary research and approaches. I had completed a study abroad and really enjoyed the chance to study and immerse myself in a new country and so knew that I would likely seek to complete my Masters and PhD in two additional countries while also jumping at any chance to see and learn in even more new places. The requirement of transnational mobility was thus another further draw for me towards an ITN. All of this paired with the overall objective of working on individual projects that collectively feed into a bigger picture with colleagues from all over the world and a wide variety of cultural and academic backgrounds further appealed to me.

Flash forward a few years and the SeaChanges ITN was advertising PhD positions at a conference I was attending (sidebar: Dr. Wright was at this conference and I had the chance to tell her about how influential her talk all those years ago had been on my trajectory). I had neither studied marine biology before nor even visited the Netherlands, but I saw it as the perfect opportunity to be a part of an ITN and challenge myself to expand my academic horizons.

Thus far, I can report back and say that I am eternally glad that I did follow through on ensuring I would do my doctoral work as part of a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions ITN. Despite the complications presented by Covid-19, I have made lifelong friends through this network, discovered a love for Mediterranean ichthyoarchaeology, and benefited greatly from the expertise within this network.

One of the highlights has been the past summer which I (not so) jokingly call the ‘dream summer’ and would not have gotten to experience if I were not a part of an interdisciplinary PhD program. It started with spending time as the fish expert at the Classical and Hellensitic site of Magoula Plataniotiki in central Greece where I got to see first hand the difference that systematic soil sampling and having someone trained in ichthyoarchaeology on site makes to the recovery of fish bones. Additionally while there, I had the chance to give a small impromptu lesson on fish bones to the other experts and undergraduate students from the local university and solidified my passion and enthusiasm for teaching.

From Greece, I traversed over to Porto san Paolo in northern Sardinia to join one of my secondment supervisors, Dr. Paolo Guidetti, and his team of researchers on their underwater fish visual census campaign to collect data on fish associated with rocky reefs, including groupers, within and outside the Marine Protected Area of Tavolara. Coming into this, I was admittedly more than a bit nervous, prior to the PhD I had spent very minimal time near (let alone in) the sea and until month two of my studies, I had never been scuba diving. Paolo and the rest of the team however all went out of their way to ensure I had a good time, felt comfortable, and (of course) learned a lot whilst there. Which I most definitely did, reading about the biology of a fish and/or how fieldwork is done in marine biology is very different from seeing the fish you’re studying in the wild and experiencing fieldwork firsthand.

Fig 1. Sorting heavy residue from Magoula Plataniotiki

Fig 2. Enjoying some free time in Olbia

I came away from my time in the Mediterranean last summer with a newfound appreciation for the groupers I study (they are fascinating to watch!!) and having had conversations with colleagues (now friends) that will in turn enhance the final products of my doctoral research. This summer serves as one of many anecdotes as to why I am so glad I have had the opportunity to do my PhD as part of an ITN.

There are many many people that I wish to thank for my whole experience so far, but particularly for this summer, I want to thank my supervisor, Canan Çakirlar, for her support through everything, Paolo Guidetti and his colleagues for welcoming me as part of their team this summer, and Sofia Voutsaki, Vaso Rondiri, and Dimitris Filioglou for welcoming me onto the excavation team at Magoula Plataniotiki.

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