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Kayden Nasworthy, a graduate student at Cornell University, holding a bag of collected mysids. A new New York Sea Grant-funded research project is evaluating long-term trends in mysid shrimp populations in Lake Ontario.

News

Cornell leads a Lake Ontario food web study in $1.5M Sea Grant research suite

Cornell University’s James Watkins and Kade Keranen are leading a nearly $240,000 study to examine the abundance of mysid, small, shrimp-like crustaceans that are critical links in Lake Ontario’s aquatic food web.

  • Biological Field Station
  • Sea Grant NY
  • Ashley School of Global Development and the Environment

News

2026 ASLO Conference

Senior Research Associate Jim Watkins and graduate student Kayden Nasworthy attended the annual conference of the American Society of Limnology and Oceanography in Montreal, Quebec from May 12-17. Watkins presented data on nearshore zooplankton...

  • Biological Field Station
  • Ashley School of Global Development and the Environment
  • Natural Resources and the Environment Section
Person standing in front of a saildrone

News

Dark Refuge for Mysids
Kayden Nasworthy’s paper on the dark refuge for mysids was accepted last week in the Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences. He used uncrewed surface vessels – Saildrones – to collect hydroacoustic data in Lake Michigan and Lake...
  • Biological Field Station
  • Ashley School of Global Development and the Environment
  • Natural Resources and the Environment Section
Student standing next to research poster

News

CBFS History StoryMap
Every summer a group of undergrad students arrive at the Cornell Biological Field Station to start their 10-week internship. This summer, James Hoehner was selected by the Cornell Cooperative Extension for the Oneida Lake Fisheries and Aquatic...
  • Biological Field Station
  • Cornell Cooperative Extension
  • New York Sea Grant Institute
Person removing cod end of limnology net

News

Mysid shrimp populations across the Great Lakes
CBFS graduate student Toby Holda, working with Watkins, Rudstam, Boynton from CBFS, and collaborators from EPA (Scofield), Univ Michigan (Jude), NOAA (Pothoven), USGS (Warner, O’Brien) and DFO Canada (Currie, Bowen), analyzed the abundance...
  • Biological Field Station
  • Natural Resources and the Environment Section
  • Ecosystems
Person discussing presentation poster on saildrones with another person

News

Limited evidence of bias in acoustic surveys determined by surface vessel
Acoustic surveys are a critical tool for studying fish populations and can provide fisheries-independent data on spatially extensive fish populations. However, prior work has identified fish avoidance of survey ships, presumably in response to...
  • Biological Field Station
  • Natural Resources and the Environment Section
  • Natural Resources
Large boat used for Great Lakes research

News

Big ship, tiny plankton
In April and August, scientists from the Cornell Biological Field Station board the US Environmental Protection Agency vessel the R/V Lake Guardian for a four week survey of all five Great Lakes. We collect samples for zooplankton and mysid...
  • Biological Field Station
  • Natural Resources and the Environment Section
  • Organisms

News

Cornell group to comb data from Lake Superior sailing drones

Seafaring drones soon will allow Cornell scientists to examine the abundance and distribution of forage fish – like zooplankton and shrimp – that nourish species higher on the food chain.

  • Natural Resources and the Environment Section
  • Organisms
  • Water
James Watkins works on a boat on Lake Ontario

News

$6.75M EPA grant to fund Great Lakes food web monitoring
Cornell received the grant to continue efforts to monitor and research the lower part of the food web, particularly zooplankton like Mysis and benthic invertebrates.
  • Natural Resources and the Environment Section
  • Water
  • Ecosystems