My name is Alex K. Brown, a graduate of Chowan University in Murfreesboro, North Carolina with a BA in Biology. I am originally from New Orleans, Louisiana, but then I moved to the east coast. I am an aspiring marine biologist and I am highly interested in researching/monitoring sharks as well as their environments, but to understand sharks better you must understand their environment first.

I am in Woods Hole on a year-long fellowship for the Accelerating Climate and Environmental Science program. For my ACES Woods Hole research project, I am working with Dr. Elizabeth Sibert from the Paleo-Fishes Lab at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. I am using this opportunity to look at core sediment samples from within a blue hole in Middle Caicos, Turks and Caicos Islands. A blue hole is a large vertical marine tunnel that sinks below the ocean floor surface. Blue holes act as a geological time scale and create a unique environment for marine life that surrounds it. I will collect micro-fossils such as denticles and fish teeth from the sediment within the blue hole core samples, to analyze ways in how humans as well as environmental change has affected the shark community composition over the last 1500 years around Turks and Caicos Island.