about your moderator
Jenny Adler, Ginnie Springs
Jenny graduated from Brown in 2011 with a B.S. in marine biology. She spent her junior semester abroad at the School for Field Studies’ Center for Marine Resource Studies in the Turks and Caicos Islands where she performed research dives testing the effectiveness of different underwater visual census techniques at estimating reef fish biodiversity. Through biology courses and the REEFCheck certification, she learned to recognize over 300 reef fish and coral species.
While at Brown, Jenny worked on a project investigating the effects of climate change on East coast salt marshes. She spent a summer doing fieldwork in salt marshes along the east coast and received honors distinction for her thesis looking at belowground decomposition of the salt marsh cordgrass Spartina alterniflora along a latitudinal gradient.
After graduating, Jenny moved to Gainesville to work as a biologist at the U.S. Geological Survey. At USGS, she studied the effects of the Deep Water Horizon oil spill on mesophotic reef fish communities in the Gulf of Mexico. She specialized in reef fish identification and took part in a 2-week research cruise to reef sites near the spill. She also studied Gulf Sturgeon in the Suwannee River, including netting and acoustic tagging. A year later, she started working in the film and production industry, traveling all over Florida, the Bahamas, and the Gulf of Mexico taking pictures and videos and aiding with all aspects of production. She has interned at the Florida Springs Institute and has her instructor and cave diving certifications – she can rarely be found above water and is seldom seen without a camera in hand.
Jenny is currently a Ph.D. candidate in Ecology at the University of Florida. Her springs photographs have been exhibited at Santa Fe College in Gainesville and the Museum of Science and History in Jacksonville. She also writes environmental journalism. See: Lenses and Love: The Art of Saving Florida’s Springs.
Email: jennifer dot adler at gmail dot com