Meet Alanna Mnich | Marine Scientist

We had the good fortune of connecting with Alanna Mnich and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Alanna, is your business focused on helping the community? If so, how?
My work is not exactly a business, although I do need to market my work in a similar way in order to get grants and other forms of funding. My research investigates a new spawning location of Atlantic bluefin tuna. The importance of this region to the species is unknown, but I hope that my work will help determine that importance, and allow for more educated management decisions. The ultimate goal is to ensure that Atlantic bluefin tuna are sustainably managed with the best scientific knowledge available to improve the health of their population. Sustainable fisheries are crucial to feeding people worldwide, while also respecting the ocean and the ecology of the fish targeted, and my work is a small piece of that puzzle.

Can you open up a bit about your work and career? We’re big fans and we’d love for our community to learn more about your work.
Right now, what I am most excited about are the results of my PhD thesis research. I have all my data at this point, and was so relieved to get that data back and to find that all of my experiments worked and provided really useful insights into Atlantic bluefin tuna ecology. One part of this work that I was particularly worried about, as it has never to my knowledge been done before, was to use an ion microprobe to obtain 18O signatures from individual otoliths (fish ear bones) of Atlantic bluefin tuna larvae. These otoliths are smaller than a grain of sand, so getting any chemical signatures from each one can be risky. 18O is an indicator in seawater of the physical process of evaporation and freshwater input, which is not consistent across the ocean, so it can tell us about the water mass that a fish passes through. In this case, it can confirm the water mass that a larvae was spawned in, and those baselines have the potential to be used in the. future to determine where adults were spawned. I am very proud of this advancement, and am excited for others in the scientific community to apply this method to their own work as well.

Getting to this point has not been a simple task. It involved a lot of methodological testing, determining what did not work, and narrowing down what would work. There were times where I was not sure if I would be able to accomplish this. The method that I had originally set out to use did not work, so I had to switch gears to a method that I was relatively unfamiliar with. I had to learn a lot in a short amount of time, but ultimately it was very much worth moving on from what I had planned to something more promising. Luckily, in science, experimenting with methods that may or may not work is all part of the process. Sometimes knowing what doesn’t work is key to figuring out how to do something differently that will yield helpful results.

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
I have give so many friends a Miami itinerary, so this is the perfect question! It is definitely heavy on my marine science bias, but I hope that perspective may help even locals check out some new places.

As a University of Miami alum, I have to mention at the top Moon Thai in Coral Gables, right across the street from the entrance to the university. Get the massamun curry, it is phenomenal. Also close to the university is Madruga bakery, which has amazing pastries. Anyone who loves BBQ needs to go to Shorty’s, a Miami icon. Last, I used to live right across the street from a cafe Rinconcito SuperLatino #4. I think that location no longer exists, but they have several throughout the Miami area. It is a serious bang for your buck, and they have excellent mamey milkshakes and cortaditos.

I love everything in Coconut Grove. You can spend all day pursuing the shops, and among all of the great shops are even more amazing restaurants. Two of my favorites there are Planta and Sapore di Mare. You can also get Chill’N nitrogen ice cream and Salty Donut in the Grove now, too. Chill’N, as I tell everyone I ever meet, is truly the best ice cream I have ever had. Everyone I bring with me for the first time agrees. Salty Donut is also special to me – when I was at the NOAA SEFSC lab in Miami, about once a month my coworkers and I would do what we termed “Salty Fridays” and pick up Salty donuts from the Wynwood location.

The best place to spend a few hours eating, drinking, and enjoying the scenery of Biscayne Bay is the Wetlab / SALT restaurant on the University of Miami Rosenstiel School campus on Key Biscayne. It is a must-go place as a visitor or as a local. It’s right on the water and provides beautiful sunset views. It’s a very laid back atmosphere and has reasonably priced drinks. As a heads up, the marine scientists there may try to talk to you about their research!

I always recommend that nature lovers visit Matheson Hammock Park and Fairchild Botanical Garden. South Florida in the greater Miami area is the only place in the world where saltwater crocodiles and freshwater alligators overlap in their range. Matheson and Fairchild are great places to see the endangered saltwater crocodiles. I actually got engaged in the butterfly house at Fairchild Botanical Garden, so it’s a place I really love. At Matheson Hammock you can rent paddle boards, so that’s something that I like to spend the day doing as well. Also down that direction, Deering Estate is a good spot to visit if you want to see manatees. My mom loves manatees and had never seen them outside of rescue/rehab facilities. I wanted her to see them in the wild, so brought her to Deering. We saw five, including a couple babies, in just a short time of watching.

For people in town on Sundays, I always recommend the Pinecrest Farmers Market. Even if you are leaving the next day and can’t stock up on all of the amazing local produce, there are incredible food stands for lunch. I tend to frequent the Peruvian juice stand for chicha mirada and also make sure to get some arepas. They also have really fabulous local artists and other makers, so it’s great for a shopping adventure as well.

Of course, everyone needs to experience South Beach and Wynwood! You can easily spend a day (or more) at both places, walking around and exploring, or just relaxing. If the weather is bad and it’s more of an inside kind of day, check out the Frost Science Museum.

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
So much of what I’ve been able to accomplish is directly a result of amazing academic advisement I had as an undergraduate at the University of Miami. I had never thought about pursuing graduate school, and certainly not a PhD. My undergraduate research advisor helped me to get an internship at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Southeast Fisheries Science Center in Miami, where I worked for two years as a student. The great folks that I worked with at that lab then hired me upon graduation, but I knew it was only a yearlong contract and that afterwards my funding would be gone. About a week before finishing undergrad, my research advisor asked me where I would be doing my PhD. I was pretty shocked, because I didn’t even have a masters. He told me I didn’t need to do a masters, and that I should really think about pursuing a doctorate. Thanks to him, and to my yearlong contract at NOAA, I was able to spend that year applying to PhD programs, which ultimately got me to where I am today. Without him, and without that job allowing me to continue my research while also thinking about my next steps, I don’t think graduate school would have ever crossed my mind. The fact that my advisor as well as my coworkers all believed in me and gave me great advice made it all possible.

Website: http://www.alannamnich.com

Instagram: @ocean.alanna

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alanna-mnich-1b3065a9/