Niguidula+Update+March+29,+2015

This week, I managed to get an interview with Dr. Andrew Solow. Dr. Solow is the director of the Marine Policy Center at Woods Hole. Previously, I have annotated one of the articles he wrote about a statistical test to determine whether a population has dropped low enough to be considered “eradicated.” Dr. Solow, or “Andy” as he prefers to be called, is an interesting subject because his work on invasive species has been largely indirect. He is trained as an Economist and his work is largely in mathematics, so his work on invasive species has been more theoretical than anything else. This gives him an interesting perspective on the issue because it is far less personal for him, compared to those working in the field and watching the damage that invasive species can sometimes do. He also gave me insight into the role of researchers in the policy making process, which is something I haven’t really been able to get out of anyone else. He explained that he was called up by a connection because of his expertise and was tasked by the US Coast Guard to figure out the effect that SONAR would have on whales. He also mentioned near the end of the interview his discomfort with some of the reasoning behind controlling invasive species. It seemed that some wanted the invasive species out simply because they were “foreign.” He is not the first person to draw parallels between this and xenophobia, further proving that exploring the connection will be an excellent research topic in the future, either for me or someone else.