Dr. Margaret amsler
USA
Polar Biologist
Maggie Amsler is an accidental polar biologist. She became enamored with the marine realm as a young girl from Illinois spending her first family vacation on a Florida beach. Years later as a marine biology major at DePaul her undergraduate mentor University was a world renowned female polar biologist researching Antarctic krill. As Maggie’s sights looked to graduate school to study estuarine marine ecology, she was invited to be a member of DePaul’s Antarctic krill team and spent four months ‘on the ice’. Maggie would continue researching krill and living in Antarctica as part of her Master’s in Marine Science at University of North Carolina-Wilmington and as a Research Associate at University of California-Santa Barbara. After a hiatus from polar work to pursue informal science education in museums, Maggie returned to Antarctic research and now focuses on benthic ecology. With colleagues at the University of Alabama-Birmingham she investigates how chemical ecology shapes and controls the lush subtidal macroalgal forests of Antarctica and the effects of climate change, especially ocean acidification, on key members of those communities. As a side project she has delved into deep sea Antarctic biology investigating potentially invasive crabs. That work, coupled with her krill experience, lead to an invitation to serve on one of the first ever submersible explorations of Antarctica’s deep sea and which resulted in a documentary aired by National Geographic. To date Maggie has spent 101 months (over 8 years) in Antarctica aboard research vessels or at research stations. She has logged hundreds of polar scuba dives and totaled 33 hours in a submersible surveying down to 1000m in Antarctica’s frigid waters. When not ‘on the ice’ Maggie enjoys sharing the joys of science and Antarctica through various outreach activities, cycling, water sports, birding, cross country skiing and gardening.
Image by Sabrina Heiser