Garret joins us from the @Smithsonian inFort Pierce, FL, where he studied soft bottom infauna communities and previously worked on kelp forest invertebrates in Friday Harbor, Washington @MarineBiol_FHL with Gustav Paulay

Please welcome Garret, our new MS grad student, studying coral population genetics @UOGTriton. Garret is most interested in coral stress response, diversity, and specimen photography as a means to better understand the reefs of Guam and the broader Pacific arena.

Last week we said goodbye to an invaluable member of our team, Garret @gtodonnell. While Garret was part of the BEL at SMS, he was full of puns, our professional selfie-taker, an enthusiastic educator, and an expert invertebrate identifier and photographer who favored the ‘pods.

It sure was a blast celebrating World Oceans Day with everyone who came out to the aquarium yesterday! IMO every day is #WorldOceansDay and a chance to take care of the ocean and admire the beauty of everything it offers, like the Cirratulid worm @gtodonnell is displaying here.

#naturejournalingweek is all about appreciation, creativity, inspiration, care, and celebration. #naturejournaling can take many forms, from Dr. Holly Sweat's detailed entries to Garret O'Donnell's @gtodonnell fun doodles. So get outside and get sketching!

Recently, the benthic lab’s very own @gtodonnell had the pleasure of introducing 3rd grade students at The Benjamin School @BenjaminBucs to the beautiful and strange world of infauna. Special thanks to @SmithsonianSMS for providing the critters on display! #Science #Outreach

Shoutout to sampling superSTARS @jsglanz and @gtodonnell! Checkout this nine-armed sea star (Luidia senegalensis) found during our April sampling of the Indian River Lagoon.

Lab tech Garret O’Donnell (@gtodonnell) is a graduate of the University of Florida. As a Floridian, Garret is thrilled to be a part of projects that quantify his home state’s benthos and can be found most days behind a microscope or on top of a sieve. #getyourhandsdirty