School of Ocean Science and Engineering
Student Spotlight: David May
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Masters in Coastal Science
What interested you about your field of study? Provide details about specific research interests.
Some people have that eye-opening moment where they suddenly realize what they want to do for the rest of their lives. Awkwardly enough, I had this moment while holding my breath in a neighbor’s pool. I was about 14. It was a sunny day. I went to the bottom of the pool, pressed my back to the floor, and looked up. Time slowed as I was mesmerized by how the sun’s light rays split and meandered about with the dancing surface waters. I dedicated my life to understanding the natural gifts of Earth’s oceans.
I am particularly interested in fish distribution, movement, and predator-prey interactions. My thesis project is to develop a series of species distribution models that will estimate the likelihood of species occurrence through space as a function of environmental variables (i.e., salinity, temperature, depth, chlorophyll). Once trained with previously collected data, I’d like these models to forecast future species distributions under hypothetical environmental scenarios (i.e., rapid salinity fluctuations).
What is/was the road to your degree path?
Born and raised in Wisconsin, my dream of one day becoming a marine biologist always
seemed out of reach. To get where I wanted to be, I dedicated each summer of my undergraduate
career to at least one field or research experience. I’ve interned at an aquarium,
quantified microplastics in freshwater biofilms, tagged elasmobranchs in Florida,
coauthored a study on fish scale predation, and volunteered at the Charles Darwin
Research Station in the Galapagos Islands.
Why Southern Miss?
I came to USM’s GCRL because geospatial science is a rapidly growing field, and Dr. Kim de Mutsert’s groundbreaking work in ecosystem modeling would allow me to address important questions in coastal fish ecology via spatial analytics.
What type of job do you hope to obtain in your field of study after you graduate?
I hope to work as a fish ecologist for either a state agency or marine ecology consulting
firm. It is a lifelong dream of mine to become a deep-sea fish ecologist later in
my career.
Please share any other information that you feel would be helpful to other students or potential students about your degree.
For any prospective students of marine biology or ecology, I cannot stress enough the importance and value of learning or at least getting experience with Geographic Information Systems (GIS) early in your career. Almost every ecologist has a need to at least visualize their study area via maps. Additionally, learning how to carry out even basic geospatial tests will greatly expand what you can do with your research and career. Finally, GIS is a skill that few ecologists have yet is highly valued by employers.
