Episode 003: Michelle Larue
Dr. Michelle Larue is a Lecturer at the University of Canterbury, in Christchurch. She is a research ecologist who works with high-resolution satellite imagery to study population dynamics of species facing substantial conservation challenges, including penguins, seals and cougars. You can follow her on Twitter @drmichellelarue.
Transcript
Cameron Graham: My guest today is Dr. Michelle Larue, Lecturer in Ecology at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand. Michelle studies cougars in North America and penguins in the Antarctic. She's the author of twenty papers on ecological modeling, much of her research revolving around how to use high resolution satellite imagery to observe animal populations. Michelle, welcome to the podcast!
Michelle Larue: Thank you so much for having me.
Cameron: I'd like to start with your research, because to me, I find the way that you go about your research is so different from mine. I go into dusty old archives and stuff like that and you get to study penguins, and you know, pictures of penguins are way more attractive and photogenic than my pictures of dusty documents. [laughter] So given the fact that you have this unfair advantage over me in research, can you tell me about what it is you actually do as a researcher?
Michelle: Yeah, what do I do for a living? [laughter] Yeah, so a lot a lot of what I do is behind a computer, right? I'm looking at these high-resolution images – we’re talking about Google Earth-type imagery, so really fine detail, the kind of images where you can see, like if you went into Google Earth and you can see your house, you can see your car parked outside, that kind of thing.
Cameron: Is it higher resolution than Google Earth?
Michelle: It's about the same. Yeah so I'm not sure, I guess, what the highest resolution is on Google Earth anymore. But yeah, it's this real high resolution, anywhere from about 30 cm to 60 cm resolution which is incredibly great. So yeah, I sit behind a computer a lot and I'll look for things. If I'm going to be as simple as possible, I make observations about animal populations. And it completely depends on the species, as far as the approach. So, if I'm looking at Emperor penguins, what I want to be looking for is the sea ice around Antarctica and I look for their guano stain on the ice, and that tells me that there is an emperor penguin colony there and that I need to zoom in and train the computer to tell me how many animals there are. If I'm looking for Weddell seals, though, on the other hand, that's a completely different way of going about it. So in that case, I’m looking at the same type of ice but I’m looking for cracks, which is where they get in and out of the ocean, and I'm looking for little black dots kind of along the ice. So yeah, I am doing a lot of searching. I’ve gotten pretty good at identifying weird things on the ice.
Cameron: So, can you tell a seal from a rock?
Michelle: I can, yeah, I think I can. Every once in a while there's a few things that'll kind of throw you, but usually if there is a rock on the ice, you can tell because there's other little smaller rocks on the ice. Whereas a seal kind of positions itself. It just looks different. I can't really describe it. You just have to see it a bunch of times before you can figure it out.
Cameron: So you develop a kind of tacit knowledge of how to interpret the photos?
Michelle: Yeah, and it’s a little weird, because I remember telling my friend Claire this. She's like, “How do you know it's a seal?” And I’m like, “I can't, I don't know how to describe it but they behave differently. When you’re looking, when you're just seeing a picture of them, the way they're oriented with each other and the way they're oriented near the cracks in the ice just looks different and there's some sort of signature that I can't quite describe but they do look different when you're when you're looking at the ice. And so once you figure that out, you can pretty quickly say, “Okay, that's probably gonna be a rock, and what I'm looking at over here is a seal instead.”
Cameron: Maybe it’s a bit the same as the way you recognize someone who’s familiar with you, in a crowd. The way my son or my spouse walks, immediately my eye just picks them out of the crowd.
Michelle: Exactly, I was just going to say that. Yeah exactly, somebody’s swagger, the way they walk.
Cameron: The way they swing their elbows.
Michelle: Exactly, it’s that kind of thing. It’s just after having enough experience, you kind of get used to it.
Cameron: Not that Weddell seals have elbows.
Michelle: [laughter] No, they're just fat.
Cameron: So was it the technology that drew you to this field of research? At what point did you wake up and say, “Oh, I’d like to spend a lot of time looking at satellite images”?
Michelle: Yeah, it was. It was the technology. So I came into the job that I had, which was basically being a GIS analyst and a cartographer with the US Antarctic program, and I was at the University of Minnesota. So I was making maps for all kinds of scientists, which was really great, because I got to know a lot of people. I really got involved in what they were doing and I learned a lot about research in Antarctica, in general. But I had a background in wildlife ecology and in geographic information systems, so when we got access to this high-resolution imagery and we were making maps with it, and when I came across a little group of seals hanging out on the ice, it didn't take very long for me to recognize that if we can see these animals from space, I could combine my geospatial skills and my wildlife skills with this high-resolution imagery to figure out what was going on in other areas around Antarctica. And from that point forward I was like, “That's what I want to do with my life, for my career.”
Cameron: You were already involved in the Antarctic at that point?
Michelle: Yes.
Cameron: So just as a cartographer. Now your previous work, then, in Minnesota, was studying cougars?
Michelle: I studied cougars at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale, yes, and that was my Masters degree.
Cameron: Can you study them from space?
Michelle: [sighs] No. Well I shouldn't say that, you can't see them because they are large predators, right, and they need stalking cover, so there's no way you're actually going to be able to ID them from space, because they live in the woods, mostly. But you know, there’s satellite tracking, right? So you can. I guess it’s a different definition of tracking them from space. You certainly could. There’s collars that you can put on them.
Cameron: So there you’re tracking individuals in that case. In the Antarctic, with the penguins and the seals, you’re studying populations.
Michelle: Right.
Cameron: What have we learned from the satellite imagery about the distribution of these species?
Michelle: I feel like we have learned a ton, leaps and bounds from just a few years ago, maybe a decade ago. What we knew then to what we know now has just skyrocketed. It’s amazing. So we now know, for example, with Emperor penguins, we used to think that there were about 30, 33 populations, locations of colonies around the continent. Now we know there's 54 spots where they will come back to every year. With Adele penguins, we used to think -- I believe the last estimate prior to recently was about 150 or 180 colonies. Now we know there's 270, something like that. And with the Weddell seals, now this is one of the things that I didn't expect, is how little of the ice they actually inhabit. We searched the equivalent of the size of New Zealand worth of fast ice around the Antarctic continent and ...
Cameron: Sorry, fast ice is ...?
Michelle: Oh, sorry. so yeah, the fast ice is ice that's literally attached to the continent. That's different from the pack ice which is out in the middle of the ocean. So these seals focus their habitat, their breeding habitat and where they raised their young, on the fast ice right next to the continent. And so we searched that type of ice around the Antarctic continent and found that they're only on like 0.5% of the available fast ice. I guess I didn't really know what to expect, but I kinda thought they were going to be visible on the space a lot more than that. So that was kind of interesting.
Cameron: So you have to figure out what attracts them to particular locations.
Michelle: Right. We want to know, why is this spot over here great? Why are there lots of seals over here and not so many in different location? What is it about that spot that's great? Yeah, we want to be able to figure those things out and then figure out okay, how many are in these locations and what environmental factors drive their populations to go up and down.
Cameron: In my research, I spend a lot of time reading theory, and I look for ways of using that theory to describe social phenomena related to accounting and poverty. In your case, I think you're more focused on having a particular method, the satellite imagery, and you're looking for ways to use that to study these populations. But that doesn't mean that you take the tool and apply it without thinking. You have to have some sort of theory about the population that you're studying, right?
Michelle: Right. What you said just reminds me of my colleague, David Ainley. I remember after we got done doing our first proof of concept: "Hey! Yay! We can see seals from space and we can count them and we can actually look at changes in their populations. This is wonderful!" I remember him emailing me right after that, he's like, "Okay, gee whiz, now, let's do the science." Right? So you're right, in my case, it's figuring out how we can best use the methods, and standardizing those tools, and then applying it and figuring out ecological theory. And I think that's where were getting to now. I would argue that my PhD was ramping up to that point. You gotta standardize things, figure out what we know, what we don't know, what we can say by using this tool. And then, all right, now that we have this baseline to figure out what we can do with it, now we can start looking at ecological theory and looking at their biogeography, the effects of climate change, and that kind of thing.
Cameron: Rights of really working in two edges of research at the same time. One is you're trying to understand the full implications of the tool, right, and I think one of your papers was a review of 14 other papers that it used the tool, in trying to figure out what do we know about how to use the tool? And then the other is, okay, now that we know how to use the tool, how do we develop our understanding of these populations. Is this something that goes on back-and-forth or do you have to spend a lot of time on the tool first before you can begin to use it? How did it work for you?
Michelle: I would argue with something like this: I mean, I think this is a disruptive technology, right. It's completely changed our ability. We can see spaces and places around the Antarctic that are completely inaccessible. It completely is changing the game and adding information that we would not have otherwise. So you have to do it right. I think it's really important to do that first and then start applying it. And I think there is a little bit of back-and-forth, because at some point the imagery resolution got better. So that changes things a little bit. Like, okay, maybe we know for a while we've been assuming that we're only looking at adult Weddell seals, for example, on the imagery. We thought that the pups were too small to see. Well, with higher resolution imagery that might not be the case anymore. So we may need to revisit our detection rate. Who are we seeing? So there is that little bit of back-and-forth and constant calibration to make sure that were getting it right.
Cameron: So how do you validate your detection rate?
Michelle: What we do with with seals is we have collaborators who are on the ground every year doing ground surveys, And as a matter fact, they tag every single animal that they see. This is a group out of Montana State University and they are wonderful collaborators of ours. And so we can use that information to make sure that what we're seeing from space is accurate to what's going on on the ground. And then in the case of penguins, we fly aerial surveys: just fly over them and take pictures, and we'll count them to make sure that if we're seeing 10,000 birds at a colony, what would we predict from the high-resolution imagery? Just need to make sure that those two answers are consistent across time and space.
Cameron: Now when you say 10,000 birds, do you develop the software to count automatically, or do you have to sit there with a pencil and check them off?
Michelle: Thankfully we train the computer. [laughs] Yeah, counting 600,000 Emperor penguins is just not feasible, no matter who you are. Even if you had an army of people working on this.
Cameron: I was going to say, crowdsourcing! Everybody's into crowdsourcing.
Michelle: Yeah, yeah. So I think that's still a little bit much. So what we do is we train the computer to say, okay, this is what a pixel of a penguin looks like, 'cause when you're looking at the imagery, they look like little black dots. They're pretty obvious. But again, you don't want to go through and count them all because that's just not efficient. So we train the computer to say, okay, here's what penguin pixel looks like, here's what guano looks like, here's what snow looks like. Okay now, computer, given that information, now you tell me how many penguin pixels there are. And then we isolate that information and we come up with an area. So we have now an area of penguins, and then we translate area into an actual number.
Cameron: All right. So using this technology to understand this species, you're looking at changes in population over time?
Michelle: That's exactly what were doing. The first study we did was just looking at a baseline. That was imagery from 2009. So we have an idea about how many there were across the entire continent.
Cameron: Going up or down?
Michelle: I don't know yet. So now what were doing, the project I'm working on right now, is taking all of the imagery since 2009 and doing exactly what I just described: training the computer to figure out how many birds there are at every single colony over the past 10 years and looking at the population change, both within a particular population, within a region, and then of course across the entire continent of Antarctica. And we are literally working on that right now.
Cameron: So you have to have a theory of the animal behaviour, because for starters, if you want to assume that they are always going come back to exactly the same place, then if you know that they're not there, they're gone. But what if they move around from place to place?
Michelle: Yes, and that is what I think they do. And we know this, and this is another kind of unexpected observation that we made just a few years ago, was the fact that sometimes colonies, sometimes the guano stain that you see from the high-resolution imagery is in a spot in one year and the next year it's not. And then the year after they might be back. So clearly they're not coming back to the same spot, or necessarily coming back to the same places every year. And so we need to take that into account when were looking at population change. So if one population goes down, but it's neighbors, the neighboring populations, go up, did some of those animals move from one place to another? Is it a true decrease? Those are the things that we're now able to look at, given we have imagery around the entire continent. We didn't have that before. We had to make some assumptions that very likely aren't true.
Cameron: You need some really basic theories of the behaviour of these birds. You know, is a penguin from one location welcomed into a group of that is normally at another one, or do they get kicked out? Like tribalism.
Michelle: Yeah.
Cameron: I know nothing about penguins. What`s your understanding of that?
Michelle: I think it depends on the species, honestly. I think that Emperor penguins in particular are a lot more mobile than we originally thought. I think that they move from place to place pretty easily. But a species like Adele penguins, which are the littler ones and they live on land -- they actually have a nesting location -- they, I think, tend to be a little bit more tied to a certain spot. But we do know that when the environment gets to be tough, they can move as well. And they can go to a different spot, providing there's space, of course, because they are territorial, whereas Emperor payments are not. So I think it just depends on the species, it depends on the situation. I happen to think that just when you back up and think about it from an evolutionary standpoint, if you are an animal that lives in such a harsh location and you've been adapted to this for millions of years, you'd think you'd be pretty plastic in your behaviors and your ability to, kind of, "All right, things are a little bit weird here. Maybe this isn't a good spot, or maybe I need to adapt a little bit." So I think they do have the ability to do that, and I think were starting to see that now with some of these populations. I don't know that that's always happened. I suspect it has. But we're starting to see that now from the high resolution imagery.
Cameron: How does your understanding of the behaviours of these species translate to other important species, like butterfly migration, for instance? Or, birds that fly from the northern hemisphere to the southern hemisphere tend to follow very predictable patterns (I think, as a person who's just a casual reader of this stuff). Are you able to translate from your work into other species or from the understanding of other species into your work?
Michelle: I think, at a minimum, the awareness that it's possible is important. So it's this idea, at least in my view, with the Emperor Penguins -- and I like to use them as an example because to me, it was very surprising, it was like, "Oh, I did not think we were not gonna see them in one spot and then they're the back!" That just seems to be weird. I think there is a lesson potentially to be learned across other, say, bird populations, like if the environment gets to be tough or if climate change gets to be a little bit too much, do other species of birds have this capacity to say, “Okay, we need to adapt, we need to do something a little bit different"? So I would like to think there's an awareness that can be applied elsewhere. Whether or not that it is true for other species still remains to be [seen], but that's what's exciting about science, is you can put something out there, someone else reads it who may be studying starlings or something, and say, okay, does that fit with what I'm observing or it does this not? So we can start to put the pieces of the puzzle together.
Cameron: Right, so you are crossing the subdisciplines quite a bit in your study of animal populations. When it comes to taking the implications of your work for things like climate change, you are incredibly multidisciplinary and cross-disciplinary. Could you tell me little bit about the kinds of interactions you have with people who are studying climate change, studying the Antarctic, but aren't remotely connected to the study of the animals?
Michelle: Yeah, so actually, I do a lot of work with with oceanographers and sea-ice modelers and things, and the fact remains that everything is connected. Right? So we oftentimes will think of penguins and seals as indicator species, they can give us an idea of what's going on in the system. And so one of the questions I have at the moment is, are these species indicating, if they're getting to be mobile and they're not coming back to the same spots, and if there is a region, let's say, that seems to be pretty variable, are they indicating change in the environment that we will then see in a couple of years? Is this just something normal? And that's where having these conversations with people who are experts in sea ice, experts in oceanography, is really critical because everything is connected. These animals happen to rely on the sea ice, they rely on the ocean to make their living, so we have to have those conversations
Cameron: I'm just standing way back as a person who's a non-expert in this field. What's the basic relationship between seeing seasonal variations in populations and in sea-ice, and the long-term trends that we associate with climate change?
Michelle: What are the differences? Um, so, the things you'd expect -- and again, coming at it from an ecologist standpoint -- things you'd expect in the sea-ice behavior, let's say, or the changes in extent and duration, you'd expect there to be less sea-ice in the summer and more in the winter, right? That's going to happen. But for me it's the timing of when those things happen. So when the sea-ice starts to form and when it starts to melt away, that's the thing that I'll say worries me a little bit, when I see the sea-ice starting to melt away or when I see the extent in October, when it should be pretty extensive around some of these islands, when it's not as extensive as it used to be, Those are those are that little ... it seems like it's nuanced but it's not, it's critical to understand what's going on here. And those are the things that I look for. So while we talked to a sea-ice modeler, they may be looking at the entire Antarctic pack ice extent and how that changes among years and changes between seasons, and I'm looking at these very small locations and saying, "Okay, hang on a second. The ice is starting to melt away a lot sooner than it used to. How are the penguins doing? What does this mean for the food web, and that king of thing.
Cameron: So you've got the connection between the micro level, the individual penguins, the small populations, the single location, and the larger global story of what's happening.
Michelle: Yeah, exactly. One of the conversations we've had with one of my sea-ice colleagues is what helps predict the fast ice, which again is that ice that's right next to the continent, what helps keep it in place? Because these animals need it to be in place for as long as possible. They rely on this habitat for eight months a year, right? So if it's even a week or two early and starting to melt away, that could be a huge problem. So providing that context is critical because I ended up learning that the pack ice in certain locations stays put. It kind of keeps the fast ice locked into place. Whereas if the sea-ice extent that we might see changing from year to year, if that changes dramatically, that could then have this kind of cascading effect on to the fast ice. So yeah, it is really critical to not, in my view, to not just focus on the one thing that you're doing but to put things into context, and talk to people who have information that you don't have. Like in my case, other oceanographers and sea-ice people.
Cameron: Mm-hmm. When you're talking with other academics, I imagine that your language can be quite specific, quite technical. I know that in my field, we get criticized for having these conversations using rarefied language of the ivory tower, and people [are] questioning what the importance of that is. I have my own sense of why it's important in my field, but in your field, maybe you can talk about the importance of having an academic language that you share, a non-everyday language.
Michelle: I think it's critical, yes, absolutely. Because the level of detail that we get into -- and you know this -- every scientist gets to this point where you have to be so specific and clear about what it is that you're doing, what you have done, what your implications mean. And so to have a language that is as specific as possible is really, really critical. And again, like I was saying, that gets to setting up a methodology. You have to know exactly what you're talking about. We get into debates about breeding colonies versus reproductive colonies. Okay, that's a very, very nuanced detail, but it's important because the animals, for example, might not be actually breeding at the time they are raising their young. That is a slight difference, but it's a difference, right? And it sounds pedantic and like, why does that matter? But it does. When you then extrapolate beyond just that one spot and beyond just that one time, it really does make a difference. So I do think it's really important to be clear, and to have that language amongst each other, but then also to be able to translate away from that when you're talking to people who might not be interested in the pedantic nature of of breeding versus reproductive whatever.
Cameron: You seem to be pretty good at communicating what you do to people who don't share that language, so maybe we can talk a little bit about that. For starters, you you've got penguins, which are really photogenic.
Michelle: Gives me a leg up, for sure!
Cameron: You can talk to a bunch of kids and say that you study penguin poop, and they all giggle. So far I've yet come up with any equivalents in my research in trying to explain it to children, so I'm quite envious. Can you tell me a little bit about the relationship between the academic work that you do and your status in the field, the importance of publications or attending conferences and stuff like that, and your ability to communicate to the general public. Is the authoritative voice that you develop in the academic world important to your communication or can you simply be out there is a "spokesmodel" for the academic community? Because there is a role for the academic researcher who explains their own research, but there's also a role for journalists who cover academic work and who try to translate it into everyday terms, and I appreciate the work those people do. Your job is quite specific, though. You actually do the research and try and translate it.
Michelle: Yeah, so I've taken the strategy -- and this is just my strategy, I'm not saying this should be used by everyone else -- but my strategy is, I wanted to to be the authority first, because there are people who are so good at communicating science. And so I want to be the person who can provide the information and to help tell that story. So yes, I guess my strategy is to try to be that authority figure, to say, "Look, I know what I'm talking about. We've studied this very carefully." And as I said, having this language, this academic language, to be very clear about what it is that we're doing, and to be able to communicate with people who are even better communicators, to say, "Okay, I'm gonna speak to a journalist or a reporter or the TV reporter who can do an even better job at telling that story." So I do work to have those two different languages -- I don't want to say "languages," but it is, for lack of better term, languages -- you have this kind of academic language and then the communication more outwardly, which in my view is focused very much on "Why should I care? What is it about what I have just done that the average person should pay attention to?" And that's where I rely on people who are even better at communicating than I am, to make that connection and help me tell those stories.
Cameron: Well, it raises the question of the role of emotion in your work. In trying to get people to understand why they should care about your work, that presupposes that you care. So for you, what is the role of emotion in driving you to do the research, or helping you understand?
Michelle: Yeah, so the role of emotion is pretty critical, I think, because the one thing that drives me is excitement. That's the first thing, is I get really excited to learn more. And I find, in my experience, that excitement is contagious, right? And enthusiasm and curiosity is contagious. It's a thing that I think humans have. And so it's genuine from my standpoint, I am genuinely excited and interested. And if I can convey that to other people, it's like this positive feedback loop, and it just makes me even more excited, and hopefully makes others excited and interested to learn even just a little bit of what I know and about the systems that I study. So I do think emotion is critical, because scientists are not robots. We get sad when when we hear about populations declining. We get happy when we hear about recovery. We get frustrated by politicians who don't listen to the facts. So yeah, emotion is really important and we do, I think, as best we can to be objective when we're looking at our results and thinking about what they mean, and that's as objective as we can get. But certainly there's a lot of emotion and excitement and drive behind what we do.
Cameron: Yeah. I think it's important for us to acknowledge the fact that this recording is taking place just a few days after the shootings in Christchurch. And that is having a profound impact on everybody in the city. I have seen incredible caring. I have seen incredible love being poured out to everybody, the Muslim community and everybody else around them. And that kind of an event has an effect on our emotions as researchers, our ability to communicate to each other and to connect. And I wanted to ask how you're doing?
Michelle: Yeah, it ... I will say that the weekend was really, really hard for me. ... I was ... it ... Clearly I'm at a loss for words. I didn't know what to think. I couldn't believe this. It was ... every ... every time I thought about it. The next day, on Saturday, I went for a walk up on the Summit Road in the Port Hills, and I was just looking at Christchurch and I was looking at Hagley Park, and I, I just lost it and I had to go home. I couldn't. It was just ... It's so sad. And that doesn't even begin to describe it. But I will say, yesterday at the vigil that we had here on campus was incredibly healing for me, and I hope it was healing for the communities who were directly affected by this. Yeah. And I, I just know that I wasn't very productive yesterday. I didn't really get a whole lot done. And so yeah, it's been really, really hard. [pause] Yup. [pause]
Cameron: This is the kind of thing that you see in smaller ways, much much smaller ways throughout our work. It's something that I think as academics, many of the academics that I know are really whole people, they understand themselves, they understand the people around them. And I think that's really an important part of what we we're doing. We're not simply a bunch of brains trying to connect the dots on ideas. I keep a box of Kleenex on my desk, and it gets used when students come in. I don't know why they feel comfortable crying in front of me, but many of them do. Maybe I look like their dad or something. But that role of emotion is something that has to be brought into all of our work. I know that for me, the events in the US over the past few years have sometimes made it really difficult to do my work, because there's a discourse there that is is seeping into Canada that regards everybody's opinion as equally valid. And a scientist's opinion is simply that, just an opinion. And if you hold an opinion that's not scientifically based, that's valid too, and we should just let free speech determine what our knowledge should be. So I'm interested how you see the work that you do, besides the way that you communicate it so authentically, as I've seen in your videos, as a whole person, but also speaking to that discourse around what counts as a fact and what counts as fake news. In other words, what is the point of doing scientific research in a world that sometimes doesn't seem to care about facts and non-facts?
Michelle: Man, that's a really good question. For me, I just keep doing it because I have hope that it will matter. Because facts do matter and facts are different than opinions. And so I don't want to lose sight of the fact that that is true. Some things are factual and some things are opinion, and I think if we, as scientists, and the scientifically literate communities around us, can continue to drive that point home, I have hope that it will infiltrate, and that will make a difference. Because I can't stress that enough: there are things that are factual and there are things that are opinion, and they're not the same thing. And so when scientists come to advise a politician, to advise policy or talk publicly about what it is that they do, what they're saying, the results of they're presenting to you are what they found. This isn't an "opinion." That is one of the reasons -- you've probably heard me say it a couple of times in this podcast -- I will say "in my view," and I do that deliberately when it's necessary. Because I want people to know that as a scientist I speak from a place of authority on the things that I am aware of, in the things that I can speak to factually. However, I have opinions because I'm a human, right? And so I try to make sure that my opinion about whatever it is, despite the fact I've been doing this research, I still have an opinion that is different than a fact. So I do try to make sure that those two things are clear when I'm when I'm speaking. Because what I don't want is somebody to say, "Oh well, Michelle said this, therefore it must be true," when in fact it might be an opinion. And so I want to make sure that the lines, in my case, are not blurred between what's fact and what's opinion, because it's really critical.
Cameron: It's a fine line in our work, because one of the things we do want to do is to be able to call into question what are taken as established facts that are perhaps not the most helpful way of looking a things. So you're trying to teach people think critically, and yet you are also trying to teach them to understand evidence.
Michelle: Right.
Cameron: So in my work, I try to show people that accounting has a relationship to power, and the things we say about corporations or about government spending are the result of a whole apparatus of power that constructs a particular message about the corporation or about the government. And to be able to call into question, to establish the ability for the individual to say, "Wait a minute, I'm not sure that I agree with that. I'd like to consider this other evidence, too." That is a way of, in some helpful ways, undermining the hegemonic understanding of the way the world works.
Michelle: Right.
Cameron: But I don't want to take that to the point where anybody's opinion matters. Every individual matters, but not every opinion is equally informed, and to have a rational discussion about where we come up with our opinions, and how they are informed by research, I think is really vital. Now, to turn this for you toward social media, I know that you have a fairly strong social media presence, and social media is not always the healthiest place for expressing fact-based opinions.
Michelle: No, is not! [laughs] You are absolutely right. Yeah. I have an interesting relationship with ... so, I only do Twitter. I got off Facebook a couple of years ago now.
Cameron: Why was that?
Michelle: And I say that with delight because, it is, in my opinion -- this is my opinion, this is this is just my opinion -- it's a terrible platform. The reason I got off of it was -- again, there's only so much you can do in writing, right? -- so if you're if you're trying to explain a situation or trying to explain something, people can pick and cherry pick and take out of context what you're actually trying to say. And the context is really difficult sometimes. And so I saw that more and more. It was incredibly political. I was very political on Facebook, and I was like, "You know what? This is enough. This is a self-care issue. I am done." I don't think it's a healthy platform. Yeah, I'm very, very opinionated about Facebook. Twitter, I think, is also that way. I have been incredibly fortunate to have much more positive interactions on Twitter, but I am probably an incredibly small minority of people who -- especially women -- who have had that. I don't know anyone who's not been abused on Twitter. So yeah, it's a nice spot to be able to quickly say something. But that's the problem, right? You can quickly say something and it can be incredibly damaging, whether you intend it to or not. And in many cases, the people that I'm referring to who are abusive do definitely intend that. But on the other hand, it is a great place for me to show pictures of penguins! [laughter] And so I try to take advantage of that and trying to get across the message of of inspiration, because pictures are great. I can put a picture up, and I did that last night, actually, and that was my form of self-care. I put up a the thread of pictures of Weddell seals. It's meaningless, but if it makes someone happy, then great. So yeah, there's definitely a kind of give-and-take with social media. It can be used for good, but I think increasingly, we are seeing it is being used for some very, very bad things, and I'm really angry about that.
Cameron: I know that people have a view of the academic world as being objective and impartial, but I know that for many people, trying to get published in the academic world can be just as emotional as some of the abuse that you can get on social media. I wonder if you could talk a little bit about your experiences working with colleagues and working with journals, working at conferences. Is the experience for you as a woman different from the experience from me as a white male?
Michelle: Yes! [laughs]
Cameron: I kind of thought that might be the case.
Michelle: I obviously can't speak to your experiences.
Cameron: Pretty good. Pretty good, thank you. Nicely privileged!
Michelle: Yeah, and I'm white, right, I'm a white woman. So, I also have a hell of a lot of privilege that no women of colour, men of colour, don't have. And I'm very, very aware of that. I think at conferences, I think I've been pretty okay. There's been a few times that reviewers have been super condescending, and the ones that I'm thinking of, kind of in the back my mind, probably had a lot more to do with the fact that I was a student more than the fact that I was a woman. But I don't know that. Of course, they didn't say, "I'm writing this because I know you're a student and this writing is poor." They didn't say it that way, of course, but that's a little bit of a suspicion. But one thing I will say is there's been a few conferences that I've gone to that had a code of conduct, and that made me so comfortable, and so much more, like, "Wow, somebody who is in a position of power cares enough to say no, this is not going to be tolerated." It's one of the things you think you shouldn't have to say, right? You shouldn't have to say, "By the way please don't hit on me, or make suggestive comments. Just don't do that. You'd think that would be like, "We're all professionals here. Can we just have a professional conversation?" But the fact that some of these conferences have gone out of their way to do that and make people feel inclusive and included, yeah, it made me feel incredibly comfortable. I seen that switch a little bit, and the tide turning a little bit, which I think is a very welcome thing. But again, I recognize I'm coming from an incredibly privileged position, and so I also try to try to do what I can to make the experiences of others better in ways that I would hope. I would hope everyone could have a positive experience. And if there's anything I can do to make that happen, I hope to be able to use my platform and my position to do that.
Cameron: Yeah. What I'm trying to do is draw a connection between the way that toxic masculinity works of the academy, and toxic masculinity works on social media, toxic masculinity works in shootings. These are all connected my mind, and it's really incumbent on us, as academics, to try to model the way that we would like to be treated and the way we would like to treat others. I know that many of my colleagues who are women in Toronto have difficulty in the classroom, because the way that you speak, the way that they hold themselves, is immediately subject to critique from the student population, often with unconscious bias, sometimes with explicit bias. And it's not pretty to see. At a conference, the way that a woman presents a paper may be different from the way a man presents a paper. And what a man does to be authoritative can come across, when a woman does the same thing, as being bitchy or pretentious or something like that.
Michelle: Bossy
Cameron: Yeah, bossy. It's just the incredible double standard. And that's just dealing with binary, right? When you look at gender fluidity and the whole importance of understanding non-binary representations in the academy, let alone in social media, I think we have a long way to go. Yeah, so I don't know. I would like to be hopeful about that.
Michelle: I think you're right. The idea of toxic masculinity is prevalent everywhere you turn. I think as academics, we would like to think we have higher standards or something, but clearly that is not the case. I mean, there's all kinds of sexual harassment going on in the academy, and it's bad, it's very, very bad. And you are absolutely right. That kind of arrogance -- and that is the nicest way I can possibly put it -- to feel that you know you can use your position of power to harm another person like that, that idea, you don't have to be in academia, and you don't have to not be in academia. That's the commonality, right? I don't know how to fix that. But I think what it takes is men who are aware of it standing up when they see it. I think there's a lot of times where -- and I've had this happen to me, too -- where you're kind of in disbelief about somebody saying something inappropriate, and you don't speak up for whatever reason, if it's a safety reason or if it's you are just in complete disbelief. But I think empowering the people who would never do something like that to stand up, say the right thing, protect the people who are being affected, punching that down and getting it out and saying "No, this is not acceptable," I think is a positive way to do that. But the actualities of how to go about doing that, it's tough.
Cameron: It's also affected by your sense of security in your work. In the academic world, one of the great divides is those who have tenure and those who don't. Do you have tenure in your position here?
Michelle: It's not considered tenure, to my knowledge, but I'm a continuing academic. So effectively, yes, I think, but it's not tenure the way that the North American tenure process goes, where you have a contract for three years or six years or whatever it is, and you go up for your tenure review. We go up for promotion here, at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand, but you don't lose your job if they don't think you're doing a good job, which is different than in North America. So I would say that I probably have the same type of security that a tenured person has.
Cameron: So does that job security give you room to do something different that you otherwise might not be able to do?
Michelle: Yeah, so I think I want to take advantage of this as best I can, first from the scientific perspective of thinking big, thinking outside the box: not necessarily writing the proposals that are going to get me funded, but writing the proposals that are interesting and would break new ground. In reality, as a nontenured person, you have to get funding, right? And even if you do get funding, you still might not get tenure, right? You have to get funding, you have to get published, you have to teach, there's so many things you have to do in order to hear "You shall pass!", right? "Oh, we accept you now!" And so it seems to me that in those first years, when you're not tenured, you're fighting to do what you can to get tenure, rather than necessarily being able to think, "Okay, you know what, I'm going to sit this grant process out, and I'm gonna wait until I have a really great idea." Or, "This is gonna take a little bit longer for me to think about. I'm gonna wait till next year." You don't have that luxury if you're not tenured, especially in North America, So that's a lot more difficult, whereas here, I feel like I have the luxury of saying, "All right, you know what? I want to think about this for a little bit. I need to do a little bit more analysis on a project that I already have funded, that I'm working on. See what comes of it. Have conversations, give presentations, do the publications and see what comes of it." And that's a long process. And that may take years to say, "Oh my gosh, we've got this great idea that could be breaking ground on a new theory or it could be upending a different one." And you don't necessarily have the ability to do that if you're in a position where you have to constantly fight for funding. So yeah, there's definitely a difference between being tenured and not.
Cameron: You talked about funding applications and stuff like that. First of all, is funding fairly available for the kind of work that you do? Is this something that those with money like to get behind?
Michelle: Most of the funding that I've gotten has been -- I'm trying to I think here -- federally [and] nonprofits. I think that penguins and seals are charismatic megafauna and I think it's probably a little bit easier to fund those those pieces of work.
Cameron: Sounds like a t-shirt: 'charismatic megafauna"?
Michelle: Yeah, exactly. So I suspect sometimes that, not to diminish what I've done because I try not to be like that, but they are charismatic megafauna. They're an indicator species, and perhaps it's easier to fund that. I'm not really sure, though.
Cameron: What's an indicator species?
Michelle: So indicator species are these animal species that give us an indication, a kind of a glimpse, into what's happening in their ecosystems. So if we happen to see a crab-eater seal, they are an indicator species for krill populations. They eat krill and krill are an incredibly important part of the Southern Ocean food web. So we watch these indicator species that eat krill to see how they're doing, and that gives us an idea of what might be happening in the rest of the food web. It's just an indication, kind of a glimpse. I'm kind of rambling there, but I think getting funding is tough, no matter what. Though I will say that the two grants that I've gotten through the US federal government, I went through the Office of Polar Programs and if I had pitched those ideas to a different office within the National Science Foundation, they would not of gotten funded, I can almost guarantee that. So, there certainly are different organizations or different spots that might be easier to get an idea funded, even if it's the exact same idea.
Cameron: Does the availability of funding shape, then, the way that you do your research, or the trajectory that you're on?
Michelle: Oh yeah. I mean, if you know the budget can only be a third of what you really need it to be, that is gonna completely change how you approach your idea. It can change it entirely. You may not be able to do what you want to do. You may be able to do just a smaller chunk, which is not necessarily a bad thing but it's mostly not great, because you're forced to be creative, which is fine, but we're creative anyway! [laughter] "But do we really need that?" I mean, I just can't imagine what the world would be like if funding for science and basic research were at the levels where people can actually do these kinds of things and ask the really big tough questions. Instead, we're always focused on, "Okay, how can I cut the budget? How can I fit something in? I had a month of my time on the project and now I can only have two weeks of it. How am I going to make that work? I really wanted to have a student but I can really only take a year of somebody's time. I can't do what I wanted to do. I can't train somebody. Now I have to take a different approach." It really does have an impact on what you're able to do so.
Cameron: So where are you headed now with your research? What are your short-term and medium-term plans?
Michelle: Ohh, so I got a couple of projects, thankfully funded at the moment, so my short-term ideas are to figure out how many Weddell seals there are in the world. That's the first thing. Looking at how many Emperor penguins there are over the course of 10 years, to look at their population trends over 10 years. And then starting to fill in the gaps with crabeater seals. So what I'm trying to do, my kind of overarching broader goal, is to start adding the pieces of the puzzle into what's going on in the Southern Ocean. Where are all these animals living? How many are there? And once you get that laid out, then you can start looking at how do they interact with each other? How are they interacting with the environment? If one population of Emperor penguins goes up, how does its nearby Weddell seal population do? Does it go up or down? How do penguins interact with each other? Those kinds of multi-species interactions, I think, is what I'm going to be interested in next. And then looking at that over time.
Cameron: Okay! So where can people find you on Twitter?
Michelle: I am @drmichellelarue. Very creative. [laughter] Very creative Twitter handle!
Cameron: You thought about that a long time!
Michelle: Yeah, I did, yeah, yeah. I had no idea what I was doing when I got onto Twitter and I saw two people who I very much respect and admire, and they both had "Dr." and then their name, and I was like, "Okay, that sounds great."
Cameron: Any speaking engagements or public presentations coming up that you want people to know about?
Michelle: I do. I will be speaking in May at the University of the Third Age, which is here in Christchurch. I will be at the the National Science Teachers Association in November. And I think I'm probably forgetting a couple of others, so apologies to anyone who I may be forgetting. But those are the ones that are at the forefront of my mind at the moment.
Cameron: You are in demand!
Michelle: I hope so, because I really enjoy it.
Cameron: So I really appreciate you giving us some time to listen to you and to understand your work on this podcast. It's much appreciated.
Michelle: Wonderful. Thank you so much for having me.
Cameron: All right. Bye now!
Resources
Michelle Larue on Twitter
Michelle’s superb photography
Credits
Host: Cameron Graham
Recording engineer: Alan Larsen
Post-production: Bertland Imai
Photos: drmichellelarue.com
Video: Andrew Fletcher
Music: Musicbed
Recorded: March 19, 2019
Location: University of Canterbury
