Westerville North graduate Melissa Rohal spends a lot of time at sea, collecting samples for her studies.
Benthis Macrofauna are all the rage in the deep ocean. Small animals like worms, copepods and nematodes fill a key role in the food web and act as indicator species of the health of the ecosystem. Westerville North High School graduate Melissa Rohal, a Ph.D. student at Texas A&M - Corpus Christi, is working to understand the impacts of oil spills on deep-sea ecosystem services provided by meio- and macro-faunal communities. Her research efforts and ability to “stick up for the little guys” earned her Student of the Month status at her school recently.
Rohal grew up in Westerville, first attending Wilder Elementary, and then Blendon Middle School. She graduated from Westerville North in 2001. Since then, her studies have taken her all over the world.
According to an article posted by Benjamin Prueitt, Rohal entered the Marine Science Program at Coastal Carolina University, where she completed an internship at the Ripley’s aquarium and helped her professors with research. Unable to get into graduate school right away, she returned to Ohio for a while where she took a job at the Columbus Zoo helping the keepers in the Shores area.
Shortly thereafter, she got a job as a marine mammal observer aboard seismic vessels in the Gulf of Mexico. She was eventually accepted for graduate school at Florida State University, where she earned a Master’s degree under the tutelage of Dr. David Thistle, who inspired her to remain in the field of benthic ecology with a focus on meiofauna. Rohal then joined Dr. Paul Montagna at the Harte Research Institute for Gulf of Mexico Studies at Texas A&M University – Corpus Christi, where she is currently working on her Ph.D.
Rohal recently returned from a Cuba cruise, where she spent time collecting benthic animals. In addition, she continues to work on sorting and identifying meiofauna collected at the sight of the IXTOC and Deepwater Horizon oil spills. She is also collaborating with researchers in the Netherlands on identifying meiofauna from their exposure experiments.
During her time at the Harte Research Institute, Rohal got to attend the international meiofauna conference twice – first in South Korea, and then in Crete. She said it was “an amazing and eye-opening experience to be able to meet and talk with experts and students from around the world who shared the same interest.” She has continued to keep in touch with many of them, which has led to a number of international partnerships.
Rohal was also part of the East Asian and Pacific Summer Institute, sponsored by the National Science Foundation. Through this program, she was able to spend two months working with Dr. Wonchel Lee in Seoul, South Korea, an opportunity that allowed her to improve her understanding of meiofauna.
“We know so little about the deep sea,” says Rohal. “There is still so much to discover and understand.”