From April 20th to 24th, the 4D-REEF consortium met for the first time in Carboneras, Spain on Zoom. On the first day, everyone gave a 2 minute introduction to who we are through a single PowerPoint slide; how we structured the slide served to introduce how we think as well. For example, Max is really fond of precise timing!
Over the next two days, everyone gave presentations on their research topics. Chantal and Elsa make Google documents and spreadsheets listing what sorts of data each project expects to generate and what data from other projects would benefit it. This is helping us form collaborations and plan field work.
On the final day we discussed plans for fieldwork in the morning and heard an informative introduction to carbonate producers by Gary Murphy. The day wrapped up with a virtual happy hour at 1:30PM-10:30PM depending on which time zone the participant was in. By then we believed ourselves masters of Zoom and attempted to break the lonely isolation by gathering in Max’s study with mixed results. (Fig. 1; Fig 2).
Figure 1: First attempt to gather in the same room. Maintaining 1.5 meter distance was not possible so the idea was dropped.
Figure 2: Members of 4D-REEF attempt to gather in the same place despite travel restrictions. Daniel and Mariya were not permanently harmed; no official statement has been issued on Roberto at this time.
Written by ESR: William Harrison
MSc in Geosciences: Palaeobiology
Naturalis Biodiversity Center, Netherlands
