My Life at CSUMB: Learning life lessons from corals

By Mark Muckenfuss

Studying the cauliflower corals in the Galapagos Islands taught Ava Besecker about resilience, not only that of the corals, but her own as well. 

The Cal State Monterey Bay Master of Marine Science student faced some formidable challenges when she arrived on campus three years ago. She struggled to find housing. She had her car broken into. And she found out she needed to apply for funding to pay for her research position, while working as both a teaching assistant and a student assistant in the Moss Landing Marine Labs Library. 

Being 3,000 miles from home made it feel worse, she recalls. But she quickly found her bearings thanks, in large part, to the people she encountered.

“CSUMB talks about finding your raft,” Besecker said, referring to Otter Raft, an oft-used campus metaphor for communal support. “The thing that got me through that one semester was leaning on my community. That’s why I stayed, and what I love so much is the community that I gained from being here.”

Besecker earned her bachelor’s in marine science at North Carolina State University, a school of 35,000 students. She spent her senior year working in a molecular biology lab, while looking for a graduate program. 

“The research is what brought me here,” she said. 

She’d been interested in studying corals since seeing the documentary “Chasing Coral,” which looked at bleaching events on the Great Barrier Reef. A professor at NC State put her in touch with CSUMB’s Cheryl Logan, and the two hit it off. Logan had an opening in her research lab, and Besecker applied. She’s been studying coral resilience ever since.

“Our goal is to identify what, specifically, genetic-wise, those corals are and how we can outplant them in the future,” she said. “I’ve found there is one subspecies that is more thermally tolerant.”

Coral bleaching is largely driven by rising sea temperatures. Besecker also discovered that a second species being studied was fast-growing. She expects that outplanting a combination of thermally tolerant and fast-growing corals may result in a population that is more resistant to bleaching and one that will repopulate the reef more quickly after a die-off. She and other researchers, part of the organization Galapagos Reef Revival, are currently outplanting the two species side by side on the reef in the Galapagos. 

When she wasn’t engaged with corals, Besecker engaged with other aspects of the university. She was president of the student body at Moss Landing and led tours of the lab there. She was a member of the CSUMB Graduate School Council. She also taught an intro to chemistry course, as well as oceanography and marine biodiversity. Working with students, she said, was a pleasure. 

“I enjoy mentoring and helping students figure out what their goals are,” she said. “My ultimate goal is to be a professor.”  

Her next step toward that goal will be starting a PhD program in ecology at San Diego State this fall. She expects she will be able to continue studying coral genomics, this time in the Caribbean. Not only has she learned a great deal about corals, but she’s also learned from them, she said. 

“I feel like, with my corals, resilience is the most important thing I’ve learned,” she said. “I’ve struggled financially. I’ve struggled in my classes. I feel like I’ve learned resilience in getting through those hard times.”

In addition, she said, she’s become a better scientist. And she’s not sure she could have done as much elsewhere. 

“I feel like I’ve learned so much and enhanced my skills, more so than in another master's program,” Besecker said. “The challenges I faced at CSUMB pushed me to grow, and the community I found here gave me the support that helped me succeed.”