Hi, this is Lawrence Bernardo, postdoctoral researcher in Nakamura Lab. On Tuesday last week (May 28), Nakamura-sensei and I participated in the Japan Geoscience Union (JpGU) 2019 Conference held at Makuhari Messe, Chiba Prefecture. I presented a poster about my ongoing work on simulating the passage of typhoons in the Yaeyama Islands, where Sekisei Lagoon, Japan’s largest coral reef area, is located. As for Nakamura-sensei, he gave an oral presentation on modeling the coral bleaching phenomenon at the coral polyp-scale and its upscaling to the reef scale.
Our presentations were part of the session A-CG44 (Coastal Ecosystems 2 Coral reefs, seagrass and macroalgal beds, and mangrove), which was held jointly with session A-CG40 (Coastal Ecosystems – 1. Water Cycle and Land-Ocean Interactions). It was a good chance to learn more about research efforts within the same general study area as ours being conducted in different universities and research institutions all over Japan and even abroad. We were also happy to receive feedback, suggestions, and other comments regarding our work from other participants.
For me personally, the event was particularly memorable for the chance to meet and catch up with researchers and former labmates whom I have not seen in a long time, as well as make some new friends from other universities and institutions. We also had a wonderful dinner party at an izakaya close to the conference venue with participants and presenters of our joint sessions to celebrate the culmination of our hard work and preparations for the conference. I wished there had been more time to drink and chat, but the time was fixed and some of us needed to catch our last trains back home.
I’d also like to give special mention and thanks to Dr. Atsushi Watanabe and Yuriko (Abe) Hagiwara, who were with me for a long time in Nadaoka Lab which I was part of for more than five years. And also to Jay Mar Quevedo, a PhD student at Tohoku University, who I knew even before coming to Japan, when I was working at the Marine Science Institute, UP-Diliman, and who coincidentally presented the poster right next to mine.
We are grateful to the organizers and session conveners for this opportunity to present some of our lab’s research activities. And I hope that this experience at the JpGU 2019 may lead to continuing friendships as well as future research collaborations. 🙂
~ Lawrence P. C. Bernardo