Nice, France Meeting Highlights Future of Marine Discovery, Co-led by Dr. Ames
Earlier this month, Dr. Cheryl Ames participated in a highly productive and collaborative meeting in Nice, France, from June 6-8, 2025. This important gathering provided a crucial platform for engaging with international colleagues and advancing the strategic planning for the groundbreaking Ocean Shot Research Grant.
As a Unit Leader at WPI-AIMEC and a co-leader of the selected Ocean Shot project, Dr. Ames was a key figure in the discussions. The project, officially titled “Discovery in the largest frontier: advanced imaging and genomics of open ocean animals,” recently secured $2.75 million USD for a three-year research period, set to begin in 2025. This significant funding was awarded by the Sasakawa Peace Foundation’s Ocean Policy Research Institute under its Ocean Shot Research Grant program.
“This is an exciting opportunity to bring marine science researchers together from around the globe to explore the ocean using innovative genomics and imaging approaches. I look forward to seeing all the new species we will discover!”
— Dr. Cheryl Ames
For comprehensive details on the Ocean Shot Research Grant, its team, and scientific objectives, please visit the original announcement on the WPI-AIMEC news page: https://wpi-aimec.jp/en/news/2207/]
Prof. Cheryl Ames’s international research project has been selected for “OceanShot” research grant program
In February 2025, the proposal entitled “Discoveries at the Greatest Frontiers:
Advanced Imaging and Genomics of Pelagic Animals,” submitted by WPI-AIMEC Unit
Leader Prof. Cheryl Ames (Graduate School of Agricultural Science, Tohoku University)
with Ocean Shot team leader Jan Hemmi University of Western Australia, together with
Karen Osborn of the University of Western Australia and Smithsonian National
Museum of Natural History, and Kakani Katija of Monterey Bay Aquarium Research
Institute, was selected for the Ocean Shot research grant program by the Sasakawa
Peace Foundation’s Ocean Policy Research Institute.
Ocean Shot was established to provide large-scale support for the discovery of marine
species and the development of new technologies that drive these discoveries.
Through this selection, the team will receive 2.75 million USD for their proposed 3-year
research project starting in 2025.
This research project focuses on the midwater zone, located between the ocean
surface and the deep sea. Despite being estimated to harbor over 90% of Earth’s
biodiversity, this light-limited region is one of the least explored ecosystems due to its
inaccessibility. By employing imaging, genomics, eDNA, and AI technologies in
dedicated research cruises, the project aims to develop a comprehensive database of
marine organisms. Through collecting, curating, compiling and disseminating multiple
data types, the project aspires to bring to light the scale of midwater biodiversity,
evolutionary processes, and environmental changes on a global scale.
Creating Sustainable Coastal Ecosystems and Fisheries in Northeast Japan
Our team at Tohoku University, led by Associate Professor Alyne Delaney, just launched SEAQUEST – a vital research project tackling the complex challenges facing fisheries in Japan’s Tohoku region since the 2011 earthquake.
We’re blending cutting-edge science, like eDNA and AI for species distribution modeling, with traditional socio-ecological concepts like satoumi and umigyo. This holistic approach helps us understand why some fisheries have declined while others increased, especially with changing ocean conditions and parasitic outbreaks.
SEAQUEST emphasizes community-based citizen science, collecting crucial data from simple water samples. We’re working closely with diverse local and international stakeholders, including fishing communities (even women fishers!), tourism, and industry partners.
Our goal? To combine local ecological knowledge with scientific methods to foster true social and environmental sustainability. Co-Principal Investigators Professor Cheryl Ames and Associate Professor Toyonobu Fujii are key to this interdisciplinary effort.
Preserving biodiversity: A Nobel Prize Dialogue Tokyo 2022 panel discussion – Water Matters
National Science Foundation Funds Tohoku University-led Seafood Traceability Network
With octopus, squid, and cuttlefish catches soaring but misidentification and inaccurate reporting raising overfishing fears, our international, multidisciplinary team is stepping in. Led by Tohoku University’s own Cheryl Ames (Co-Principal Investigator and Smithsonian Research Collaborator) and Demian Willette from Loyola Marymount University, our 15-member team spans 7 countries and diverse fields, including fisheries management, marine biology, and AI. Associate Professor Alyne Delaney (Tohoku University) is also on board!
Funded by the National Science Foundation, we’re building an application to track and identify octopus from ocean to table. This project uniquely combines traditional methods with cutting-edge tech: genomics, molecular metabarcoding, eDNA, and AI. Fishers in Mexico, California, and Alaska will be key citizen scientists, using eDNA kits to help us map octopus distribution and seasonality.
“Reliable knowledge will point us to where edible octopuses are found, and policymakers can use this information to make octopus fishing sustainable,” says Ames. We’re confident this network will pave the way for ecosystem-based fisheries and contribute to a thriving blue economy.
Raising Awareness of the Severity of “Contactless Stings” by Cassiopea Jellyfish and Kin
Current doctrine on jellyfish stings largely focuses on physical contact with a jellyfish. In rhizostome medusae capable of extruding agglomerations of nematocysts within mucus, physical contact is not necessary for skin irritation and pain. Here we highlight pain and symptoms reported by researchers and aquarists working with water around Cassiopea and several other jellyfish. We conclude that Cassiopea, long thought to be harmless, can lead to multi-day pain and rashes experienced largely as burning and itching sensations along entire limbs. We suggest that recommendations on sting avoidance expand to include consideration of these contactless stings so as to limit a previously under-publicized vector of envenomation.
Live Jellyfish Make a Splash in Marine Education
The Smithsonian Magazine that takes you behind the scenes at the National Museum of Natural History! The piece shines a spotlight on the museum’s unique “AquaRoom” a dedicated facility where live jellyfish and other marine invertebrates are raised and studied.
The AquaRoom, co-founded by marine biologists Allen Collins and Dr. Cheryl Ames, had humble beginnings but a grand vision. As Allen Collins recounts,
“So, Cheryl and I started collecting freebie aquarium stuff that people were getting rid of in the department, including a 55-gallon tank.”
From these dedicated efforts, the facility grew to cultivate various jellyfish species and became instrumental in educational outreach, offering tours, bringing live jellyfish to the museum floor, and continuing its mission through virtual webinars and collaborations, even sending jellyfish polyps for student experiments.
Who’s in this Ocean? Tracking Down Species on the Go Using Environmental DNA
The article details the development of a novel method for tracking marine species: the portable eDNA sequencing kit (FeDS), spearheaded by Dr. Cheryl Lewis Ames’s team from Tohoku University. The article explains how the FeDS kit makes the complex process of environmental DNA identification — from water sample collection to species identification — entirely portable and capable of being conducted on-site without an internet connection, thanks to the Nanopore MinION device.
The effectiveness of the FeDS kit was successfully tested in the Florida Keys, where the team not only detected the upside-down jellyfish (Cassiopea) but also identified a remarkable 53 jellyfish species, including two venomous box jellyfish species previously unreported in the area. Dr. Ames envisions incredible practical applications for this technology, such as predicting jellyfish sting risks, much like a ‘weather forecast app’ for swimmers!
This innovative research was published in the esteemed Frontiers in Marine Science journal, underscoring its solid impact and global relevance.
And to access the original scientific paper that underpins this research, click here:
The role of taxonomic expertise in interpretation of metabarcoding studies
The performance of DNA metabarcoding approaches for characterizing biodiversity can be influenced by multiple factors. Here, we used morphological assessment of taxa in zooplankton samples to develop a large barcode database and to assess the congruence of taxonomic identification with metabarcoding under different conditions. We analysed taxonomic assignment of metabarcoded samples using two genetic markers (COI, 18S V1–2), two types of clustering into molecular operational taxonomic units (OTUs, ZOTUs), and three methods for taxonomic assignment (RDP Classifier, BLASTn to GenBank, BLASTn to a local barcode database). The local database includes 1042 COI and 1108 18S (SSU) barcode sequences, and we added new high-quality sequences to GenBank for both markers, including 109 contributions at the species level. The number of phyla detected and the number of taxa identified to phylum varied between a genetic marker and among the three methods used for taxonomic assignments. Blasting the metabarcodes to the local database generated multiple unique contributions to identify OTUs and ZOTUs. We argue that a multi-marker approach combined with taxonomic expertise to develop a curated, vouchered, local barcode database increases taxon detection with metabarcoding, and its potential as a tool for zooplankton biodiversity surveys.