Marine BiOLogy > Meet the OLogist: Melanie Stiassny

MELANIE STIASSNY: My name is Melanie Stiassny, and I'm Curator of Fishes here at the American Museum. I'm an Ichthyologist, and an ichthyologist is a biologist who studies fishes. My research takes me all over the place, but basically, I'm very interested in trying to find out how many fish species there are on the planet today. So that means I have to get in water a lot, and I have to go all over the world, and I have to hunt for fishes. And that's really what I do. 

MELANIE STIASSNY: What I enjoy most about my work as a scientist is having fun. And a lot of kids don't realize it, but science is really fun. And I have fun every day of my life.

I've never come to work and said oh, my goodness, I've got to go to work. I love it. It's fun. It's exciting. It's exploring. It's discovering things. It's really cool.

Some of the most fun things that I do it's actually when I go to different parts of the world and I get in the water and I start fishing. I start talking to the local people about what fish they know and what they find. And then discovering a species that I've never seen before, that's so cool. It's like Christmas every time. You just pull in the net, and you look what's there, and it's brilliant.

MELANIE STIASSNY: What's my favorite place or object at the museum? That's really hard. This is such a cool place, and there are so many wonderful things to see. But I've got two favorite things.

One has to be the Hall of Ocean Life. The Hall of Ocean Life is magnificent, and it's full of fish, and it's really cool. And every time you go there you find something new, so that's great.

But there's another place in the museum that I really love, and it's kind of tucked away. If you go into the Hall of North American Mammals, as you enter the hall, just turn to your left and you'll see a tiny, small, little diorama. And that diorama represents what North America looked like about 15,000 years ago.

And it's amazing because you look there and you see lions, and camels, and elephants. It's just like you're in the plains of the Serengeti, but it's not. That was North America 15,000 years ago. So it kind of always makes me think, wow, everything's changing. And it's really cool to learn about that and to understand that.

MELANIE STIASSNY: How did I figure out what I wanted to be when I [? grew ?] up?

When I was a kid, I wanted to be a veterinarian. I loved animals and I still do. But as I got [? learned ?] more and went to school and started thinking about what am I going to do, I got really interested in evolution. The idea that things do change, things haven't always been like this.

Why are there so many beetles on the planet? Why are there so many fish on the planet? You could imagine a world where there's only five species of fish, but there's over 25,000 species of fish.

So I got really interested in evolution and that led me into biology. So that was kind of my entry point, it was loving animals and then, asking questions about why the world is the way it is.

MELANIE STIASSNY: If I wasn't a scientists, what would I be? Hm. Well, I'd like to be a movie star, but I don't think that's going to happen. I've always wanted to be a barmaid and an opera singer. I think I would have been a really good opera singer. 

MELANIE STIASSNY: My advice to any kid that's interested in pursuing a career in science is just do it. I mean, just follow your heart. If something interests you, that's what you do. When I was a kid, and as I was always getting into-- growing up and going to college and stuff, everyone said to me, you know, you're doing this, but you're never going to get a job. But I said, you know what? Well, I care. I wanted to have a job.

But I just wanted to do what I wanted to do. I wanted to follow my heart, and that's what I did. And it worked out great for me and for all of my friends and colleagues, it's the same story. If you do what you love, then that's the way to have a good life.

MELANIE STIASSNY: My advice to kids that think that science is boring or irrelevant-- ooh, I think they should wake up and smell the coffee. Science is not boring, it's fantastic, and it's incredibly relevant It's the most important set of knowledge and techniques we have about understanding the world. It's great.

MELANIE STIASSNY: What are my favorite kids books, past or present? "Charlotte's Web," how about that, "Charlotte's Web." Fantastic, love it. 

MELANIE STIASSNY: Ooh, what's my favorite flavor of ice cream? That's really hard. That's like saying what's my favorite place in the museum. There are so many. I have to say Cookie Dough. Love it. And when I'm feeling more sophisticated, Green Tea. Love Green Tea ice cream. 

MELANIE STIASSNY: We're here, welcome to [? Barulu. ?] To me, one of the most beautiful places in the world. And our welcoming party is already gathering on the beach where we're going to be camping. So we're getting to [? Barulu ?] at long last. Here we are.

So we've arrived [? in Barulu. ?] It's taken a while, but it was so worth it. This is the most beautiful place on earth, I think.

We're on the beach. We're setting up camp. I've selected a really nice spot for my tent so I want to show you what, to me, is an excellent campsite.

So I'm nestled a little bit away from the others, which I always like, a bit of privacy. I'm on a very flat surface. Got rocks all around me. I feel very safe and protected. And it's very beautiful.

So here is a quick panorama of where I'm going to be spending the next week or so. Here it is. Here's my tent. It's kind of small, but it's home. So that's it, that's home for a week. Over and out.

MELANIE STIASSNY: Hi. It's Thursday morning, wonderful morning. We were woken up this morning by the villagers of the local-- we were woken up by the Bulu villagers who came to us with 13 specimens of the blind fish of Bulu so we're pretty psyched.

And here they are. They don't look much, but they are terrific for us to have scientifically. Here they are.

So the villagers, we gave the villagers last year, some containers and they've been collecting mondele, that's what they call this fish here, mondele bureau. It's very strange. Mondele is actually the term in Congo that they use for white people, it just means white. And bureau is French for office so for some reason they call this fish the white man's office. Go figure.

So we have 13 specimens of mondele bureau now from the villagers. They preserved them in alcohol, and we're now going to take tissues from them.

From these tissues, we'll be able to extract DNA and that's really the goal of this part of our project. It's really to understand the genetics, particularly the population genetics, of this very, very strange, blind, cichlid fish that seems to be living just in some very deep canyons that are in this region.

So one of the very interesting things that we learned this morning when we were talking to the villagers, is that actually, they're finding these fishes, they find them dead on the surface. They're finding them just in a couple of places so they're not everywhere. They're just in a couple of places.

And this afternoon, they're going to take us to the places where they find the dead mondele bureau. And that's really going to be very interesting because my colleagues, Ned and John, who are hydrologists, they have been taking measurements in the region. And they found two places where the canyon is very deep, it's over 400 feet deep. That's unheard of in a river, that's incredibly deep.

So that is very, probably, where the mondele bureau are living. So now the hunt is really on and we are looking for the home of the legendary mondele bureau at Bulu.

MELANIE STIASSNY: Incredible day yesterday. Ned and John were able to sample around the limestone cliff where we've heard from the local people that there are deep, deep caves and [? grottoes. ?] And they got some incredible data that really seems to confirm our idea that that really is the home of the white fish.

So absolutely spectacular. Cannot wait till we get back to the museum and can really start analyzing all of the population data we're getting and tie that in with the hydrology that Ned and John are getting. So really, really terrific. And another day in paradise.

MELANIE STIASSNY: A beautiful moment for me some time for reflection and a bit of relaxation. We just finished collecting on one side of the canyon. We got a bunch of individuals of a couple of species, which is exactly what we want because we're going to do the same on the other side of the canyon. And then we'll have a good series to compare the genes, basically, to see whether these two populations on either side of the river are in communication or not.

So it's kind of nice. I've finished doing all the sorting. It's very meticulous, one could say tedious work, but it's done. And now I'm just waiting for the crew to come back and ferry me across to the other side so we can start sorting specimens.

MELANIE STIASSNY: OK. So here we are by the shore of this very small tributary of the Luozi River. But we've made some really nice new friends, and they're going to say hello. So here they are.

[INTERPOSING VOICES]

MELANIE STIASSNY: [NON-ENGLISH]

GROUP: [NON-ENGLISH]

MELANIE STIASSNY: [INAUDIBLE]