SLL Living Seawalls Team presents at 2026 Benthic Ecology Meeting

by Daniel Lopez

The Benthic Ecology Meeting took place in March 2026 at Virginia Beach and brought together various marine ecologists across systems ranging from tropical to temperate systems with a focus on the east coast of the United States. The three-day conference was a great opportunity to see the breadth of research in benthic ecology and make great connections!

This year, members of the Stone Living Lab Living Seawalls project team attended the meeting, and Dr. Jarrett Byrnes and I gave a talk about our research. This is the 54th meeting, and each year brings together collaborators and familiar faces, one of which was Dr. Byrnes’ very first PhD student, Dr. Marc Hensel, and his lab from the University of Florida!

Members of the Bynes Lab at UMass Boston with members of Dr. Marc Hensel’s lab at University of Florida.

Each day started off with announcements, followed by a plenary speaker, who blended their journey and philosophy of research into their presentations. The two talks that especially stood out most to me were Dr. Emmet Duffy, who founded the Marine Global Earth Observatory (MarineGEO) and shared how he came into the field of ecology, and Dr. Kristy Kroeker whose research focuses on how we can pursue conservation and implement tactics informed by how climate will change.

PhD Candidate Daniel Lopez presenting at the 2026 Benthic Ecology Meeting.

On the second day, I presented my research on our first year biodiversity assessment of the Living Seawalls in Boston and was met with both positive feedback and conversations. I was also able to make a connection with a researcher at the Natural History Museum of North Carolina who was interested in helping with the identification of encrusting bryozoans (an offer I really couldn’t refuse).

As this was my first ever talk at a conference, personally I found it to be a supportive and motivated community of ecologists, and it gave me not only a platform to share my research, but to be excited about it. We look forward to the 55th Benthics Ecology Meeting, which will be held at UMass Boston in 2027!

Print of the Benthic Ecology Meeting logo from 1986, when it was first hosted at UMass Boston.