Catie Caterham Studies Sedimentology in the Bahamas and Italy

Catie Caterham Studies Sedimentology in the Bahamas and Italy

Most of Catie Caterham’s friends and family assume that she decided to pursue a graduate degree in geology because of her passion for the subject.

“While that is true, I am certainly not going to argue about the free vacations,” said Caterham. “Carbonate rock, in particular, leads to some of the world’s most beautiful destinations—pink sand beaches, snorkeling—all in the name of science of course!”

This summer she had the privilege of traveling to two idyllic locations: San Salvador Island, Bahamas, and Sardinia, Italy. Caterham’s advisor, Professor Linda Kah, found an opportunity to send their lab group to the Gerace Research Center for a one-week course run by AIPG and the University of Kentucky.

“San Salvador Island is a dream destination for a carbonate sedimentologist,” said Caterham. “The island is surrounded by modern reefs and pink sand beaches while the island interior is comprised of a series of inland lakes, and outcrops of older beach and reef facies. As an avid SCUBA diver, I was quite partial to the daily snorkeling. However, nothing will quite top the experience of observing the modern stromatolites of Storrs Lake with my own eyes—and squishing them with my own feet! The amount of extracellular polymeric substances (microbial mucus) was amazing.”

Her second field trip of the summer was to Iglesias, a mining town in southwestern Sardinia, Italy. This trip was less vacation and more work, as she was there to collect samples from the Cambrian-aged calcimicrobial and archaeocyathid reef complexes to search for herringbone carbonate.