Wesley Huffman is an instructor in Marine Science at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy (USCGA). He earned a B.S. in Marine Sciences, with a minor in Geographic Information Systems, and an M.S. in Oceanography from the University of Connecticut, where he is pursuing a Ph.D. in Oceanography. He also holds a graduate certificate in Geographic Information Systems. His research interests span aquatic biodiversity, contaminant biogeochemistry, and marine food-web ecology. At USCGA, his current research uses environmental DNA (eDNA) to characterize aquatic biodiversity in the Thames River in Connecticut. His doctoral research focuses on mercury biogeochemistry, particularly how local environmental conditions and seasonal changes in zooplankton communities influence methylmercury bioaccumulation and trophic transfer to planktivorous fish. His fieldwork has included Long Island Sound, river and salt-marsh sites affected by mercury contamination, and the southeastern Bering Sea. He combines field observations with trace-mercury analysis, laboratory experiments, geospatial tools, and data analysis in R, Python, and ArcGIS.

Education

• Ph.D., Oceanography, University of Connecticut – in progress
• M.S., Oceanography, University of Connecticut, 2022
• Graduate Certificate, Geographic Information Systems, University of Connecticut, 2022
• B.S., Marine Sciences, minor in Geographic Information Systems, University of Connecticut, 2017

Courses Taught

• Data Exploration and Visualization
• Fisheries Biology
• Geographic Information Systems I
• Oceanography
• eDNA Capstone Research

Selected Publications and Presentations

• He, Y., Shi, X., Huffman, W.W., Lamborg, C.H., and Mason, R.P. (2022). Description of a Dimethylmercury Automatic Analyzer for the High-Resolution Measurement of Dissolved Gaseous Mercury Species in Surface Ocean Waters. Environmental Science & Technology, 56(18), 13076-13084. https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.est.2c02908
• Huffman, W.W., Dam, H.G., Mason, R.P., and Baumann, Z. (2020). Formalin-Preserved Zooplankton Are Not Reliable for Historical Reconstructions of Methylmercury Bioaccumulation. Science of the Total Environment, 738, 139803. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2020.139803

Honors and Awards

• UConn Doctoral Travel Award, 2022
• UConn Marine Sciences Travel Award, 2018
• UConn Marine Sciences Predoctoral Fellowship, 2018
• International Conference on Mercury as a Global Pollutant Travel Award, 2017

Professional Affiliations

• The Marine Biological Association
• Association for the Sciences of Limnology and Oceanography
• American Geophysical Union
• Long Island Sound Ocean Cluster