Marine Mentor

By Claire Davenport

For Arthur Bos, professor in AUC's Department of Biology, working in water fits into a larger family trend. "My family is all related to water somehow. My grandparents had boats, and my parents met on the water - my dad on a sailing boat and my mom in a canoe," he explains.

Bos was no different. He grew up frequenting a summer home in his home country, the Netherlands, by the water: swimming, sailing and canoeing. Becoming a marine biologist just felt like a natural progression.

Now Bos, who has worked as a marine and fisheries biologist for three decades and taught at AUC for the past 13 years, is working to train the next generation of aspiring biologists. "I want my students to fall in love with the beauty of the planet, just like I did," he says.

Deep Water Discoveries

Before coming to AUC, Bos mostly worked in the South Philippines, "which is a no go for tourists because of political instability," he explains. "But I have my connections and the infrastructure there for research." He worked with the Davao del Norte State College, leading underwater research and observation studies, and it was there that he made one of his most exciting discoveries: the never-before-identified Black-margined goatfish.

"I found the fish at a market," he says. "I'd never seen it before. I checked the literature and couldn't find anything about it." He then reached out to a marine expert he described as a "fish guru" -- the late Jack Randall from the Bishop Museum in Hawaii, who has described over 800 species of Indo-Pacific fish. "He told me, 'Arthur, I've never seen this fish before,'" he relays. "And then I thought, okay, this is something new." He categorized it as a goatfish, counting the number of its dorsal spines, measuring the fish and describing its distinguishing characteristics and habitat. "And this proved that it was a completely new species no one had ever described," he says.

At AUC, Bos also does a lot of work with taxonomy, using resources at the School of Sciences and Engineering to do genetic work on marine animals. He explains how it works: "You break open the cells and get to the DNA molecules within the cell nucleus, and then very specialized machines can read the genetic code of the specific organism." Describing the biodiversity of locations is important because it allows us to properly manage ecosystems. "High biodiversity means stability for natural systems," Bos says.

His taxonomic work has also led Bos to establish collaborations with other international museums like the Field Museum in Chicago, the Bishop Museum in Hawaii and the Naturalis Biodiversity Center in the Netherlands, where he's been an associate researcher since 2007. He is also a curator of the online encyclopedias FishBase and SeaLifeBase, providing them with scientific data and pictures of species that haven't been photographed yet. A big part of his work with these sites is making sure the correct photos match to the correct animals, keeping the online resources organized.

Desert to Sea

When Bos first came to AUC in 2011 after conducting research for years in the Philippines, it was his first time in Cairo. "I always like to say I'm a marine biologist in the desert," he jokes.

More seriously, Bos said the desert is a fascinating place for tracking the evolution of marine life since it's often filled with sea fossils and other relics from centuries past, when its sandy dunes stretched under miles of sea. "The sea is gone, but the seafloor is still there," he says. "And you're living on it."

While he sometimes takes students to Wadi Hitan in Fayoum to study the fossilized whale skeletons in the desert, Bos prefers class trips to the Red Sea, including El Gouna, Hurghada and Ain Sokhna. "There, we study the coral reefs and related marine organisms, as well as visit fish markets and mangrove areas," he explains.

According to Bos, the Red Sea is an inlet ripe for exciting research for students new to the field. Beyond being known to divers for its great visibility and beautiful coral reefs, the Red Sea hosts some of the most unique sea life on the planet. According to a chapter in Oceanographic and Biological Aspects of the Red Sea, the cordoned-off body of water hosts over 1,166 fish species, with 165 specific to the inland sea.

"There are a lot of species only found in the Red Sea because they've experienced isolation periods over millions of years," Bos explained, referencing the sea's special geography. This means that for students interested in exploring the evolution of marine life, it's an exciting seabed of activity.

The Red Sea offers fascinating research opportunities for students with an interest or focus on climate change. While the inlet is experiencing coral bleaching and environmental degradation as a result of the global rise in sea temperatures, Bos explained that because of cooler water in the Northern part of the sea, the biodiversity is also more preserved there than in other parts of the world. "So perhaps the Red Sea could be a sort of refuge for corals," Bos posits.

Waves of Wisdom

Now Bos is passing all of this passion for experimentation and exploration on to his students. For instance, heworked with an AUC master's student to analyze the genome of the comber, a fish found in the northern Red Sea.

This species was previously understood to have come from the Mediterranean in the past 150 years through the Suez Canal. "The first time I saw the comber underwater, I didn't know what it was, then found out it was a Mediterranean fish. And I thought it looked slightly different," he says. Bos and his student did genetic work on the species and discovered that the fish had actually been isolated for at least 200,000 years, meaning it hadn't migrated through the Suez Canal.

Bos describes his students as "highly motivated," especially because his classes, which cover topics like the essentials of environmental biology and marine ecology, tend to be on the smaller side. Bos says this is because marine biology is a less popular degree at AUC than other fields of study like engineering -- something he is working to change.

Bos encourages student interest in biology whenever he can. He describes one student who had been so passionate about the field that after speaking with Bos, he switched majors, became president of the Biology Association at AUC and later fundraised to continue his studies abroad.

He finds working with students like this especially rewarding. "I really like the combination of teaching and research," he says. "You see these young people coming in as teenagers, and when they leave AUC, they're young adults with a goal."

On top of his work as a researcher, professor and mentor, Bos is also a musician. His Spotify account, where he posts a mix of his rock, electronic and pop music under the moniker "Dorian Whisper," now has as many as 60,000 monthly streams. Like everything else Bos is passionate about, his interest in music began at a young age. He started playing piano at age 8 and guitar when he was 12. "Music, like water, has always been with me," he says.