Underwater robot can follow marine organisms over record distances: Nature News.

Nature News published my story today! Follow the link above to read it.

I’m obviously excited to publish a story in Nature, it’s been a dream of mine. And the fact that it was my first pitch to them makes it feel even more special.

But the story behind it is interesting too – I came across this story sort of by accident, while talking to researchers at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI) for a Salinas Californian newspaper story about tracking toxic algae.

One of the researchers talked about this new underwater robot, the Tethys, and it seemed really interesting. I thought it might make a good story, but I was sure someone would have written about it before.

To my surprise, no one had…and so I pitched it, Nature accepted, and I spent a few hectic days last week reporting and writing it so that it came out before the news release.

And that’s actually why no one had written about it, I think – I’d somehow stumbled onto breaking news before the news release even came out! That was certainly a pleasant surprise 🙂

What was interesting was that for that brief moment, when it seemed like I had this interesting story idea that no one else was writing about, I felt like I was back in lab again. It reminded of those rare but precious occasions when I’d actually make a new scientific discovery, and I was quite possibly the only person in the world to know about it.

Of course, here a lot of people (scientists, researchers, and the press office) actually knew the information, but at the same time, it wasn’t public knowledge. So hopefully I did my bit in disseminating and explaining what I thought was some really cool science and technology.

Of course, I don’t think I’d have had the confidence to pitch it to Nature without being in my science writing program, and without the edits and comments of one of my instructors, so I’m certainly grateful. Hopefully as I do more pitches and writing, I’ll get better at it.

And I hope to get to write for Nature News again; but for now, I’m going to celebrate my first successful pitch!