Judith Weis

[3] In addition to teaching, she has conducted research on the threats faced by organisms in shallow coastal estuary environments, such as contamination from pollution, especially heavy metals, and invasive species.

[3][5] In the 1970s, Weis and her children starred in a Tang orange drink commercial because General Foods was promoting the product with ads featuring female scientists with cute kids.

[3] She also serves on the Waterfront Management Advisory Board of New York City and the National Marine Team of the Sierra Club and Plastic Free Waters Partnership.

[2][6] Weis has served as president of the American Institute of Biological Sciences and volunteered with the Ecological Society of America, among other scientific bodies, and worked on the Intergovernmental Panel on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services and other United Nations (UN) reports.

[2] Weis enjoys choral singing and performing in musical theatre and comic opera, including at the International Gilbert and Sullivan Festival.

In contrast, mummichogs from a polluted estuary, Piles Creek, in Linden, New Jersey, produced embryos that were practically all normal after being exposed to the same amount of methylmercury, showing that they were tolerant to the chemical.

[15] Later in the 1980s and 1990s, Weis and her team observed that adult mummichogs in the polluted estuary were slow to capture prey (grass shrimp) and were easier to catch by a predator (blue crabs).

[19][20] Juvenile bluefish ("snappers") there exhibit slower swimming speed and reduced prey capture, and grow more slowly than their counterparts in a clean environment.

[19][5] Weis and her field research team documented, over the decades, the unhealthy effects of pollutants on the coastal species in Piles Creek and the Meadowlands, as compared with similar animals in the cleaner waters of Tuckerton, New Jersey.

She concluded that, while the Clean Water Act has helped improve the quality of the environment in industrial areas in northern New Jersey, stronger regulation is needed.

It found that most coastal marshes, which protect local communities from flooding and storm surge, are not elevating[25] as rapidly as the sea level is rising and are also losing acreage.