NOAA Teacher at Sea
Hayden Roberts
(In advance) Aboard NOAA Ship Oregon II
July 8-19, 2019
Mission: Leg III of SEAMAP Summer Groundfish Survey
Geographic Area of Cruise: Gulf of Mexico
Date: July 2, 2019
Introduction
“There are many good fishermen and some great ones. But there is only one you.”
–Ernest Hemingway (Old Man and the Sea)
As I sit at my home computer, my mind is racing with thoughts of what I need to do before leaving for Mississippi. My family doesn’t quite know what I am doing aboard NOAA Ship Oregon II, not that I am sure either! They vacillate between images of cramped, hot quarters portrayed in old World War II movies like Das Boot (1981), which is about a German submarine crew. In contrast to the sailors traversing icy, choppy waters as in the reality TV show Deadliest Catch, which is about King Crab fishermen in Alaska’s Bering Sea. I am not sure my time aboard Oregon II will be either, but perhaps they will think me braver if I leave that picture in their minds ahead of my trip [wink, wink].
However, before I talk about my trip, I should take a step back and talk about where I came. I am from Oklahoma, one of the most landlocked areas of North America. I grew up in Oklahoma (both Tulsa and Oklahoma City), but have had many other experiences since then. I have been teaching at the collegiate level for 15 years. I mostly instruct high school students taking concurrent enrollment classes and community college students working on undergraduate general education requirements. I teach regional geography, folklife and traditional culture, and introduction to the humanities at Oklahoma State University—Oklahoma City (OSU-OKC) and Oklahoma City Community College. I am lead faculty in geography at OSU-OKC.
I earned my BA from Sarah Lawrence College in New York (1994). I studied visual arts, primarily painting and filmmaking, and cultural studies. I earned my MA in Folk Studies from Western Kentucky University, Bowling Green (1998), and I earned my PhD in Geography from the University of Oklahoma, Norman (2015). Through my education and early adult life, I lived coast to coast in seven different states. This education prepared me to work in the field of public history, historic interpretation, community development, and arts administration in addition to teaching at the collegiate level. Before teaching, I worked in Washington, DC for Ralph Nader (yes, the clean water, clean air, clean everything guy…oh, and he ran for president). I worked for several historic sites and cultural agencies, including Mammoth Cave National Park, Kentucky Museum, Historic Carnton, and the Tennessee Arts Commission. I have also worked in education administration. I served as the director the Oklahoma Center for Arts Education for the University of Central Oklahoma, as executive director of the Oklahoma Folklife Council for the Oklahoma Historical Society, and recently, as Director of Community Resources for Western Heights Public Schools. At Western Heights, I have been fortunate to work close to a younger group of students. I have been a part of the expanding arts and science curriculum at the high school. The school district is in the process of renovating the high school science wing and building a new arts and science high school building for an emerging STEAM program. STEAM stands for science, technology, engineering, arts, and math instruction. Working with community partners, I am also involved in promoting college and career readiness at the secondary level.
My research interests include the cultural geography of Oklahoma, family stories and cultural expressions, and community building. However, through my research in folk studies (similar to anthropology) and cultural geography, I have studied human interconnectivity associated with occupations, which is what initially drew my interest to the NOAA Teacher at Sea (TAS) program. In the past, I have studied occupations associated with rural culture and how environment and increased urbanization have effected work settings and their relationship to identity. My research interest aside, I am excited to learn more about the science of fishery surveys. I think learning about the maritime career opportunities associated with NOAA programs will be important to convey to the students I teach. Especially because so many of my students come from economically challenged, urban settings, and the thought of pursuing a career based on scientific research is foreign. As a geographer, I am also excited to share with students ways they can connect to geography as an influence on their career plans.
Mission Information
I will be part of the third leg of the Southeast Area Monitoring and Assessment Program (SEAMAP) sailing out of the NOAA Pascagoula, MS facility. SEAMAP is a State/Federal/university program for collecting, managing, and disseminating fishery-independent data in the southeastern US. The Gulf of Mexico survey work began in 1981. I have read blogs and videos from NOAA TAS alum that have been part of the similar research cruises, and I have reviewed the NOAA website under the SEAMAP pages and NOAA Oregon II pages. TAS alumni Angela Hung from the 2018 SEAMAP survey crew posted a great blog on roughly what Oregon II crew will be doing while I am sailing (see https://noaateacheratsea.blog/2018/07/03/angela-hung-dont-give-it-a-knife-june-30-2018/). However, I am still working to understand exactly what I will be doing. Coastal culture and scientific research of this nature is new to me. The closest experience I have goes back to my childhood when in the 1980s my mom built a catfish hatchery and commercial pond operation on 10 acres of farmland in southeastern Oklahoma. The “catfish farm” as we called was only in our family for a few years. The next closest experience I have to coastal fisheries is chartering boats for near shore and deep sea fishing adventures on vacation. Clearly, I am in for a lesson on the broader science of understanding and maintaining the ecology of our domestic waterways in the US. This will be an interesting trip, for sure!
