2013 – Page 5 – NOAA Teacher at Sea Blog

September 16, 2013August 20, 2021

Britta Culbertson: The Beat of the Bongo (Part 2) – Catching Zooplankton, September 12, 2013

NOAA Teacher at Sea
Britta Culbertson
Aboard NOAA Ship Oscar Dyson
September 4-19, 2013

Mission: Juvenile Walley Pollock and Forage Fish Survey
Geographical Area of Cruise: Gulf of Alaska
Date: Wednesday, September 12th, 2013

Weather Data from the Bridge (for Sept 12^th, 2013 at 9:57 PM UTC):
Wind Speed: 23.05 kts
Air Temperature: 11.10 degrees C
Relative Humidity: 93%
Barometric Pressure: 1012.30 mb
Latitude: 58.73 N Longitude: 151.13 W

Science and Technology Log

We have been seeing a lot of humpback whales lately on the cruise. Humpback whales can weigh anywhere from 25-40 tons, are up to 60 feet in length, and consume tiny crustaceans, plankton, and small fish. They can consume up to 3,000 pounds of these tiny creatures per day (Source: NOAA Fisheries). Humpback whales are filter feeders and they filter these small organisms through baleen. Baleen is made out of hard, flexible material and is rooted in the whale’s upper jaw. The baleen is like a comb and allows the whale to filter plankton and small fish out of the water.

Baleen — This whale baleen is used for filter feeding. It’s like a small comb and helps to filter zooplankton out of the water. (Photo credit: NOAA)

I’ve always wondered how whales can eat that much plankton! Three thousand pounds is a lot of plankton. I guess I felt that way because I had never seen plankton in real-life and I didn’t have a concept of how abundant plankton is in the ocean. Now that I’m exposed to zooplankton every day, I’m beginning to get a sense of the diversity and abundance of zooplantkon.

In my last blog entry I explained how we use the bongo nets to capture zooplankton. In this entry, I’ll describe some of the species that we find when clean out the codends of the net. As you will see, there are a wide variety of zooplankton and though the actual abundance of zooplankton will not be measured until later, it is interesting to see how much we capture with nets that have 20 cm and 60 cm mouths and are towed for only 5-10 minutes at each location. Whales have much larger mouths and feed for much longer than 10 minutes a day!

Cleaning the codends is fairly simple; we spray them down with a saltwater hose in the wet lab and dump the contents through a sieve with the same mesh size as the bongo net where the codend was attached. The only time that this proves challenging is if there is a lot of algae, which clogs up the mesh and makes it hard to rinse the sample. Also, the crab larvae that we find tend to hook their little legs into the sieve and resist being washed out. Below are two images of 500 micrometer sieves with zooplankton in them.

Crab larvae (megalopae) that we emptied out of the codend.

Some of the species of zooplankton we are finding include different types of:

Megalopae (crab larvae)
Amphipods
Euphausiid (krill)
Chaetognaths
Pteropods (shelled: Limasina and shell-less: Clione)
Copepods (Calanus spp., Neocalanus spp., and Metridea spp.)
Larval fish
Jellyfish
Ctenophores

The other day we had a sieve full of ctenophores, which are sometimes known as comb jellies because they possess rows of cilia down their sides. The cilia are used to propel the ctenophores through the water. Some ctenophores are bioluminescent. Ctenophores are voracious predators, but lack stinging cells like jellyfish and corals. Instead they possess sticky cells that they use to trap predators (Source: UC Berkeley). Below is a picture of our 500 micrometer sieve full of ctenophores and below that is a close-up photo of a ctenophore.

It’s fun to compare what we find in the bongo nets to the type of organisms we find in the trawl at the same station. We were curious about what some of the fish we were eating, so we dissected two of the Silver Salmon that we had found and in one of them, the stomach contents were entirely crab larvae! In another salmon that we dissected from a later haul, the stomach contents included a whole capelin fish.

Juvenile pollock are indiscriminate zooplanktivores. That means that they will eat anything, but they prefer copepods and euphausiids, which have a high lipid (fat) content. Once the pollock get to be about 100 mm or greater in size, they switch from being zooplanktivores to being piscivorous. Piscivorous means “fish eater.” I was surprised to hear that pollock sometimes eat each other. Older pollock still eat zooplankton, but they are cannibalistic as well. Age one pollock will eat age zero pollock (those that haven’t had a first birthday yet), but the bigger threat to age zero pollock is the 2 year old and older cohorts of pollock. Age zeros will eat small pollock larvae if they can find them. Age zero pollock are also food for adult Pacific Cod and adult Arrowtooth Flounder. Older pollock, Pacific Cod, and Arrowtooth Flounder are the most voracious predators of age 0 pollock. Recently, in the Gulf of Alaska, Arrowtooth Flounder have increased in biomass (amount of biological material) and this has put a lot of pressure on the pollock population. Scientists are not yet sure why the biomass of Arrowtooth Flounder is increasing. (Source: Janet Duffy-Anderson – Chief Scientist aboard the Dyson and Alaska Fisheries Science Center).

The magnified images below, which I found online, are the same or similar to some of the species of zooplankton we have been catching in our bongo nets. Click on the images for more details.

A chaetognath found in the Bering Sea. (Photo credit: Dave Forcucci, NOAA)

A type of euphausiid called Thysanoessa raschii. (Photo credit: WoRMS Database)

Dungeness crab megalopa (larval form). Photo credit: Liz Leavens, Padilla Bay NERR

A type of naked or shell-less pteropod called an “ice snail”. (Photo credit: Kevin Raskoff, NOAA Office of Ocean Exploration)

A type of copepod called Calanus. (Photocredit: Russ Hopcroft, University of Alaska, Fairbanks)

Limacina helicina, a type of shelled pteropod. (Photo credit: Russ Hopcroft, University of Alaska, Fairbanks)

Neocalanus critatus – a type of copepod found in the Gulf of Alaska. (Photocredit: Russ Hopcroft, University of Alaska, Fairbanks)

A type of amphipod found in the cold waters around Alaska. (Photo credit: Russ Hopcroft, NOAA Office of Ocean Exploration)

Metridia pacifica – a type of copepod found the Gulf of Alaska. (Photo credit: Russ Hopcroft, University of Alaska, Fairbanks)

Personal Log (morning of September 14, 2013)

I’m thankful that last night we had calm seas and I was able to get a full eight hours of sleep without feeling like I was going to be thrown from my bed. This morning we are headed toward the Kenai Peninsula, so I’m excited that we might get to see some amazing views of the Alaskan landscape. The weather looks like it will improve and the winds have died down to about 14 knots this morning. Last night’s shift caught an octopus in their trawl net; so hopefully, we will find something more interesting than just kelp and jellyfish in our trawls today.

Did You Know?

I mentioned that we had found some different types of pteropods in our bongo nets. Pteropods are a main food source for North Pacific juvenile salmon and are eaten by many marine organisms from krill to whales. There are two main varieties of pteropods; there are those with shells and those without. Pteropods are sometimes called sea butterflies.

Unfortunately, shelled pteropods are very susceptible to ocean acidification. Scientists conducted an experiment in which they placed shelled pteropods in seawater with pH and carbonate levels that are projected for the year 2100. In the image below, you can see that the shell dissolved slowly after 45 days. If pteropods are at the bottom of the food chain, think of the implications of the loss of pteropods for the organisms that eat them!

Read more about ocean acidification on the NOAA’s Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory (PMEL) website. Also, check out this press release from November 2012 by the British Antarctic Survey about the first evidence of ocean acidification affecting marine life in the Southern Ocean.

Teacher’s Corner

In my last blog entry on the bongo, I talked about using the “frying pan” or clinometer to measure wire angle. If you’re interested in other applications of clinometers, there are instructions for making homemade clinometers here and there’s also a lesson plan from National Ocean Services Education about geographic positioning and the use of clinometers this website.

If you are interested in teaching your students about different types of plankton, here is a Plankton Wars lesson plan from NOAA and the Southeast Phytoplankton Monitoring Network, which helps students to understand how plankton stay afloat and how surface area plays a role in plankton survival.

If you would like to show your students time series visualizations of phytoplankton and zooplankton, go to NOAA’s COPEPODite website.

Zooplankton time series visualization from the COPEPODite website.

For more plankton visualizations and data, check out NOAA’s National Marine Fisheries Service website.

If you are interested in having your students learn more about ocean acidification, there is a great ocean acidification module developed for the NOAA Ocean Data Education Project on the Data in the Classroom website.

September 13, 2013August 20, 2021

Britta Culbertson: The Beat of the Bongo (Part 1): Catching Zooplankton, September 11, 2013

NOAA Teacher at Sea
Britta Culbertson
Aboard NOAA Ship Oscar Dyson
September 4-19, 2013

Mission: Juvenile Walley Pollock and Forage Fish Survey
Geographical Area of Cruise: Gulf of Alaska
Date: Wednesday, September 11th, 2013

Weather Data from the Bridge (for Sept 11^th, 2013 at 10:57 PM UTC):
Wind Speed: 4.54 kts
Air Temperature: 10.50 degrees C
Relative Humidity: 83%
Barometric Pressure: 1009.60 mb
Latitude: 58.01 N Longitude: 151.18 W

Science and Technology Log

What is a bongo net and why do we use it?

As I mentioned in a previous entry, one of the aspects of this cruise is a zooplankton survey, which happens at the same stations where we trawl for juvenile pollock. The zooplankton are prey for the juvenile pollock. There are many types of zooplankton including those that just float in the water, those that can swim a little bit on their own, and those that are actually the larval or young stage of much larger organisms like crab and shrimp. We are interested in collecting the zooplankton at each station because because we are interested in several aspects of juvenile pollock ecology, including feeding ecology. In order to catch zooplankton, we use a device called a bongo net. The net gets its name because the frame resembles bongo drums.

20bon — Diagram of a 20 cm bongo net set-up. (Photo credit: NOAA – Alaska Fisheries Science Center)

The bongo net design we are using includes 2 small nets on a 20 cm frames with 153 micrometer nets attached to them and 2 large nets on 60 cm frames with 500 micrometer nets. The 500 micrometer nets catch larger zooplankton and the 153 micrometer nets catch smaller zooplankton. In the picture above, there are just two nets, but our device has 4 total nets. At the top of the bongo net setup is a device called the Fastcat, which records information from the tow including the depth that bongo reaches and the salinity, conductivity, and temperature of the water.

Bongo in water — This is what the bongo looks like when it’s finally in the water (Photo credit: John Eiler)

What happens during a bongo net tow?

The process of collecting zooplankton involves many people with a variety of roles. It usually takes three scientists, one survey tech, and a winch operator who will lower the bongo net into the water. In addition, the officers on the bridge need to control the speed and direction of the boat. All crew members are in radio contact with each other to assure that the operation runs smoothly. Two scientists and a survey tech stand on the “hero deck” and work on getting the nets overboard safely. Another scientist works in a data room at a computer which monitors the depth and angle of the bongo as it is lowered into the water. It is important to maintain a 45 degree angle on the wire that tows the bongo to make sure that water is flowing directly into the mouth opening of the net. One of the scientists on the hero deck will use a device that we lovingly call the “frying pan,” but more accurately it is called a clinometer or inclinometer. The flat side of the device gets lined up with the wire and an arrow dangles down on the plate and marks the angle. The scientist calls out the angle every few seconds so that the bridge knows whether or not to increase or decrease the speed of the ship in order to maintain the 45 degree angle necessary.

Peter and the pan — Scientist Peter Proctor holds up the “frying pan” also known as a clinometer or inclinometer, which is used to measure the wire angle of the bongo when it’s in the water.

Meanwhile, back at the computer, we monitor how close the bongo gets to the bottom of the ocean. We already know how deep the ocean is at our location because of the ship’s sonar. The bongo operation involves a bit of simple triangle geometry. We know the depth and we know the angles, so we just have to calculate the hypotenuse of the triangle that will be created when the bongo is pulled through the water to figure out how much wire to let out. The survey tech uses a chart that helps him determine this quickly so he knows what to tell the winch operator in terms of wire to let out. In the images below, you can see what we are watching as the bongo completes its tow. The black line indicates the depth of the bongo, and the red, purple, and blue lines indicate temperature, conductivity, and salinity.

Good bongo tow — This is an example of a good bongo tow. The black line on the left of the graph shows a consistent tow angle both up and down. The key is that the black line should have a “v” shape on the graph if the tow is good.

Bad bongo — This graph shows what happens when a bongo gets caught in the current and stays at the same depth for a while. Look at how the black line isn’t smooth, but levels off for a bit. This happened with the bongo both when it was going down and coming back up to the surface.

When the bongo is within in 10 meters of the bottom, the survey tech radios the winch operator to start bringing the bongo back up. It usually takes longer for it to come up as it does for it to go out, nevertheless, the 45 degree wire angle needs to be maintained. When the survey tech sees the bongo at the surface of the water, the two scientists on the hero deck get ready to grab it. This operation can be quite difficult when it’s windy and the seas are rough. If you look at the sequence of the photos below, pay attention to the horizon line where the water meets the sky and you can get a sense of the size of the swells that day.

Bongo Coming On Board — Chief Scientist Janet Duffy-Anderson and scientist Peter Proctor bringing the bongo back on deck.

Bongo retrieval — Bongo nearly over the railing of the hero deck.

Bongo on deck — Pulling the nets over the railing.

Bongo on board — Finally pulling up the codends of the bongo net. Note the change in the horizon line on all 4 pictures. There were pretty big swells this day.

When the bongo is safely back on deck, the person in the data room records the time of the net deployment, how long it takes to go down and up, how much wire gets let out, and the total depth at the station. If anything goes wrong, this is also noted in the data sheet.

As the bongo reaches the surface, the scientists grab the net keep it from banging into the side of the ship. When the net is on board, the next step is to read the flowmeters on the nets that indicate how much water has flowed through them. Then we rinse the nets and wash all of the material down the nets and into the “codends” at the very end of the net. These are little containers that can be detached and emptied to collect the samples.

Vince, the survey tech, and Peter the scientist prepare to read the flowmeters on the bongo.

Britta and Peter washing the bongo nets.

Once the codends are detached, they are taken to the wet lab and rinsed. Each of the four parts of the net has a codend where the zooplankton are caught. The zooplankton are rinsed out of the codends into a sieve and then collected in a jar and preserved with formalin. The purpose of having two of each of the 20 cm and 60 cm bongo nets is to ensure that if one sample is bad or accidentally dumped, there is always a backup. I have had to use the backup once or twice when there was a big jellyfish in the codend that kept me from getting all of the zooplankton out of the sample.

cleaning the codends and sieve — Britta rinsing the 500 micrometer sieve.

After we collect the zooplankton the samples are shipped to Seattle when we return to port. Back in the labs, the samples are sorted, the zooplankton are identified to species, and the catch is expressed at number per unit area. This gives a quantitative estimate of the density of plankton in the water. A high density of the right types of food means a good feeding spot for the juvenile walleye pollock! This sorting process can take approximately one year. I think it’s pretty amazing how much work goes into collecting the small samples we get at each station. Just to think of all of the person hours and ship hours involved makes me realize how costly it is to study the ocean.

Colleen and zooplankton jar — Scientist Colleen Harpold holding up one of the preserved jars of zooplankton.

Colleen with zooplankton — Scientist Colleen Harpold holding up one of the preserved jars of zooplankton that has A LOT of algae in it too!

Personal Log

It is hard to believe that I’ve been on the ship a week now. It feels strange that just 7 days ago I had never heard of a bongo net or an anchovy net. Now I see them every day and I know how to identify several types of fish, jellyfish, and zooplankton. I love working with the scientists and learning about the surveys we are doing. Nearly every trawl reveals a special, new organism, like the Spiny Lumpsucker – go look that one up, I dare you! We don’t have much down time and I’m trying to blog in between stations, but sometimes the time between stations after we finish our work can be 45 minutes and sometimes just 15 minutes. So we are pretty much on the go for the whole 12-hour shift. That’s where the fortitude part of Teacher at Sea comes in. You definitely need to have fortitude to endure the long hours, occasional seasickness (I like to think of it as “sea discomfort”), and periodic bad weather.

By now though, it all seems routine and I’d like to think I’ve gotten used to being thrown around in my sleep a little now and again when we hit some rough seas. This experience has been so worthwhile and even though I look forward to the comforts of home, I don’t really want it to end. When I graduated from college, I worked with a herpetologist studying lizards in the desert south of Carlsbad, New Mexico. I have fond memories of living in a tent for four months and collecting lizards all day to bring back to camp to measure and check for parasites. I often miss doing scientific work, so Teacher at Sea has given me the opportunity to be a scientist again and to learn about a whole new world in the ocean. What a treat! One of the reasons I chose to be a teacher was to be able to share my excitement about science with students and I feel so lucky that I get to share this experience too.

Did you know?

There are two species of Metridia, a type of copepod (zooplankton), that are found in the Gulf of Alaska/Bering Sea. One of them is called Metridia lucens and the other one is Metridia oketensis. These copepods are bioluminescent, which means that they glow when they are disturbed. They sometimes glow when they are in the wake of the ship or on the crest of a wave. Tonight when I was draining a codend into a sieve, my sieve looked like it had blue sparkles in it, but just for a second! I asked our resident zooplankton expert, Colleen Harpold what they might be and she thought that my blue sparkles likely belonged to the genus Metridia.

If you are interested in reading a little more about Metridia, check out this blog from Scientific American on copepods in the Bering Sea!

This is an image of Metridia longa. (Photo credit: NOAA/Hopcroft)

Glowing Metridia — This is a picture from Scientific American of Metridia spp. glowing while in a sieve. (Photo Credit: Chris Linder, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute)

Thanks for reading! Please leave me some comments or ask questions about any of the blog posts and feel free to ask other questions about the work we are doing or what it’s like at sea! I would love to be able to answer real-time while I am at sea.

September 13, 2013August 20, 2021

Susy Ellison: There’s a Volcano Outside My Window, September 10, 2013

NOAA Teacher at Sea
Susy Ellison
Aboard NOAA Ship Rainier
September 9-26, 2013

Mission: Hydrographic Survey
Geographic Area: South Alaska Peninsula and Shumagin Islands
Date: September 10, 2013

Weather:
Partly cloudy
GPS Coordinates 54⁰ 49.627’ N , 159^o 46.421’ W
Temp. 10.3C
Wind Speed 10-14 kts
Barometer 1008.49 mb

Science and Technology Log

You never know what you might see first thing in the morning! When I awoke and looked out my porthole I saw this in the distance.

The volcano has been active for the past few months, but I saw no smoke today. You can check out volcanic activity at http://www.avo.alaska.edu/activity/Veniaminof.php

We are scheduled to leave Kodiak at 1000 Hrs, RST

We cast off yesterday morning at 1000 hrs, RST—Rainier Ship Time. Although we are still in the Alaska Daylight Savings time zone, our time on the ship has been adjusted backwards 1 hour to give us more daylight during ‘working hours’. Since the ship is its own floating universe, time that is referenced to a specific time zone is not as important as time that is referenced to our day and the work that needs to be completed. Einstein would be pleased to see that time is, indeed, relative here aboard the Rainier!

There is science involved just to leave port and set forth on this cruise. There’s data to be collected, such as a weather forecast—and decisions to be made based on that data. Today’s weather report called for rain and high winds. That data input resulted in a travel plan including taking a more protected route north of Kodiak Island instead of heading out to more open water right away. We didn’t reach the wide-open spaces until evening, and I was lulled to sleep by the endless rocking and rolling of the boat.

We need to take out the trash before we leave. — We needed to take out the trash before we left.

Science can also include the protocols needed to keep everyone on board safe and healthy during a cruise. With that in mind, I spent part of the day learning about the ship and the safety routines we need to follow. Ensign Wall gave me my survival suit, aka Gumby Suit and showed me how to don that lifesaving apparel. The suit is a foam-filled drysuit, providing insulation and floatation in one handy, non-form-fitting package. They are, apparently, one size fits none, but when it’s a matter of survival, I doubt that style counts for too many points!

Each person aboard is assigned stations to report to in case of fire or in case it becomes necessary to abandon ship. I found out that I go to the Boat Shop near the stern in case of fire, and that I head to Station 1 near the bridge. We had a fire drill in the afternoon, followed by an abandon ship drill. Much like fire drills at school, it’s a good time to practice and figure out the best way to get to where you need to go. Since I’m still learning my way around the ship, it was especially important to figure out where I needed to go and how to get there.

Then there’s the ‘real’ science—the science of hydrography and the point of this entire venture. The NOAA Ship Rainier has been tasked with charting (creating maps) of the Shumagin Islands and Cold Bay areas. It’s amazing to think that there are still some parts of our coastline that haven’t been charted. I spent much of this afternoon talking with the scientists who are making these maps and came away with the overwhelming sense that this is, indeed, a complicated and multi-faceted process. I’ll be writing separate journals on all the science that goes into creating these detailed maps of the ocean floor. If you just can’t wait and need to know more right now, check out the blogs from previous TAS teachers on the Ship Rainier.

Personal Log

Much of my first day at sea was spent getting used to being aboard a large floating object on a rather bumpy sea. Our day was spent in transit, from Kodiak to the Shumagin Islands, around 28 hours away.

There’s a lot to learn about life on board the Rainier. Most important has been orienting myself and figuring out where everything is located. Decks are labeled from ‘A’, the lowest, to ‘G’, the uppermost deck area. My quarters are on the ‘E’ deck. The Galley, where food is prepared and served, is on the ‘D’ deck below me, and the Bridge (steering and control of the ship) is above me on the ‘F’ deck.

I have my own room—kind of luxurious living! There’s a bunk, the head (bathroom), a couple of closets, drawers, and even a small fold-down desk area so that I can write my journals. Every drawer latches tightly to minimize the chance of unidentified flying objects if we hit some rough weather.

I took a short tour of some of the more esoteric parts of the ship, including a visit to the cofferdam, whose access was through a hatch and down a ladder hidden in one of the heads (bathrooms). This is sort of like accessing the crawl space under your house through a small tunnel in your bathroom. While we speculated on just what purpose this area served (storage, poor planning in designing the hull and layout, a random skinny place to hang out?), it turns out that it is a watertight compartment that separates the contact between liquids that might be in the bow area and those in the stern area of the ship.

Starla Robinson leads us down the hatch into the cofferdam

There was also an escape hatch that was incredibly heavy to lift—but I am sure you could lift it if your life depended on it! I don’t plan on having to test this thing out!!

Just in case you need to get out in a hurry!

September 9, 2013August 20, 2021

Louise Todd: Ready to Go! September 9, 2013

NOAA Teacher at Sea
Louise Todd
Soon to be Aboard NOAA Ship Oregon II
September 13 – 29, 2013

Mission: Shark and Red Snapper Bottom Longline Survey
Geographical Area of Cruise: Gulf of Mexico
Date: September 9, 2013

Welcome to my NOAA Teacher at Sea Blog!

Personal Log

I am thrilled that in just a few days I will be aboard NOAA ShipOregon II as a NOAA Teacher at Sea. I have been eagerly waiting for this week to arrive and now it is almost here! On Friday, September 13, I will fly from New Orleans to Houston and then drive to Galveston. I will be aboard the Oregon II from Galveston, Texas until we dock in Pascagoula, Mississippi on September 29.

I am the Education Coordinator at the Audubon Aquarium of the Americas in New Orleans, Louisiana. I manage our education animal collection, those animals that are used in programs at the aquarium and in our outreach programs, and I coordinate the AquaKid program. Our animal collection includes a range of animals from saltwater invertebrates like horseshoe crabs to large reptiles like a red tail boa. Caring for these animals is one of the best parts of my job. I love interacting with them each day and ensuring they receive quality care. Our program animals are an important part of our mission to connect our audiences to nature. Inviting our guests to interact with these animal ambassadors helps demonstrate just how awesome animals can be! The AquaKids are youth volunteers who enter our program when they are in 7th-9thgrades. AquaKids go through a training session during the month of July that covers basic marine biology and prepares them to serve as educators at the Aquarium for the next school year. Some of my favorite parts of the summer training session with the AquaKids are the field trips we take every week and the dissection of spiny dogfish that we do in the last week of training. I am ecstatic to be aboard the Oregon II and to be able to bring back new research and information to share with the AquaKids during our summer training.

Shark Disection — AquaKids dissecting a spiny dogfish

Audubon Youth Volunteers at the Sorting Table — Audubon Youth Volunteers at the sorting table on a summer field trip

Science and Technology Log

I will be aboard the Oregon II participating in the fourth and final leg of a shark and red snapper longline survey. These longline surveys are crucial in assessing the populations of sharks and red snapper in the Gulf of Mexico and the western Atlantic Ocean. You will be able to track the progress of the Oregon II as we move through the Gulf of Mexico using NOAA’s ship tracker. I will be participating as a member of the science crew working a 12 hour shift each day. I cannot wait to see what we catch during this leg of the survey! This will be an amazing opportunity for me to see population research in action and to share that research with my blog readers and visitors to the Audubon Aquarium when I return from this experience.

I have had a great summer with trips to the barrier islands of Georgia for vacation and New York for my sister’s wedding. This time aboard the Oregon II will be an exciting end to my summer. I hope you will continue reading as I post about my experience and ask any questions you might have in the comments section!

September 9, 2013August 20, 2021

Susy Ellison: How Long Does it Take to Get to Kodiak, Alaska? September 7, 2013

NOAA Teacher at Sea
Susy Ellison
Aboard NOAA Ship Rainier
September 9-26, 2013

Mission: Hydrographic Survey
Geographic Area: South Alaska Peninsula and Shumagin Islands
Date: September 7, 2013

Weather:
Partly cloudy at the Anchorage Airport
Lat 61.217 N, Lon 149.900 W
Temp 56F

Personal Log

Although Mapquest says ‘you can’t get there from here’, when queried about routes from Carbondale, CO to Kodiak, AK, I am sitting in the Anchorage Airport and well on my way to meeting up with the NOAA Ship Rainier. While it’s easy to make a list of exactly how I’m getting to Kodiak (drive to Vail, CO, shuttle van to Denver, fly from Denver to Seattle, Seattle to Anchorage, and Anchorage to Kodiak), it’s a little more complicated to actually describe my journey to Kodiak and the Rainier.

Sitting in Vail waiting for the shuttle van to Denver.

I’m not sure that the journey only started when I packed my large, orange duffel bag and threw it in the car. That bag, currently either in the underbelly of a plane or sitting in a stack somewhere in the bowels of the airport, is filled with the clothing and personal supplies I’ll need for the next 3 weeks. Topping the list of clothing is a pair of Xtratuffs–rubber boots to keep my feet dry on the ship and when we’re on shore. Speaking of dry, I have 2 sets of raingear; a gore-tex parka and pants for those mostly wet days, and pvc-coated nylon parka and pants for the truly wet days. Rumor has it that it could be a bit rainy in the Shumagin Island area. I have long underwear to keep me warm, a wool hat to keep my head toasty, and the usual assortment of jeans and t-shirts for time ‘indoors’ on the ship.

Sometimes I think this journey started while planning 3 weeks of lesson plans for my students. My mind was already on the ship as I was creating those plans and trying to link my students’ activities with some of what I will be learning during my cruise. I created an independent study plan for students who wanted to earn science credit by following along with my blogs and reading the blogs of other teachers. All that planning gave me ample time to think about the journey that lay ahead, and to, perhaps, already start the journey while I was sitting at my desk.

This journey to Kodiak and the Shumagin Islands certainly has some foundation in my endless perusal of the Teacher at Sea blogs this summer. I was an avid reader of blogs from teachers aboard the Rainier, but also took time to read journals from teachers in other oceans and locations. Since I’ve never been on a ship this was a great way to start my trip a little bit ‘early’.

Did this journey begin way back when I applied for the Teacher at Sea program? After all, part of the application process involved envisioning how I would use this experience in my classroom. I had been following other teacher’s cruises for many years, so it was great to have to visualize myself on a ship and what I could learn from such an experience.

But, when I really think about this journey, it might actually have started long ago, when I was a child. I was lucky enough to grow up in a household that was, to put it mildly, firmly rooted in science and looking at the world as one giant science experiment. I was taught to ‘think like a scientist’, observing the world around me and asking questions (and searching for answers) about our planet.

It comes down to a question of scale. Is it really just a journey of 3000+ miles from Carbondale to Kodiak, or is it the sum total of days, months, or even years? Either way, I can’t wait for this part of the journey to end and my life on the ship to begin!