Category: 2024

NOAA Teacher at Sea

Jacqueline Omania

Aboard NOAA Ship Thomas Jefferson

June 17 – June 28, 2024

Mission: Hydrographic Survey of the Northern Gulf of Mexico

Geographic Area: Galveston , Texas

Date: June 14-18, 2024

Weather Data: 

Latitude: 29.29979 º N”
Longitude: 94.79312 º W
88º Fahrenheit
Clear Skies, Sunny

Galveston Island, Texas

Galveston Island is a barrier island on the Texas Gulf Coast. It is about 50 miles southeast of Houston and is 27 miles long and only 3 miles wide at its widest point. It has 32 miles of beaches! The main strip is the Galveston Seawall which is the longest contiguous sidewalk in the U.S. at 10.3 miles long! You can walk forever with the ocean rolling right next to you. The tan sand is soft like powder. The water these days has a brown color due to run off from the Mississippi River. It is warm like a bathtub, which makes it very enjoyable to swim in. I learned later, however, that such an ocean temperature is actually a danger sign for a possible coral bleaching event. 

This is my first visit to Texas ever and the differences are remarkable to me. The price of gas is $2.67 a gallon compared to the near $5 we pay in California. Consequently, there are many more large pickup trucks on the road. In the drive from Houston to Galveston, I passed oil refineries so large they seemed like cities in themselves. I’d seen images in movies, but this was my first real experience.

The Thomas Jefferson is docked in Galveston and I am spending Friday meeting the folks at Flower Garden Banks National Marine Sanctuary and NOAA Fisheries, both of which are housed in the NOAA headquarters in Galveston.

My Orientation: Flower Garden Banks National Marine Sanctuary Foundation (FGBNMS) and NOAA Fisheries

Flower Garden Banks National Marine Sanctuary (FGBNMS) is located 80-125 miles off the coast of Texas and Louisiana and is the only sanctuary in the Gulf of Mexico. It was designated in 1992. Although there are some visible coral reefs at divable depths, most of the sanctuary exists 130-725 feet below the surface in the twilight (mesophotic) zone. The sanctuary contains some of the healthiest coral reefs in the contiguous United States. Their work focuses on preserving and restoring the marine environment in the Gulf of Mexico.

Thanks to the efforts of Kelly Drinnen and Taylor Galaviz, the Education and Outreach team at FGBNMS, I was able to meet the staff at the Sanctuary and the NOAA Labs and get  a glimpse of their work. I arrived at the end of a staff meeting to hear Dr. Michelle Johnston, the Sanctuary Superintendent, present her work encouraging a plan for the fishing of Wahoo in the Gulf of Mexico. Currently the practice is unmanaged. This discussion of balancing the actions of local fishers with environmental sustainability is one that I am familiar with. As a teacher, I wonder: are they teaching about ecosystems in kindergarten? To create a collective mindset where individuals understand how to balance their needs with that of nature, we must begin in the schools.

These questions were answered in my next meeting with Rebecca Smith (NOAA fishery and outreach educator). She shared a workbook, Habitat! It’s Where It’s At, which explains the local ecology and conservation. I am excited to use her resources with my students. 

I also met Keith Roberts, a data scientist from NOAA Fisheries, who shared about his work collecting fish data. He gifted me an otolith and explained how you can tell the age and gender of the fish from a particular inner ear bone. The otolith works like a tree with rings, and by counting the ridges on the bone you know the age. It is made of calcium carbonate like our fingernails. 

Besides learning about the sanctuary, we had some time to discuss entry points into marine science careers. I love to support my past students in achieving their dreams, and our conversation gave me new resources to do so. I learned about opportunities at the Island School and Cape Eleuthera Institute in the Bahamas, and the Sea Turtle Rescue and Rehabilitation Center (Surf City, NC) which has internships for students in their junior year of high school. There is also a dolphin research center in Marathon Key (FL) and possibilities at Disney’s Epcot Center Aquarium. Several of the staff had entered their field through early internships at zoos and aquariums- and even by doing work with something as unusual  as Attwater’s Prairie Chickens (an endangered species of grouse native to Houston). Since access to environmental science careers is a topic I am passionate about, I was also happy to learn that NOAA has scholarship programs to support youth from underserved communities.

Mapping and the National Marine Sanctuary Foundation

In the afternoon, I was connected with the wonderful Sasha Francis, who works for the National Marine Sanctuary Foundation as the Gulf Restoration Education and Outreach Manager. She supports the projects focused on restoring the mesophotic and deep benthic communities (MDBC) that were injured by the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in April of 2010. Mesophotic and deep benthic communities are vast and complex ecosystems of coral, sponges, fish, and more along the ocean floor that are a foundation of Gulf of Mexico food webs.

Sasha, along with Kris Benson and Kelly Martin, NOAA Project Managers for this restoration work, helped me understand in detail how the mapping data we would be collecting with the Thomas Jefferson would be used. It is often combined with ROV (remotely operated vehicles) video and photo data to give us detailed information on deepwater features. If the maps show the deep ocean seafloor to be hard and highly reflective of sound beams, then it is likely that area has surfaces coral like to attach to. Areas having relief and variety can also be good for coral growth. Finding seafloor features like this helps restoration experts predict the presence of deep-sea coral communities and locate them for data collection and restoration. The expedition on the Thomas Jefferson is one of the many focused on creating higher-resolution maps of the Gulf than ever before to help with the restoration. 

NOAA and the other partners for this restoration work are working with FGBNMS as a reference site to better understand healthy deep-sea communities in the Gulf so they know how best to restore injured species in similar habitats across the Northern Gulf. 

Overall, seafloor mapping provides important information for restoration and which locations should be explored with greater detail. The mapping data supports MDBC restoration and protection efforts, such as finding ideal locations to place coral fragments for new colonies to grow and  mooring buoys that  prevent damage by anchors The mapping also provides data that can  inform management decisions in the Gulf. For example,companies drilling for oil can identify  areas where there is a large expanse of sediment rather than locations with a high diversity of fish, coral, and other sea life. Finally, it gives vital information that can support expanded or a greater number of marine protected areas in the Gulf of Mexico.

The education and outreach initiatives for the MDBC restoration projects include high-resolution images of the various deep ocean zones so that students can see the rich variety of marine species that thrive there. As Sasha showed me large posters that represent the seafloor as you go deeper in the Gulf, from the mesophotic zone (about 160 ft to 980 ft) through the transitional Lophelia zone (about 980 ft to 2600 ft) and into the deep zone (less than 1% light), we searched for creatures like the Spotted moray eel and Dumbo octopus and colorful corals, too. I hope to use the images with my 5th graders to foster knowledge of the deep sea; I also plan to have them share their learning with their kindergarten buddies and so foster cross-age learning as students search for deep sea species together. Another excellent visual resource is The Deep Sea.

The Coral Lab

The Galveston MDBC Coral Lab is run by aquarists Shannon Ainsworth (“the coral gardener”) and William Daily, and managed by Ben Higgins, who referred to himself humbly as “the plumber.” Ben is a NOAA research fishery biologist and the well known manager of the sea turtle program that was housed where the coral lab is now. He has built and manages all equipment in the MDBC Coral Lab. This lab is raising mesophotic corals that have never been kept in human care before and learning important information about their life history and reproduction. The small coral colonies carefully collected from the Gulf are  stunning colors of bright orange, purple, white, and yellow with fascinating names like Swiftia exserta and Muricea pendula. It is mesmerizing to watch them sway in gentle current in their tanks. Shannon shows the coral babies, which at just 2 years old are the size of alfalfa sprouts. She explains how the lab prepares the coral food by adding nutrients to brine shrimp and we have a chance to feed the coral. It is simply beautiful, and witnessing the coral work in the lab gives me so much hope for our ability to restore our ocean.

Final Stop: Moody Aquarium

Moody Gardens in Galveston is shaped on the outside like the three pyramids at Giza. One is an aquarium, another a rainforest and the third, a science discovery museum. The Moody Aquarium, a 1.5 million gallon aquarium, is one of the largest in the Southwest. It has a special focus on the Gulf of Mexico as well as exhibits from the South Atlantic, the North Pacific, the South Pacific and the Caribbean.

With Sasha Francis from the National Marine Sanctuary Foundation as my guide, I was in great hands. Sasha had worked as penguin and seal biologist and diver in the Moody Aquarium for 5 years, and was even responsible for transporting penguins and a sea lion to  the exhibits. She knew the penguins well and shared the details of her work with them. With her as my guide, I was even able to learn about the Sub-antarctic penguins which due to winter in the Antarctic region were in completely dark exhibits. A few highlights of the museum were: the Coral Rescue Lab, the reef under the oil rig, and the underwater tunnel. A huge thanks to Sasha for being such an excellent host!

Personal Log: The Unexpected

Unfortunately, I began to feel sick that evening. The body aches continued into the next day and out of caution I decided to do a Covid Test. I tested positive. It is actually my first experience with Covid. I am not sure how I have stayed well for years teaching in the pandemic, only to have a positive test days before an experience that means so much to me. Thus, I was not able to sail on the Thomas Jefferson. I do thank NOAA for the life changing opportunities in Galveston that I was able to have. I do hope to be a Teacher at Sea in the future.

Thanks for following my blog and sorry for the unexpected ending.