CHESAPEAKE BAY – NOAA Teacher at Sea Blog

June 18, 2018

Lenore Teevan: Ready to Go with the Tide, June 19, 2018

NOAA Teacher at Sea

Lee Teevan

Aboard NOAA Ship Oscar Dyson

June 29 – July 23, 2018

Mission: Pollock Acoustic-Trawl Survey

Geographic Area of Cruise: Bering Sea

Date: 19 June 2018

Weather Data from Norfolk, VA

Temperature: 84 degrees F

Wind: 7 mph NE

Humidity: 79%

Introduction:

The high tide is beginning its re-entry into the Chesapeake Bay at this moment, signaling a cascade of events among the organisms that call it home. The periwinkle snails have started their perilous climbs to the tips of the cordgrass while the fiddler crabs scurry along the tideline. Even the humans at the boathouse take note and launch their boat of 8 rowers and a coxswain to row in an inlet lined with trees sheltering night herons, crown herons and the conspicuous egrets.

This is but a snapshot of the incomparable Chesapeake Bay, which has played an instrumental role in my circuitous path to becoming a science teacher.

TAS Lee Teevan and a box turtle — Life in the fast lane with a First Landing State Park resident

When I first moved to Norfolk, VA in 1995, I was an English as a Second Language teacher at the local university. In and around the Chesapeake Bay, I became aware of the unfamiliar and fascinating: the live oaks that tolerate brackish spray and are bent like arthritic elders and the “come-back-to-life” fossils called “horseshoe crabs”. Although my job at that time was teaching language, I become aware of another language, the language of this unique ecosystem, that I wanted to speak. I then began taking graduate courses in biology and soon got my teaching license. Since 2006, I have been teaching Earth Science and Biology for Norfolk Public Schools. Being a teacher has allowed me opportunities to be a student of my environment. I was fortunate to attend a NOAA Phytoplankton Monitoring Network workshop in 2008 and my students and I logged in the species and abundances of Chesapeake Bay phytoplankton from 2008 to 2017.

Last year, as a PolarTREC teacher, I was able to be part of the “Jellyfish in the Bering Sea” expedition during which imaging devices were used to estimate ages, abundances and locations of jellyfish. I’ll return to this location in a few weeks to be a NOAA Teacher at Sea on the Oscar Dyson to be part of the Pollock Acoustic Survey.

Science and Technology Log

I will be on NOAA Ship Oscar Dyson along with another TAS, Joan Shea-Rogers. Our mission is to assess walleye pollock locations and abundances using trawls and acoustic surveys. Stay tuned to this blog to see photos of this in action!

Please feel free to ask questions or leave comments for me.

Did You Know?

Alaska Pollock is rich in omega-3 fatty acids and protein.

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July 28, 2014August 21, 2021

Joan Le, Packing Up and Ready to Go, July 28, 2014

NOAA Teacher at Sea
Joanie Le
Aboard NOAA Ship Henry B. Bigelow
August 5 – 16, 2014

Mission: Deep-Sea Coral Research
Geographic area of the cruise: Western North Atlantic Ocean
Date: July 28, 2014

Personal Log

Hello there! I am Earth Science teacher Joanie Le, from Washington-Lee High School in Arlington, Virginia. I couldn’t be more excited to join the Deep-Sea Corals research team in August, and spend two weeks on the NOAA Ship Henry B. Bigelow out in the North Atlantic Ocean. My interest in the ocean started at James Madison University, where we studied the geology left by ancient inland seas. Standing next to giant shale formations, I would imagine how the whole area was once submerged in water and teeming with marine life. But if I’m going to be honest, I truly didn’t appreciate the importance of marine life until very recently. Squeezing in at the last minute from a packed wait-list, I was so fortunate to spend a week on the Chesapeake Bay learning from an exceptional group of educators through one of the Chesapeake Bay Foundation‘s Summer Immersion Courses, “Teachers on the Bay”. After spending days trawling, marsh-mucking, and breathing in the beautiful bay air, I am thrilled to take my studies even deeper into the Atlantic Ocean.

Beautiful morning view from Fox Island in Virginia’s Chesapeake Bay.

However, my departure from my home in Washington, DC will be bittersweet, I’m afraid. While email correspondence works well for my husband, my two dogs never gained the knack for it. We’ve spent so much of the summer exploring local rivers and beaches together that it’ll be tough to leave them behind. They will just have to keep each other company, I suppose.

So that’s it. Next post will be from the NOAA Ship Henry B. Bigelow in the Atlantic Ocean. In the meantime, please let me know if you have any specific questions, or would like me to highlight anything in particular. I’ll look out for your comments below, or through my classroom Twitter account, @TheScienceRoom. See you soon!

NOAA Ship Henry B. Bigelow, and my home for two week.

July 9, 2013August 19, 2021

Christina Peters: Introduction, July 3, 2013

NOAA Teacher at Sea
Chris Peters
Onboard NOAA Ship Oregon II
July 10 – 19, 2013

Mission: SEAMAP Summer Groundfish Survey
Geographic Area of Cruise: Gulf of Mexico, leaving from Pascagoula, MS
Date: July 3, 2013

Welcome to my NOAA blog!

A little about my background…

I am Christina (Chris) Peters, from Farmland Elementary School in Rockville, Maryland. I have been a fourth grade teacher at Farmland for the past eight years, after trying out some other careers. While my past teaching has included all subjects, I am excited to get to focus more on science this coming year as my team will be departmentalizing and I will be teaching two classes of science. We spend half the school year learning about life sciences and the environment.

I grew up only a few miles from where I teach today, and was the third of ten children in my family. My father loved to fish and used to take us fishing, in turns of course, in his seventeen foot motor boat. Most often we fished in the Atlantic Ocean, off the coast of New Jersey, where my family frequently visited. We also fished in the Chesapeake Bay on occasion. One of my favorite summer meals was fresh bluefish. These experiences taught me to love the water, and to care about protecting that environment.

My father and I after a fishing trip. I was about ten, the same age as many of my students.

In addition to learning about and participating in the SEAMAP Summer Groundfish Survey, I will be learning something else completely new to me – how to blog! While I consider myself pretty technologically informed, I am new to blogging and am very excited, and a little nervous, about writing my own blog describing my Teacher at Sea experience.

Our mission on Oregon II

I will be flying to Mississippi next week and will be joining the crew of Oregon II on July 10 to participate in the SEAMAP Summer Groundfish Survey. To see pictures of the Oregon II, and to learn more about the ship, you can visit the website that describes details of the ship, as well as the different past and present projects for which Oregon II has been used. We will be departing from Pascagoula, Mississippi and measuring data on groundfish in the Gulf of Mexico. The Southeast Area Monitoring and Assessment Program (SEAMAP) is a state/federal program designed to collect, manage and disseminate fishery-independent data in the southeastern U.S. I am excited to learn more about how the scientists and crew actually complete the surveys and record data. One of my goals is to pass along what I learn to everyone who reads my blog.

Furthermore, while the Groundfish Survey is the mission of the scientists and crew onboard Oregon II, I will have an additional goal of learning all about the jobs of the crew, and sharing much of that information with the readers of my blog. Hopefully, when you read about these exciting and important careers, many of you will consider the possibility of pursuing one similar to those described.

To all my upcoming fourth grade students, I am looking forward to adapting the data collection tools I learn about to our science activities in the coming year. I hope my past students will visit my blog and think about connections they can make to our fourth grade science units where we created and observed our own model ecosystems.

See you at sea!