Marine Education Fellowship

Hello! For the past 8 weeks, the Sea Grant office has been abuzz with National Marine Educators Association (NMEA) conference planning. I couldn’t really describe a “regular” day in my marine education fellowship because no two days have been alike. I’ve ventured through Portsmouth to meet with businesses and collect generous coupons for our conference attendees (one business donated 700 free beers!). I’ve been out on a cruise around Great Bay with 30 passionate adults who wanted to learn science and willingly collected water samples, discussed pH, and analyzed real-time data on their smartphones. I’ve been developing interactive marine science curriculum, which included playing with play-dough, reaching out to some of my favorite former teachers, and brainstorming with some incredible marine science educators at the NMEA conference. I’ve been working alongside amazing volunteers, the Marine Docent educators, many of whom are retired teachers who cannot simply give up teaching or stop themselves from learning new things everyday. I’ve been peacefully working in Excel by myself one day and then meeting dozens of incredible people from all over the world the next.

Look below to see more! I've posted updates from my fellowship in chronological order, starting with "Gyotaku and Ocean Acidification".

~Maggie :)

NMEA Conference: The Finale!

Week 8:

The conference has arrived! I went to a Sea Grant educators network meeting this weekend and met some really awesome people. I also got to mention the Marine Careers website and the educators were very willing to help update and expand it. My appreciation for Sea Grant has continued to grow throughout my fellowship. Meeting educators from all over the country was amazing! Everyone shared an update from their Sea Grant program, which gave other educators great ideas to improve their own educational programming. People provided advice, formed connections, and caught up on each other’s lives. Some have been in their Sea Grant educator position for decades!

I have been tasked with “crisis management” for the conference, which mostly involves helping attendees figure out where they’re going and dealing with technology issues. I’ve gotten to work alongside Marine Docents again and we have lovely chats while waiting for the rush of attendees to visit our raffle table. At the end of the week, I attended a lobster boil where I met conference attendees in a less formal setting. We scrambled out on the rocks in the intertidal and talked about the differences between the rocky coast in NH and Maine and the smooth sandy beaches of New Jersey. Everyone was still learning from each other, even after the formal conference events had ended. Despite being involved in conference planning for a mere 2 months, I was a little emotional when it ended. So much work, time, and careful planning were involved--to see it all pan out and witness attendees’ enjoyment was surreal.

Left Brain, Right Brain

Week 7:

The conference is next week and the anticipation is tangible! I visited several Portsmouth businesses to collect coupons for the welcome bags we will give to conference attendees from and have written to thank each business. We stuffed the welcome bags with goodies and coupons, which involved walking around a large table in a line to place each item into the bags, all while listening to music and eating baked goods. 

On a long-term projects note, I’ve been working with a hefty historical dataset (~740,000 rows of data; about 50 years of monitoring!) from Shoals Marine Lab for the high school curriculum. Aside from the human interaction aspect of meeting lots of new people, I get to sit quietly on my computer and work in Excel. When I’m done sorting and filtering data, it should be easy to use and understand in the marine science curriculum. I’ve never worked with an Excel dataset this big before, so it’s been a really fun challenge. I’ve discovered features I never learned about in my four years of college.

Eco Cruise

Weeks 5 & 6:

I went on the Great Bay Eco Cruise this week, which was attended mostly by adults who had a marine science background. I wasn’t sure what to expect as we set sail on the Gulf Challenger with 30 adults who seemed to already know plenty about marine science. I had been to an event focused on youth education, but I wasn’t sure how adult education would work. They all shared their knowledge, networked with each other, and had a wonderful time pointing out familiar landmarks along the ride. Some were local, but hadn’t been out on Great Bay in years and were noticing all the changes in the landscape that had happened since. There were stations to collect samples with a plankton tow and measure pH, dissolved oxygen, and other water quality parameters. We compared samples from the coast (more ocean influence) to the Bay (more freshwater influence) and then visited the Jackson Estuarine Lab. I met some wonderful people who had successful careers in the marine field and happily gave me advice about being a recent graduate.

My other long-term projects are going well. My mentor is bringing the curriculum I’ve worked on over to Appledore Island where marine educators will read it and provide feedback/suggestions. I recently worked with two Marine Docents to create a seacoast activities guide for the NMEA conference attendees. We’ve suggested different activities for people who are visiting the area for the first time, which is a high proportion of the ~400 anticipated attendees. We’ve suggested outdoor activities, food, music & arts, shopping, and kids’ activities. This project was marketing-focused and I really enjoyed finding pictures and writing little blurbs for each suggestion. One of my mentors put the guide on the conference website and it was really satisfying to see our work online for people to use and enjoy. The guide will also be printed out for the information table at the conference, which is now only 2 weeks away! I’ve been shielded from the conference stress, but the planning committee has been working on the conference for over a year!

Marine Careers!

Weeks 3 & 4:

My fellowship started with super fun events and now I’m working on a lot of research projects. I have my own desk at Sea Grant where I can sit and work. It’s also right on the way to the water fountain, so people are always walking by to say hello. I’ve been working on a marine careers website, which involves doing some research to identify good contributors to the website and crafting some survey questions to be sent to future Sea Grant collaborators. We’d like to update the website, which has been stagnant for years, and get some help from other Sea Grant programs who have connections to people with cool marine jobs. The website is awesome and, since I’ve spent plenty of time on there, I’ve gotten some great career advice from the profiles.

I’ve also started working on high school marine science curriculum, which has been a great opportunity to get creative. It’s tough to make the lessons interactive when the students can’t actually go out to the intertidal, so I’ve been brainstorming the best ways to make it fun (play-dough? Building a model with boxes? Fun coloring projects?). Stay tuned because I haven’t totally figured it out yet!

Food Motivation: An Emerging Theme in Outreach Events

Week 2:

This week I got to attend three different events on the seacoast. I started with the Marine Docent monthly meeting at the Seacoast Science Center. I met so many docents who had fascinating life stories and gave me lots of career advice. There was an amazing sense of community among the docents (they even go snorkeling together!). Some have been volunteering for over 10 years! They brought plenty of food to share, so I just got to listen, meet people, and munch on homemade brownies. 

The next event was a symposium on cod population structure. I helped with the event logistics a little beforehand and then got to listen to the discussion during the event. It was awesome to see so many different types of knowledge come together to address an important question. Local fishermen, researchers, and policy experts were all in the same room to contribute their expertise. I learned about event logistics, which includes lots of tiny details that can really improve the experience for participants. For example, we made sure to pack up the leftover catering food (which would otherwise be thrown out) and offer it to people as they left. Some attendees were thrilled at the chance to take home some food after a long day.

The last event I attended this week was a Floating Lab for middle school students, run by the Marine Docents. Students gathered on the docks of the UNH Pier and learned about benthic creatures, water quality, plankton, mapping, and plate tectonics. They even got to climb to the top of a lighthouse at the military fort and learn about its rich history defending the coast. Most of the kids were really engaged the whole time and we were lucky that they had learned about plate tectonics (a tricky topic!) already. The docents have to prepare for the educational background of their students because sometimes a topic is brand new and way over the students’ heads. There were live specimens, models, and interactive activities at every station; it was awesome to see young students get excited about marine science. Humor also seemed to go a long way, since the students were in their very social middle school years. There was also a lovely spread of food provided by the docents...I’m noticing a theme and I like it!

Gyotaku and Ocean Acidification

Week 1:

I started my fellowship by attending the Piscatuqua River Fest, an annual event that celebrates the rivers and bays. I helped Marine Docent volunteers at an educational table that started out with a fish printing activity. Kids painted a rubber fish of their choosing (flounders and rays were most popular) in any way they wanted. Then, we helped them to stamp their fish onto a piece of paper, which left behind a painted imprint that they could keep. This is a Japanese art form known as Gyotaku. Japanese fishermen used to create a print of large fish they caught far from shore and were unable to bring back. The print served as evidence of their amazing catch and eventually became an art form. Today, it is a popular activity run by UNH Marine Docents that is remembered fondly by adults many years later (several adults told me they remembered doing a fish printing with a real dead fish and wanted to know why we now use rubber fish…).

The second activity was ocean acidification outreach. We had so many great conversations with people about acidity, pH, and watersheds. The pH scale is actually pretty confusing, since it is logarithmic. Little changes in pH can mean big changes in acidity. It’s also difficult to visualize changes in acidity and pH. The term ocean acidification leads people to think that the ocean (with a pH of ~8) will become acidic, but that’s not really what it means. It was awesome to see the docents tackle these misconceptions and leave people with positive actions they can take to address climate change. The Marine Docent outreach programs were awesome and I’m happy I got to be involved on my first day in the fellowship!

Completely meant to be doing this along the way, but here goes my first blog as a Doyle Fellow!

Working with the green crabs has been an incredible experience so far, especially within my focus for the project. My goals have been production and marketing of the soft shell green crabs along with outreach and education here and there. By identifying crabs that are considered to be pre-molts and placing them under observation, there are certain signs of the molting process that appear over time.

Once these crabs have molted they become extremely soft, which makes them more desirable by restaurants and thats where outreach and marketing comes in so that the public begins a demand for them!

I've lead groups of children through intertidal waters on crab hunts, talked with chefs, spread information at a farmers market, pulled crab traps across the coastline of New Hampshire and even driven to Brunswick in Maine already and it feels like were only getting started!

Only half way through my time as a Doyle Fellow and I've gained immeasurable experience as well as confidence within my field. 

Weeks 3 and 4

Weeks 3 and 4 were a blur they went by so fast!
Week 3 Highlight:
During the third week of my internship I lead a GIANT Great Green Crab Hunt with the rest of the interns I am working with for the 4-H camps in New Hampshire. There was 4 coach buses full of campers!

For this GGCH we were splitting up into 5 groups and each group was going to a separate location: Drowned Forest, Cedar Point at Little Bay, Hampton, and Pierce Island. The coach buses were so big that one almost got stuck in the down town of Portsmouth! Needless to say, it did not make it to Cedar Point, and instead we had two groups at Pierce Island.

I was located at Drowned Forest abutting Odiorne State park, so no bus ride for me! Unfortunately it was a neap tide, and in this particular location a spring tide is ideal for finding some larger crabs. Because of this we found over 50 crabs that were under 2 centimeters! Of our 7 crabs that were over 2 centimeters 3 of them were fresh molts! The campers had a blast and were talking about how this green crab hunt was their favorite part of their summer at the 4-H camp which was really great to hear. I really strive to inspire others through education and it means a lot knowing that something I am doing this summer is having a positive impact on the people I am interacting with.

Week 4 Highlight:
During week 4 I had a lighter work load due to taking a holiday vacation. The tides were also not ideal for sampling or doing any crab hunts so I helped the other interns with their projects. Jillian and I checked some traps in Hampton, and on the side of the pier were two GIANT sea stars that had to have been 10 inched in diameter. After that we went on an adventure to buy animal fat and fish skins (Yuck!). Jillian needs them for a project she is working on with Gabby. She has come up with another use for the green crabs that is not for human consumption.