RE Log - Spring 2020

20 Ransom Everglades LOG SPRING 2020 This is so far outside the boundary of a traditional high school science class. This course has components that we all have taught at the college and graduate level; it’s pretty advanced. We started by getting in the swimming pool to teach the students how to scuba dive. All of them earned their PADI Open Water Diver certification. We had a guest speaker from the Florida Department of Environmental Protection who explained the agency’s citizen science “BleachWatch” program, where they encourage divers trained to survey to note coral bleaching and coral disease. So we taught them how to do that, then we took them out diving and they examined coral along the barrier reef tract just off of Key Biscayne. They found a bit of bleaching and a bit of disease, and we submitted that data to DEP. We also took them out seining, which is a way to measure biodiversity; you drag a net through the water and everything that is caught in the net we identify and then let it go. We took them out shark- tagging, which of course is my area of expertise. We went out with a local team that surveys shark species in Biscayne Bay and off-shore year round. Our kids were involved in the actual research; we tagged sharks, took blood for stress physiology research, assisted the scientists in the field. We will also be doing statistical analysis on that data. We’ve done work on land, too, examining sediment cores around specific sites in Miami, limestone outcroppings that provide insights into climate history. This spring we are doing coral outplanting, helping to replant nursery corals on the reef. I feel like I teach best when I’m out on a boat because I can make a lesson out of anything. I can pick up Sargassum and shake it out and explain what’s in it and why it’s important. If there’s algae floating in the water, I can explain what’s happening there. If something swims by, I can identify it and I’ll explain that. If we’re standing in sea grass, that’s a whole lesson. It’s informal. I feel like we’re tricking them into learning. And we get to do what we love. Our students have done great work in the classroom, too. For their final [first-semester] project, we had each choose a scientific research paper on a marine science topic of their choosing. They had to present the paper during five-minute lightning talks; they were evaluated by two classmates who had “peer-reviewed” the paper. You really have to get to the main point. You really have to understand the paper to distill the critical facts. And then you have to communicate it to your fellow students in a way they can understand. Finally, they had to “tweet” their papers in Google Classroom. The idea was to share the essence of their topics in really clear, engaging ways. Not surprisingly, they were shockingly good at that. They had funny hashtags. Their tweets were attention grabbers; they had good hooks. It’s been a high-energy class. We all have our RE Marine Field Research diving shirts. We have to take care of each other. When we’re diving, we use a lot of hand signals, checking on one another, making sure everything is okay. We treat our class like a big team. I say “one team, one dream” all the time in class. It’s been a dream. We all love what we are doing every day. Dr. Kristine Stump STEM faculty member Dr. Stump and Jules Murray ’22 examine a shark.