My Voyage as a Sea Scholar
Mendel Graeber, Marine Educator

On Tuesday, October 5, I learned that I would be included on the Sea Scholars voyage from Honolulu to Portland, Oregon, and that I would be leaving for Hawai’i the next week.  I knew few details of the trip.  I knew that Sea Scholars was a collaborative program between COSEE (Centers for Ocean Science Education Excellence, of which the Dauphin Island Sea Lab is one of five grantees) and the Navy.  One of the objectives of COSEE was to foster dialog and understanding between scientists and educators, and the Sea Scholars trips were designed to take teachers to sea to see applied oceanography.  Details of the trip were deliberately left vague because, as Mark Jarrett, our onboard host, put it to us,’“Loose lips can sink ships.”  We were told what dates to fly into Honolulu and out of Portland but very little else.

We boarded the U.S.N.S. (United States Navy Ship) Sumner in Pearl Harbor on Friday, October 15.  At 0900 Saturday, October 16, we left port, watching Oahu fade into the distance.  Then we learned more about the Sumner and its crew.  U.S. Navy Oceanographic Ships are not armed; they were made specifically for Navy survey operations.  I had described the trip as a being aboard a Navy research ship, which I learned was incorrect.  Survey ships do not do research; they conduct surveys, the distinction having to do with international politics and sharing data.  The survey crew with whom we were to work was part of the Naval Oceanographic Office (alternately called NavOceanO or NavO), which is charged with providing the Navy with the information it needs to safely and effectively carry out its missions.  The NavO team was not military, but civilian employees of the Department of Defense.  The ship’s crew was not military; it was composed of merchant marines.  Our mission revolved around conducting surveys alongside the NavO crew, but we were also encouraged to interact with the merchant marines.  We learned a lot about careers available to people interested in the sea.

The Naval oceanographers prepared lessons about and opportunities for us to participate in their various operations.  We did a CTD (Conductivity, Temperature, Depth) cast to approximately 3000 meters.  We had previously colored Styrofoam cups and Styrofoam heads, which were put into a mesh bag and attached to the CTD.  They came up quite shrunken.  The group did sediment grabs and cores (one of our cores brought only obsidian and nails), dropped weighted light bulbs and, using sound-receiving buoys we had launched, listened to the light bulbs implode.  We used sonar data to create computer-generated 3-D images of the ocean bottom.  We collected plankton and launched weather balloons to collect meteorological data.  I was fascinated by the many applications the Navy had for the data and models the NavO team provided.  For instance, bioluminescent plankton could reveal a submarine or other covert operative.  Sediment data could help determine the best place and/or method of anchoring, or it could help us to better understand the sonar data.  All survey operations had practical applications for the Navy.

In addition to learning about careers and practical applications of oceanography, I met 13 teachers who were an incredible source of ideas, information, and inspiration.  I met Dr. Shelia Brown and Dr. Susan Ross from the University of Southern Mississippi.  And all of us teachers made valuable connections with the NavO crew and Mark Jarrett, who, in this time of heightened security, had to fight hard to keep the Sea Scholars Program afloat.  From this voyage, I gained a wealth of experience, information, samples (data and physical), ideas, and connections.  It has added, and will continue to add, to my classroom, in ways I will be discovering for a long time to come.

For information about Sea Scholars, please contact Denise Keaton at dkeaton@disl.org or (251) 861-7515