Oceans of Life I - Applied Science & Engineering Workshop for Middle School Girls

BEWiSE
Oceans of Life Overnight I
31 Mar 2000
Birch Aquarium,
Scripps Institute of Oceanography

Preliminaries - The Program's Second Year: It's time to start having the two overnights every spring as originally planned. This means that we can provide the experience to 60 new girls each year. We decided this spring's theme would be Oceans of Life and that we would have one overnight at the Birch Aquarium and one at Sea World. For selection the students would have to write a one-page esssay on one of the following topics:

Why do you think the oceans are a vital resource? Describe what you could do to help understand and protect our oceans in the new millennium.
Coral Reeefs are often compared with rainfoirests. How are they alike? Why are coral reefs so important to the health of the oceans?
Worldwide weather patterns are directly connected to the movements of the oceans. How do the oceans affect weather? How does the atmosophere affect the oceans?

The girls would be divided into six groups for each event: the dolphins, the grey whales, the blue whales, the sea lions, the seaotters, and the killer whales.

Planning - Determining the details: Arlene de Strulle, Birch Aquarium, Director of Education, would be our contact person at the aquarium.

Finalizing - Setting the schedule:
* Keynote Speaker: Judith Swift, Sea World Education Department, on her career and about Stranding Biology. The girls will be given a scenario in which a sick/dead whale has beached itself and some biological evidence of what may be wrong (stomach contents, flesh wounds, other symptoms, etc).

* Workshop Speakers will be:

Kerri Danil & Kelli Robertson, National Marine Fisheries Service, on Analyzing Stomach Contents and Determining Age, Sex, and Reproductive Status
Dr. Pat Yocham, Sea World Veterinarian, on Toxic Tissues
Kevin Hardy, SIO, on Exploring the Depths: Designing a Submersible
Anita Balcar, Birch Aquarium Instructor, on Food Webs: Plankton
Maria Mendez, SIO grad student, on Toxic Tides and Bioluminescence
Judith Swift, Sea`World Education Department, on Field Identification of Whales

We will have T-shirt Fish Printing as a late evening activity.

Literacy Component: For this event the book(s) were Women in Oceanography, Scripps Institution of Oceanography; Oceans: looking at beaches and coral reefs, tides and currents, sea mamals and fish, seaweeds and other ocean wonders by Adrienne Mason, Kids Can Press Ltd; Writing About Science by Joy Frestedt, Anne Weber-Main, and Kimerly Wilcox, A publication of Graduate Women in Science and donated by them

Also: Students all got folders full of info. Nametags were made. Lanyards for the nametags were reordered.

Photos:
Photo A

Feedback: The students gave the event an average rating of 9+. 21 of 24 said that a career in science is a possibility.

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BEWiSE Oceans of Life Overnight I 31 Mar 2000 Birch Aquarium, Scripps Institute of Oceanography

BEWiSE
Oceans of Life Overnight I
31 Mar 2000
Birch Aquarium,
Scripps Institute of Oceanography