Shark Surveys and Lesson Plans: A Multitasking Teacher at Sea

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0:00:01.2 John Sheehan: Teachers bring the world to their students. And since 1990, NOAA has been helping them do it by bringing educators from all over the country on research cruises. The program Teacher at Sea has sent more than 850 teachers from kindergarten to college level to log more than 10,000 days at sea and assist with more than 118,000 hours of research. The aim of the program is to give educators hands-on experience with oceanic and atmospheric research, so that they can turn around and use the experience to enrich their classes, lessons, and ultimately, their communities. This is Dive In With NOAA Fisheries. I'm John Sheehan, and today I'm talking to one recent teacher at Sea, Maronda Hastie.

0:00:43.5 Maronda Hastie: Hey, this is Maronda Hastie from McNair High School. I am skipping school today 'cause I am part of The Teacher at Sea Program, and I am so excited I get to tag sharks.

0:00:53.7 JS: That's Maronda recording herself on the boat. She teaches algebra, geometry, and pre-calc at Dr. Ronald E. McNair High School in Atlanta. Last August, she set sail aboard the NOAA Ship, Oregon II, on a 13-day, bottom long line survey of shark and red snapper populations around the coast of Florida. And though Maronda teaches math, she's passionate about environmental science and is always organizing trips and impact projects for her students. Here are a few of her colleagues' testimonials.

0:01:24.4 S3: She's always coming up with innovative ways to get the students involved.

0:01:27.9 S4: We will all benefit from her experience of being out there. I can't wait to hear her stories.

0:01:33.2 S5: She's going to record, continue to blog while she's there. She's gonna take a ton of photos, and she's going to make sure our students experience it as if they were there with her.

0:01:44.4 JS: And Maronda did exactly that. From recording interviews with the crew mates to conducting actual classes from the Oregon II, all of which is above and beyond the requirements of the Teacher at Sea program. But also as you'll hear, that's just the kind of teacher and person that she is. Maronda Hastie, welcome to Dive In With NOAA Fisheries.

0:02:05.2 MH: Thank you. Thanks for inviting me.

0:02:07.4 JS: So Maronda, when you signed up for Teacher at Sea, you knew you'd be getting onto a NOAA research vessel and conducting a research, but I don't know that you knew that you'd be working with sharks. So when you found out, what was that like?

0:02:23.5 MH: Oh, my goodness! I was extremely scared, excited, and I felt like, "Okay, they know what they're doing, so I should be safe." But I was excited because there's so much research out there and I just didn't know which angle it was gonna come from. So to find out that I was gonna be researching sharks, I was definitely excited.

0:02:45.1 JS: Did you have any experience either working on boats or dealing with large fish?

0:02:51.1 MH: In college, we had a Marine Biology Department at Savannah State, so I used to spend a lot of time in the Marine Biology Center. Although my major was math, it was just... They had the coolest projects. So I would participate and maybe we'd do some trolling, catching shrimp, or we'd have to label different types of fish that we caught, but not the large fish. So I've only seen maybe dolphins but not up close and personal like I was with the sharks.

0:03:20.1 JS: So, the day itself, when you showed up in Cape Canaveral in Florida, did you just jump on the boat and steam out and start working that day? I mean, was there sort of like an introductory process, or?

0:03:35.7 MH: We definitely had an introductory process. So we had to take two COVID tests, and they had to fuel the ship and we had to wait a couple days. I was in Orlando, and then I had to drive to Cape Canaveral and then I met my shipmates, and we got a tour of the ship from top to bottom. So that was pretty interesting 'cause just from going on cruises, you don't get to see the inner workings of a ship, even going down to the engine room. I didn't realize when I see water coming through the ships that that's what cools the engines. I just thought maybe there was a leak somewhere and that's why the water was leaving out. So my first day was learning about the ship and where everything was, the Wi-Fi, I learned [laughter] that I definitely needed Wi-Fi so I got acclimated with the technician so that my devices would work. So that was pretty cool as well.

0:04:28.9 JS: And we'll talk about why you needed Wi-Fi a little bit later. So take us through a day. What was the day like on the Oregon II, on the long line survey, catching sharks and snappers?

0:04:46.2 MH: So learning how to use the equipment was first. Our objective was to send out 100 hooks with bait. So everybody had a different station. We would bait 100 hooks with some mackerel. So my job might be, "Okay, I'll do all the cutting of the mackerel." Somebody else's job might be putting the bait on the hooks and then somebody else's job might be cleaning or keeping track of the data. So it was kind of fun being able to rotate it. It definitely helps you appreciate the different jobs and you feel like you've learned so much by not just doing that one thing. And then sometimes, we catch five or six fish, sometimes none, sometimes way more than that, but it depends. But everything we caught, we had to log, so that was pretty exciting. And even before that, just watching the skies change from left to right or front to back on the boat. It might be raining three miles away, but you could see it or there might be a rainbow on the other side of the ship or all of a sudden dolphins were chasing the boat. For me, it was exciting every single day. The sun rises, the sun sets. Going out to participate in the actual surveys was nice. Learning how to track the data and what they were looking for. Like I did not know just the parts of the fish that we needed. All that was important.

0:06:11.1 JS: Yeah. What were you collecting?

0:06:12.4 MH: From the red snapper, we were collecting the gonads, trying to figure out is it a female, is it a male? And then how old the fish was. So we collected the eardrum and now I gotta think of what that was called.

0:06:28.0 JS: Is it otoliths?

0:06:31.2 MH: The otoliths. The otoliths.

0:06:32.3 JS: Is that right?

0:06:33.2 MH: We collected the otoliths.

0:06:35.4 JS: These are a few of Maronda's recordings from the Oregon II.

0:06:38.3 S6: We collect otoliths from a number of bony fish species. And the reason we do that is that you can take an otoliths and cross section and tell how old the fish was, much like rings on a tree.

0:06:49.0 S7: These are... These are what actually catch the fish, hook at the bottom.

0:06:55.6 MH: And they have the numbers on each one. So it's important we stay very organized because we have to make sure we tag and numbered everything properly because whoever gets this data needs to know.

0:07:07.6 S8: They need to know exactly which fish it came from. And each fish has multiple samples.

0:07:14.0 JS: And you're doing this for every fish you catch. So you're taking out these otoliths and you're measuring the fish and you're recording everything and which hook it's on.

0:07:25.0 MH: Yes, we recorded all of that for every fish. And so for the shark, we had to be careful. We had to make sure we had our hard hats on, our gloves when they would use the crane to lift the sharks towards the boat. The shark didn't come all the way onto the boat, but they were right there on the edge in the basket and trying to do it in a timely manner because the... You want to put the shark back in the water.

0:07:48.5 JS: Yeah, that seems like it would be kind of dicey right at the moment that they bring it onto the edge of the boat. Like was that kind of the...

0:07:56.8 MH: Yes, there was one time I had to step back because my job was to tag the shark. So as I was trying to tag the shark, I thought about, "Oh, my gosh! It feels like I'm gonna hurt the shark." So as I was sticking the knife into a shark to make a hole, to then put the tag in, the shark flipped over. So we all jumped back. But the guys were really good, the fishermen, and making sure the shark flipped back over and we all backed up but the guys knew how to handle it and we got right back to work.

0:08:28.3 JS: Just a quick note here. What Maronda was doing was completely standard procedure for tagging sharks and was not harming them. How big was the shark?

0:08:37.1 MH: Oh, gosh! It was probably about eight feet.

0:08:40.7 JS: Oh, okay. Not like... Right.

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0:08:43.3 MH: It was not a baby shark. It was a big shark.

0:08:45.7 JS: Wow. And so these are 12-hour days that you're doing this as well. So it's not like you go out for an hour with your friends and come back. This is a long day of work.

0:08:56.9 MH: 12. Yes. So we had two shifts. You either work from 12:00 PM to 12:00 AM or from 12:00 AM to 12:00 PM. My shift was 12:00 PM to 12:00 AM. So it does sound like a long day, but as a teacher, I'm kind of used to long days anyway. And it kind of worked out because we were one hour behind Atlanta. So since my shift started at 12:00 PM, at 5:00 in the morning, I was already up. So by 8:00 AM, I would log in with my students and I was able to do work with them. So I'd go run and eat breakfast once I got them started. But I was able to pretty much work online with my students as well as work a 12:00 PM to 12:00 AM shift, so. [chuckle]

0:09:44.5 JS: That is so bonkers.

0:09:46.6 MH: [chuckle] It actually worked out because my students work was online and there's so many different online resources that allow you to communicate. So if the students emailed me, it would pop up on my phone and I can respond to them or I could log into the platform they were using and they were able to interview my shipmates. They can ask me questions and I could show them the ocean 'cause some of them have never been and they could see what was going on. So that was really exciting to be able to utilize the resources. Right then, it was real time.

0:10:20.9 JS: Yeah. This is amazing. And this is why you needed the Wi-Fi.

0:10:26.6 MH: I definitely needed the Wi-Fi. [chuckle]

0:10:29.3 JS: And it sounded like not only were you communicating with students, you were actually like teaching lessons on the boat.

0:10:36.3 MH: I was able to do the attendance, I could communicate with parents, I was able to do it all, and I really appreciated the Wi-Fi. That was my savior and I liked that the kids were able to ask me questions or I could go ahead and show them pictures right then, or they could see that I was rocking back and forth on the boat. 'Cause I think one time we hit a wave and I bumped into the wall and the students said, "Are you okay?" I said, "I'm gonna be alright. I just gotta bend my knees a little more." But it was pretty exciting or I think I was talking to them and some dolphins came by, so one of my classes was able to see the dolphins in the water.

0:11:15.0 JS: Wow! What kind of things did the students ask your shipmates?

0:11:15.5 MH: They wanted to know what their personal life was like or how long were they out at sea? Did they miss their family? They definitely wanted to know like how much they got paid or what their jobs entailed. They were pretty curious.

0:11:33.4 JS: And one of the purposes of the Teacher at Sea program is to sort of have that experience with educators, so that they can bring it back to their students. But you just gave it to them right there.

0:11:39.6 MH: Right there.

0:11:42.0 JS: And you know, Atlanta's somewhat landlocked so maybe like ocean research or oceanography or working on the water isn't necessarily the first career choice they would think of, but you just brought it right to them.

0:11:53.5 MH: And I like the opportunity that they had 'cause you don't know what's gonna inspire the next person. So being able to see the environment, be a part of the environment, it opened their eyes, too. So I don't think it's so far fetched for them. For them to be able to talk to my shipmates, I thought that was cool too, 'cause they could have easily said no. But they enjoyed it. They even told me that it... Sometimes when you're doing something so much, it becomes kind of mundane or you don't think it's that important until someone else reminds you of how important your job is or they remind you of how exciting it is.

0:12:29.0 JS: Yeah. And so this experience Teacher at Sea wasn't the first time that you've kind of gone above and beyond for your students. Can you give us a sense of some of the other projects that you've tackled?

0:12:42.1 MH: So one of the experiences that I had that's similar to this NOAA Teacher at Sea Program was through the Georgia Aquarium. It was called Rivers to Reefs. So we started in Atlanta and we were sampling the water quality in Atlanta. We went down towards Macon, Georgia, High Falls, we went to Savannah, Georgia, we went to Sapelo Island and Skidaway Island. And then we went out to Gray's Reef. We learned so much in that week and I was able to create lessons from that and take that back to the classroom and work with my students. And I found out about so many other resources. Like I didn't know that Skidaway Island had a Marine Biology Center down there. So I planned a few trips for my students to go and they learned so much in just a few days that they had never done in their biology classes. Being able to dissect squid or analyze the planta, just scooping out water and looking at what you caught underneath the microscope, analyzing the different types of fish, how they're shaped, what they eat, all of that. I learned about NOAA through the Georgia Aquarium. So I just say, "Well let's go check it out. Let's go see." [chuckle]

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0:13:52.0 JS: And so you mentioned when you were in college, you were going for...

0:14:00.9 MH: My degree is in mathematics and computer science, but I also was interested in marine biology. I just didn't want to change my major.

0:14:09.8 JS: And so where did this love of biology and environmental science come from?

0:14:14.4 MH: Oh, gosh! From a young age. I mean, as a kid I did a lot of road trips with my family and even in high school, my teachers used to take us to Savannah for math competitions, but we would also go to the beach. And coming from Atlanta, where there is no beach, that was the highlight of our year to go to Savannah, to the beach. And before the internet, when I was ye old, we stayed outside all day anyway. And as a teenager, we used to go to the horse stables on Sundays and the Cowboys would teach us about that. So I just kind of grew up doing a lot of environmental things. We did a lot of community service, whether it was my mom, my dad, or my school.

0:14:58.6 JS: And so you just didn't wanna change your major?

0:15:00.5 MH: I didn't. So I think because math came easy to me, and I did a lot of math competitions, but I loved the environmental things. So when I wasn't doing math, I would still go to the Marine Biology Department and see what projects they had going on and I would participate. Although I didn't get a grade for it, I still would participate.

[laughter]

0:15:20.1 JS: You would just go and do the projects?

0:15:21.9 MH: I sure would. If they were taking the boat out, I would go with them and I would collect the specimens and label everything, too. [chuckle]

0:15:29.4 JS: You're such a go-getter.

0:15:30.8 MH: You learn so much more when it's fun, so. [laughter]

0:15:33.0 JS: That's so great. So, alright, so what's next? What do you... What's your next horizon?

0:15:38.3 MH: So impact projects, is the thing and I kind of told the kids I want them to get into their environment. So I partnered up with DeKalb County Beautification Project. So they'll do projects, where they clean up their own neighborhoods. So they'll provide like the gloves, the trash bags, the safety vests. We just provide the people and we'll organize cleanup days. This weekend, we're looking forward to going to the Chattahoochee River. We're gonna help clean up a part of the creek, Proctor Creek that leads into the Chattahoochee. So they're excited about that. And then we're gonna go down to Skidaway Island next semester. It's gonna be an overnight trip, and they'll get to dissect squid, they'll get to take the boat out, they'll do some trolling, they'll do all the projects we can and try to fit it in a few days while they're down there.

0:16:34.2 JS: And so many of these projects that you've taken your students on, you just bootstrapped them, you raise the money yourself.

0:16:40.9 MH: Yeah, when you hear the problem is you don't have money, it makes me sad. And so I say, "Well, I mean, when I was in school, we would just get together and raise money," whether it was... We would have bake sales, car washes, we would do something so donuts. We would come up with a something to raise the money because our parents just didn't have it. And it's still that... It's worse now. A lot of my parents don't have it. So I found out about a program at the stadium, where your organization can get together as a team and you can run concessions. So once we started working concessions at, say the Georgia Tech Games, the Falcons game, whatever, if there's an event at the stadium, you can get a contract and you can raise money. So we'll spend the first half of the year raising money.

0:17:31.4 MH: So when it comes to spring and summer, if we wanna go to Italy, if we wanna go to Greece, if we wanna go to Egypt, now we can go. And that's how we've been able to do it. So when people hear me talking, I say, "Oh, I took the kids to Costa Rica. We went to Guatemala," they're like, "What? I haven't even been to those places." So it sounds amazing, but once we figured out how to solve the problem of, "I don't have money," we got together and we were able to raise the money and we... I use the Barter system. When I take the kids camping because they're willing to volunteer and help clean at the campsite, they don't have to pay for the cabin. We just pay for the transportation there. But we can raise money for gas, we can raise money for food. So I love that part because it taught me a lot, too.

0:18:21.1 JS: And so what are some ways that your students have sort of taken these experiences and run with them?

0:18:27.4 MH: I would say, for the ones who are willing to write about it and capture the moments and add the pictures, it's been great because for scholarship opportunities, they end up being on the top of the list because not only do they have the grades in class, now they're showing that they're doing a lot outside of the classroom. So I have several students who won awards and gotten more opportunities because they've been a part of participating in these impact projects. I know, I had one student, she ended up being the President of the Youth Foundation for the United Way. I have some that got the Bill Gates scholarships. They've gotten a lot of great opportunities. And to get a full ride academic scholarship says a lot. And I know the parents are like, "Thank you so much." And I keep telling them, "Yes, I'm glad they got the grace, but they gotta do more outside of the classroom." And so when I bump into some of those kids now that they're grown and they'll say, "Oh, you won't believe this." And they tell me some of the community service projects that they continue to participate in or it inspired them to do more for their environment. It lets me know, "Okay, keep doing what you're doing, keep doing it." Because that's the objective, to get them to be stewards of their environment.

0:19:45.3 JS: Maronda Hastie, thanks so much.

0:19:46.1 MH: Thank you. Thank you. I really appreciate it, and I can't wait for the next opportunity.

0:19:52.5 JS: Maronda Hastie teaches algebra, geometry, and pre-calc at Dr. Ronald E. McNair High School in Atlanta, Georgia. And is a proud alum of the Teacher at Sea Program. To learn more about Teacher at Sea, including how you can apply, the program accepts a wide variety of educators from kindergarten through college level. Look forward at our website, fisheries.noaa.gov. I'm John Sheehan, and this has been Dive In with NOAA Fisheries.