A Teacher's Voyage Connects Science, Students and Family
A Facebook post last fall led Churchill High School teacher Stacey Morris to an unexpected summer adventure: 16 days aboard a federal research vessel, working night shifts at sea to catalog fish caught in a survey of Pacific Coast populations.
The voyage gave Morris a firsthand look at the science behind sustainable commercial fishing—and an opportunity to reconnect with an earlier chapter of her family history. Her father was a longtime high school biology teacher who specialized in marine biology, and decades earlier, she had joined him on a sabbatical excursion off the coasts of Australia, New Zealand, and Fiji.
Working daily alongside marine scientists, Morris got a hint of what her professional life in education, now in its 27th year, may have been like if she’d followed more closely in her father’s footsteps. She returned from the voyage invigorated by the enrichment opportunities available to fellow educators, and also by the prospects for students interested in careers in science and public service. She plans to incorporate her experience in lessons to better engage students in marine science.
“This was my little late in life, what would it be like to be a scientist,” said Morris, a Spanish teacher and previous AVID teacher at Churchill.
One of the last things Morris’ father told her before he died last spring at age 97 was that he wished he could have accompanied her on the trip. Morris was one of just 11 educators that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) selected for this year’s Teacher at Sea program.
Morris set out to sea with the crew members aboard the 208-foot Reuben Lasker on July 26. During the day, as Morris slept, the ship used its advanced sonar to locate schools of fish. At night, Morris worked from 8 p.m. to 8 a.m., primarily helping sort through the trawls of fish the ship brought aboard in its specialized nets for the survey. The data collected through the survey of some of the Pacific Coast’s most common open-sea fish species, including anchovy, hake, mackerel and sardine, help support sustainable commercial harvests, according to NOAA.
One of her favorite jobs was "mammal watch,” surveying the area using night-vision technology to ensure large sea creatures such as whales, dolphins and sea lions didn’t get caught in the large nets before they were raised.
“Seeing whales with the moon over the water was a beautiful sight!” she wrote in a blog post during her trip.
The odd hours, hard labor and smelly work were balanced by the delicious food, the camaraderie of the tight-knit crew and its shared passion for science.
“Overall, it was an awesome experience,” she said.
Throughout the voyage, Morris often reflected on the sea adventures she and her father had experienced—his decades ago, hers now. She was thinking of him one morning following a long night of work as she watched the sun peek over the horizon.
In that moment, a whale surfaced nearby and spouted.