Wisconsin Sea Grant Fellowship Podcasts

Tis' the season of fellowships! Check out these three audio podcasts featuring the Wisconsin Sea Grant director and two Wisconsin Sea Grant Knauss Fellows sharing their thoughts and insights on the fellowships and fellowship process!

Wisconsin Sea Grant: On Fellowships

Adapting to rising tides in Bay Area parks

As a NOAA Coastal Management Fellow with the San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission, I work on sea level rise adaptation through the Adapting to Rising Tides (ART) Project. We work with all sectors of local government including cities, transportation agencies and utility providers but my work focuses on parks and recreation departments.

Leslie Knope jokes aside, shoreline parks are the literal and figurative frontline for sea level rise. These parks provide recreation opportunities for millions of Bay Area residents and are heavily used by windsurfers, swimmers, walkers, bikers and picnickers.  Park visitors can learn about sea level rise impacts and adaptation through formal and informal education.  During my fellowship, I have worked with park interpretive staff to develop sea level rise curriculum for field trips and adult education.  

Shoreline parks are exposed to sea level rise impacts and sensitive to increased erosion and salt water flooding.  East Bay Regional Park District is spending millions of dollars this year to replenish sand at Crown Beach Memorial State Park (see image).  Without expensive maintenance, the recreation and shoreline protection benefits of this park will be lost.  My fellowship project is focused on understanding park-specific vulnerabilities and developing sustainable adaptation strategies.  I am lucky to work on an experience team of coastal  planners-they are all jealous that my site visits are at parks instead of to wastewater treatment plants!

For more information on the ART project, please visit www.adaptingtorisingtides.org

Maggie Wenger

Coastal Management Fellow

(8/2012 – 8/2014)

maggiew@bcdc.ca.gov

So long, and thanks for all the fish...

(Apologies for the Douglas Adams reference)

Hard to believe two years have gone by since I started the Coastal Management fellowship.  I had a valuable experience working with the NY Department of State (NY DOS) Oceans and Great Lakes Program.  I had the opportunity to work with lots of data on fish, marine mammal, and seabird distributions, and I was able to learn and apply various statistical modeling and GIS techniques to help "squeeze" more information out of limited data.  It's gratifying to see that some of the resulting maps made their way into the recently-released NY DOS Offshore Atlantic Study, available at http://www.dos.ny.gov/press/2013/atlantic7-10.html.  This study will help NY identify valuable offshore resources, for both recreation and industry, and intelligently plan for competing uses in an increasingly crowded offshore environment.

I also enjoyed working closely with coastal managers to help translate technical products for public audiences, while at the same time creating analyses that were supportive of public needs.  For example, I helped synthesize maps of commercial and recreational fishing intensity as depicted by actual stakeholders.   The fellowship program provided funds to present some of this work at local and regional conferences, where I was able to meet people from state, federal, and private sectors and gather a variety of perspectives on coastal science and policy.  All in all, I practiced interpersonal and technical skills, made valuable contacts, and created products in concert with my fellow Oceans and Great Lakes staff members that I'm definitely proud of.  I'm very thankful to Michigan Sea Grant, the NOAA Coastal Services Center, and NY State for providing this opportunity, and I plan on building on it for the rest of my career!

Zach Hecht-Leavitt

NOAA Coastal Management Fellow

(8/2011 – 8/2013)

zhechtle@gmail.com

A great learning experience

Six months in to my Knauss Fellowship and I’m still just as excited as I was on the first day of work. But time is passing very quickly.

The first few months were spent just figuring out how the Office of Marine Conservation at the Department of State functions and learning a wealth of acronyms that sometimes still seems like a foreign language.

At work, I’ve been learning quite a bit about the management of international fisheries, the implementation of foreign aspects of US domestic law, the Global Environment Facility, marine pollution and aquaculture. I also had a chance to attend a five-nation fisheries negotiation, where delegations agreed on the need to collaborate on scientific research and reached consensus on conservation and management measures.

The fellowship also provides a wealth of learning opportunities outside of work. I’ve attended Congressional hearings – including seeing Titanic director James Cameron testify on the need for deep sea exploration – briefings on the latest science and policy advancements – blue carbon anyone? – and countless after work receptions.

Two highlights were getting behind-the-scenes tours of the U.S. Naval Observatory and Natural History Museum. The observatory maintains official time for the United States and fellows had a chance to see Saturn and its rings through the observatory’s telescope. The museum has several oceans-focused rooms and we got a glimpse at some of the exciting research that occurs in the laboratories in the non-public portions of the building.

There’s so much going on, in fact, that it can be hard to focus on exactly what you want to accomplish by the time the fellowship ends. That’s my next task, and I’ve started to pursue some new interests and get involved in a few exciting projects. More on those later.

Dave Gershman

Knauss Marine Policy Fellow
(2/2013 – 2/2014)
GershmanDJ@state.gov

We will conserve only what we love

In the end, we will conserve only what we love.
We will love only what we understand.
We will understand only what we are taught.

-Baba Dioum, Senegalese poet

Through my fellowship, I recently attended a meeting in East Lansing that was hosted by the Great Lakes Stewardship Initiative and the Great Lakes Fishery Trust. The conference brought together educators and outreach coordinators from across the Great Lakes region and focused on one key theme: Place-based education. Now, I had had an abstract, opaque definition of this term floating around my head for some time, but had not yet gained a firm grip on it. Truth be told, I had not made much of an effort to understand how place-based education differed from typical, run-of-the-mill education, or why it was important. That is, until I moved back to the Great Lakes area after spending a few years on the east coast…but I’ll get to this shortly.

So, what is place-based education (PBE)? PBE “focuses learning within the local community of a student. It provides learners with a path for becoming active citizens and stewards of the environment and place where they live” (Antioch University, Center for Place-based Education). Okay, this makes sense. What may be more of a challenge, and what is embedded in the definition and philosophy of place-based education is this: a sense of place. This is a key element of environmental stewardship and of PBE. By sitting in on talks and exercises with the rest of the meeting participants, I learned that a sense of place stems from ‘place attachment,’ which stems from both ‘place dependence’ and ‘place identity.’ Think of place dependence and place identity as our functional and emotional connections, respectively, to an area where we reside. I also learned that building a sense of place is less often the direct focus of environmental and place-based education than issues like service-learning and community engagement. Now, these surely are important components of an educational model. But, if we (teachers, informal educators, scientists, etc.) can enhance our focus on helping a student to discover his or her own sense of place, we likely will continue to count stewardship among the outcomes in addition to community service and academic excellence. Now we’re on to something!

All of this has me wondering: what are our functional and emotional connections to our places? How often do we take these for granted? And, following Baba Dioum’s conviction, how can we ensure that the youth of today gain a deep enough understanding of and appreciation for their local environment that they will be moved to protect it? These are questions that I have neither all of the answers to, nor the time or space to fully address. I will offer a few thoughts, however. Over the past several years I have had many opportunities to educate students and communities on different aspects of the environment. Much of this has taken place in lower Chesapeake Bay, where there are distinct and obvious connections to both the fresh- and saltwater habitats, as well as to the iconic species that define that region: the blue crab (Callinectes sapidus), saltmarsh cordgrass (Spartina alterniflora), the eastern oyster (Crassostrea virginica), and others. These are ingrained in the ideals and lifestyles of local tidewater Virginians. As I observed these connections with an outside perspective, I found myself drawn to the bonds that those communities have with their ecosystem(s) and the layers of history that underlie those relationships. And, throughout this process, I was vaguely aware of a couple of things: 1) the people, landscapes, and ecosystems of tidewater Virginia and Chesapeake Bay were interesting and worthy of study and protection; 2) this was not my place.

Toward the end of my graduate degree in Virginia, I was consumed with thoughts of the Great Lakes – of home. As I mentioned, my return to the region ignited in me not only a desire to more fully grasp the concept of PBE, but also a strong awareness of my own sense of place and how this was instilled in me over time. So, what was it that drew me back? Why do I associate so greatly with these freshwater seas? Partly, it is because I want to study them. The Great Lakes basin is a rich, complex ecosystem that, until abandoning terrestrial ecology to delve into marine science out east, I thought little of exploring in much (professional) detail. Partly, it is because I was bred to love them. These coasts are where I swam for the first time, dug in the sand and mud, discovered my first bivalves, caught my first fish, and rolled down my first (seemingly endless and frighteningly steep) sand dune. It is also because I was taught to love them. I hiked the forests on school field trips, collected and examined countless jars of pond water, and pressed the leaves of native trees into art. We stand in the midst of one endless, freshwater science experiment; an open-ended ecological investigation; a living mural of some of the most picturesque places on the planet. I came back to the Great Lakes because I love them. I love them because I understand them. I understand them because their importance was both educationally and emotionally reinforced.

Living in Michigan for 23 years before moving away, my awareness for my own sense of place was buried, so much a part of me that I did not know how strong the connection was. However, my sense of stewardship for my place is sentient and energetic – a creature of its own. With or without an awareness of why, this has never wavered. Periodically, I question whether or not kids today have a solid appreciation for the lakes, rivers, and forests of this region. Is their sense of place at risk of being underdeveloped or overlooked? I think not. At the PBE Conference, aside from two refreshing days of ‘sharing’ games and arts and crafts, I gained two days worth of perspective on just what it takes – and what our formal and informal educators are doing – to implant in today’s youth the knowledge that this is their place. This is our place. If we stay on the path being paved by my fellow meeting attendees and those who came before them, I happily predict that the youth of today and tomorrow will come to love, understand, connect with – and fight to protect – the Great Lakes ecosystem well into the future.

Happy holidays (wherever your place may be)!
-Cassie
GLC Sea Grant fellow, 2011-2012