— Filed by  Seth Voorhees for Spectrum News 1

Rochester, NY, July 25, 2023 — A Lake Ontario cruise was no summer vacation for several teachers who spent a week on board an Environmental Protection Agency ship, testing water quality on the lake. The voyage plays an important role in the future health of not just Lake Ontario, but all of the Great Lakes.

When Nate Drag walked along the dock at the Port of Rochester, he was headed toward a week-long adventure on board the Lake Guardian. He wasn’t alone.

“It is very exciting,” said Drag, a Great Lakes literary specialist with New York Sea Grant. “And there's so much to learn.”

The Lake Guardian is a science ship owned by the EPA. Fifteen teachers spent a week on board the research ship, taking water samples and collecting data.

“I’ve always been interested in science,” said Tucker Ruderman, a teacher at Rochester School of Inquiry #58. “And learning more about how authentic science happens in the world, and how scientists do their jobs."

During the Shipboard Science Workshop, teachers spent one week on the EPA research vessel, which goes out every spring and summer and does sampling across all five Great Lakes. One lake is featured every five years, on a rotating basis.

“I mean, they're all interconnected,” said Kristin TePas, of the Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant. “It's one big ecosystem.“

The work is important, say researchers. Data collected during the weeklong voyage will help determine policy, and could help scientists pinpoint and solve problems with water quality and issues like toxic algae blooms. 

“I’ve heard from teachers that it's like Space Camp for aquatic science teachers,” said TePas.

The research serves other purposes. Teachers will take what they learned and experienced back to their respective classrooms.

“I’m hoping that I can make some of that more relevant to my students,” said Tara Spitzer-List, a science teacher at Virtual Academy of Rochester. “So many kids grow up here in Rochester, they know the Genesee River or they know Charlotte Beach, but they really have no idea that the resources that we have.”

“I really hope to inspire kids, especially kids in the city, to kind of be able to dream of doing work like this,” said Ruderman. “Because it should be opportunities that everyone gets to do.”

Opportunities, in an ecosystem that’s critical in so many ways. With a ship full of teachers and scientists — making sure its future stays healthy.

“The Guardian has been going out for years,” said Drag. “We’ve been studying the Great Lakes for a long time but there's always more to learn. It’s so dynamic and complex. I just want to get people excited about the lakes, and excited about science, and share this opportunity.”

Spectrum News is available on channels 1 and 200 exclusively for Spectrum customers in the Central New York region including Syracuse, Ithaca, Utica, Watertown, Binghamton, Elmira and surrounding areas in upstate New York.

For more on the 2023 Shipboard Science Workshop, including insights from the educators onboard, see NYSG's pre-workshop press release, "Educators to Learn from Scientists and NY Sea Grant Aboard Ship on Lake Ontario". There's also NYSG's post-media analysis news item, "On YouTube, On Air: Teachers Learn Aboard the Lake Guardian".

Additional video and audio clips related to this workshop can be found below ... 




More Info: New York Sea Grant

New York Sea Grant (NYSG), a cooperative program of Cornell University and the State University of New York (SUNY), is one of 34 university-based programs under the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Sea Grant College Program.

Since 1971, NYSG has represented a statewide network of integrated research, education and extension services promoting coastal community economic vitality, environmental sustainability and citizen awareness and understanding about the State’s marine and Great Lakes resources.

Through NYSG’s efforts, the combined talents of university scientists and extension specialists help develop and transfer science-based information to many coastal user groups—businesses and industries, federal, state and local government decision-makers and agency managers, educators, the media and the interested public.

The program maintains Great Lakes offices at Cornell University, SUNY Buffalo, SUNY Oswego and the Wayne County Cooperative Extension office in Newark. In the State's marine waters, NYSG has offices at Stony Brook University and with Cornell Cooperative Extension of Nassau County on Long Island, Brooklyn College and Cornell Cooperative Extension in NYC and Kingston in the Hudson Valley.

For updates on Sea Grant activities: www.nyseagrant.org has RSS, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube links. NYSG offers a free e-list sign up via www.nyseagrant.org/nycoastlines for its flagship publication, NY Coastlines/Currents, which is published quarterly.