High school students learn the basics on the UWM research vessel on Lake Michigan
Throughout the year, the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee research vessel Neeskay takes researchers out to study the changing ecosystem of Lake Michigan.
Last week, the Commission started with a different agenda.
Captain Max Morgan welcomed fourteen high school students from Milwaukee who were eager to get their hands dirty doing basic research on the Great Lakes. The students were participating in UWM’s Watershed Expedition Program, a week-long program designed to increase knowledge about the impact of water on the economy, recreation, and public health.
Samir Qureshi, teaching, learning and technology specialist in the UWM School of Freshwater Sciences, said the goal was to give students hands-on knowledge of the Neeskay, a converted Army ship equipped with a freshwater laboratory.
Morgan took the boat to Milwaukee’s outer harbor, where the water was about 25 feet deep, and the students split into three groups. Led by Qureshi, they took turns lowering a large net into the water to collect microscopic organisms.
“We want to see what’s swimming around in the lake and what’s living there,” Qureshi said. “There’s a lot of life in the lake just below the surface.”
As they pulled out the net, they detached a container from its base and poured its contents into a clear plastic bottle. The greenish-brown liquid elicited a mixture of curious expressions and disgusted grimaces from the teenagers. Later, the students examined the contents under a microscope. Qureshi said he expected to find phytoplankton – tiny algae – and a few zooplankton – microscopic animals – in the water.
Next, they attached something that looked like a metal clam, called a Ponar sampler, to the end of a winch and lowered it into the sandy depths of the lake. The Ponar sampler helps scientists see what’s on the bottom of the lake. It was invented in the Great Lakes and got its name from the first letters of its inventors’ last names: Powers, Ogle, Nobel, Ayers and Robertson.
When the mussel shell was pulled back on board, the students opened it on a sieve, from which poured a pile of thick black sediment. The students carefully hosed off the mud a few times, revealing a few mussels, wriggling worms, and even a piece of plastic.
In other parts of the lake, a Ponar sample would detect invasive zebra mussels that are destroying the lake’s ecosystem. However, a sample in the outer harbor yielded few shells because zebra mussels cannot survive in sandy bottoms.
At the back of the boat, Jim Lubner spoke to the students about light. Lubner is an associate professor emeritus in the School of Freshwater Sciences and now volunteers in community outreach. Phytoplankton, which use sunlight as an energy source, form the basis of the lake’s food chain. They are affected by how far light penetrates below the surface.
Lubner showed the students how to use a Secchi disk to determine how deep light penetrates. The black and white disk is attached to a long measuring tape. By repeatedly lowering it into the water and marking the point where the disk becomes invisible, you can calculate the Secchi depth. It is the measure of how much light penetrates the water.
In another part of the boat, the students crowded into the wheelhouse with Morgan and Brandon Fiew, a research vessel engineer. The captain showed them how he steers the boat and stays in touch with other vessels on the water. Morgan, Fiew and the others on the boat also talked about their unusual career paths and how they came to their current jobs on the Neeskay.
Fiew said he wanted to “convey the message that there are many paths to science.”
Thomas Reisel, a sophomore at Dominican High School, said he enjoyed the hands-on research experience, especially the Secchi disk experiment.
The other students also seemed interested, although it was sometimes difficult to tell since they were teenagers after all.
At the end, as the boat headed back to shore, the students were given the opportunity to wander around the boat on their own. Some went off on their own, others climbed up into the pilot’s cabin. They just seemed to want to enjoy the view.
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