WEEK 24: VERMONT

A Life-long Science Educator Connects Vermont with the Arctic…via the Arctic Ocean

The Vermont State Fossil is an Arctic Whale…

Yes indeed, Vermont’s official state fossil is the Charlotte Whale, named for the town in which it was discovered in 1849, one mile from Lake Champlain. It was later identified as an approximately 11,000-year-old beluga whale that had lived in the Champlain Sea, a temporary inlet of the Atlantic Ocean created by retreating glaciers during the close of the last ice age. One section of Lake Champlain is known even today as the Inland Sea. The fossil is just one of Vermont’s many unique connections to the Arctic.

While living and working in Vermont for over 40 years has not made me a real “Vermonter” (that takes generations) my connections to this beautiful state run deep. I taught science here for 33 of my 39 years of teaching primarily at the high school level. During my career, I endeavored to relate the science I was teaching in the classroom to the real world, particularly to those people and places both in and outside Vermont that were meaningful to my students.

While living and teaching close to Lake Champlain made many of those connections easy, traveling and working in the Arctic allowed me to serve as the link for my students to an area with which most of them had no connection. I was able to bring the Arctic to them directly through my journal postings while on board Arctic research cruises, and by filling my biology curriculum with examples from the Arctic and with stories of real scientists at work. Sharing my experiences with colleagues in my K-12 district also helped bring the Arctic and scientists’ work there to countless additional students.

“No, my husband is not going with me on my Arctic research cruise.” I repeated that phrase dozens of times over the ten year period in which I participated in eight research cruises to the Arctic, mostly to my friends who thought I was heading off on something akin to an Alaska pleasure cruise. I am a science teacher who has always loved travel both on my own and with students.

The only thing the research cruises I embarked on had in common with pleasure cruises were that both took place on ships amidst some of the most stunning scenery and animal life in the world. And while research cruises can definitely offer enjoyable moment of sightseeing (when you remember to look up from your scientific work), more often they are characterized — as I quickly learned during my first one to through the Bering Sea and into the Chukchi and Beaufort Seas on board a six-week cruise on the USCGC Healy in 2002 — by intense and grueling periods of work and take place under often difficult circumstances, in cramped quarters, on board working vessels where science goes on 24–7.

My first experience in the Arctic took place in 2002. I was selected to participate in the TEA program — Teachers Experiencing Antarctica and the Arctic, which sponsors research experiences in the polar regions for U.S. elementary and secondary school teachers. Through TEA I was paired with Dr. Jackie Grebmeier, a internationally-recognized Arctic researcher who studies marine ecosystem dynamics, especially as related to Arctic megafauna like walruses. Today, she is a respected research professor and a biological oceanographer at the Chesapeake Biological Laboratory at the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science. Her work took her through the Bering Sea and into the Beaufort Sea, Chukchi Sea, and adjoining Russian waters of the Arctic. I accompanied her on this journey.

I was on board the Russian ship Professor Khromov for two (2009 and 2012) of the U.S.-Russian collaborative multidisciplinary (biological, geological, chemical and physical oceanographic sampling) missions as a part of the RUSALCA (Russian American Long Term Census of the Arctic) that is documenting the long-term ecosystem health of the Pacific Arctic ecosystem through periodic research cruises that visit both U.S. and Russian waters. Both cruises included more than 40 scientists from the United States, Russia, and Korea. Our own benthic team worked closely with Russian scientists who were also collecting sediment samples for research.

During each cruise, I worked directly with Jackie, observed and interviewed other researchers on board, and posted daily journals and photos. The work was often difficult, taking place under adverse conditions — cramped “lab” and work spaces, deck work in heavy swells and bad weather, and long periods of little sleep when stations came only a few hours apart. It was always tiring, yet I often think about it. I miss the intensity and the raw, incredible beauty that surrounded the ship on a daily basis.

In 2010 I participated in my 5th research cruise on board the Canadian ship Sir Wilfrid Laurier. I kept a journal, which can be viewed here. In one entry I wrote about a conversation I had with the Ice Observer. He wryly described himself as the “last Ice Observer” because his job was to help direct the ship through ice. The ice cover is decreasing in general and in addition there is significantly less strong old ice that would make passage difficult for a ship. Much of the old ice is now soft and rotten, pockmarked with holes. Although the ice cover returns each year it’s primarily 1st year ice that forms later and moves out earlier. When I asked him if he felt that the changes he was seeing were human caused he said simply, “definitely.”

While the TEA program has ended, another program, PolarTREC (Teachers and Researchers Exploring and Collaborating), is carrying out the valuable work of sending teachers to the Arctic and Antarctica. You can check out the teachers’ stories and blogs here.

Beyond the work of teachers who bring the Arctic into Vermont’s classrooms so that they can better understand the relevance of the region, there are other connections as well. Although the beluga whale is an Arctic species, it can also be found in the sub-Arctic, but I prefer to think of the Charlotte whale as Vermont’s direct connection to the Arctic species. I’ve also hiked to the top of Camel’s Hump — Vermont’s third-highest mountain — and seen a small section of alpine tundra vegetation. Yes, here in Vermont we have little “pockets” of tundra, as The New York Times pointed out in it’s story some years ago, A Pocket of Alpine Tundra Nestled Atop New England.

A good friend of mine has also photographed several Arctic birds, including the snowy owl, that pass through Vermont. The snowy owl was once a rare site but has been seen recently in greater numbers as they expand their range to find food in a changing Arctic climate.

Vermont is a tiny state with plenty of economic reasons to do its part to tackle climate change. Two multi-million dollar industries, skiing and maple syrup, are totally climate dependent. Vermont produces 44% of the maple syrup in the United States and there is a “direct correlation” between the sweetness reduction of the sap (4% sugar 50 years ago and 2% today) and temperature rise since 1970, as discussed by the National Geographic’s article, Global Warming Pushes Maple Trees, Syrup to the Brink. We in Vermont understand climate change directly impacts us and many are taking steps to reduce our carbon footprint. Burlington, Vermont’s largest city, recently became the first city in the country to use 100% renewable energy for its electric needs.

I gained a greater appreciation for the connection of local actions on global climate change when I visited Little Diomede Island in the Bering Strait, where fewer than 150 live on a small area of the rocky coast. The residents hunt beluga and bowhead whales, seals, walrus, and polar bears. Additionally, they supplement their diet with fish, crabs, local wild greens and vegetables; this subsistence life style is threatened by shifting ice patterns. Life on Diomede is a stark contrast to my life in Vermont but some aspects are the same. I was welcomed by a group of young children who happily took me on a tour of their village, and I spent time petting a few of the local dogs. When speaking with a woman I had met on previous visits, she commented that she had been to Anchorage and all the stores there, but she’s always happy to be home.

While I’ve retired from the classroom, I stay involved with teaching and science through my work as the Teacher Leader for the Teacher Advisory Council of the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine. The National Academies understand the imperative of communicating what is happening in the Arctic with the wider population, and have done an excellent job with the 2015 publication from the National Research Council of the National Academies, Arctic Matters; The Global Connection to Changes in the Arctic.

The book begins its “Global Impacts” chapter with “What Happens in the Arctic Doesn’t Stay in the Arctic.” Part of being an Arctic nation is realizing that we’re only one piece of the puzzle; we’re part of a global Arctic community. Throughout the Arctic temperatures are rising, sea and land ice are melting, permafrost is thawing, Arctic ecosystems are changing, and life is changing for the people who live there.

Explore the Arctic Matters Web Interactive to see the Global Connection to Changes in the Arctic and download Arctic Matters as a free PDF file.