SITKA, ALASKA
Ellen Chenoweth is a research technician in Sitka, who works for marine biologist Jan Straley. Chenoweth is also the coach of “Sitka Team Fish: Cold-Blooded Competitors.”
“If you imagine something like Jeopardy, except you’ve got teams of four students (you can have up to five on a team, but only four play at a time), and they each have buzzers. The moderator reads off these multiple-choice questions, and they buzz-in and answer. There are a lot of complicated rules with scoring and how it all works. It’s really a lot of fun.”
The National Ocean Sciences Bowl was started in 1998, by the Consortium for Ocean Leadership and the National Marine Educator’s Association. There are fifteen regional competitions, and then a national finals in the spring. Winners can take home substantial scholarship money for college.
But this is not just science trivia. The Alaska Tsunami Ocean Bowl also requires a twenty-page research paper, and a twenty-minute oral presentation. Chenoweth says Alaska is the only region with this requirement.
“It was thought that just doing the quiz competition was giving kids the idea that doing science was just memorizing facts. So they wanted to incorporate a research paper that would have kids see that a lot of this stuff is still being learned.”
The research paper and presentation count for fifty-percent of a team’s overall total. In 2010, the top paper was from a team in Selawick, which authored The Effects of Open Landfills on Arctic Communities.
Because Sitka is fielding a team for the first time, they won’t be required to submit a paper to participate. And although they can still win the quiz, they won’t be able to advance to the National Bowl. Sitka High freshman Connor Fish doesn’t seem bothered by that. He was looking for a different way to learn science.
“Well I’ve always kind of liked Oceanography. So when I heard about this in school, I jumped at the opportunity.”
Fish and his teammates: Jonte Oberreuter-Valentine from Sitka High School, and Michaiah Mullins, Mariah Moore, Anneliese Moll from Mt. Edgecumbe, are giving up time on Saturdays to work with the study guides provided by the Ocean Bowl, as well as practice with the buzzers.
Most ninth-graders would rather do almost anything else on their weekends than study Oceanography. Connor Fish is not among them.
“It will better educate me on what’s really important to Sitka, because we live on the coast. The ocean is really important here. It’s a good thing to learn.”
Competitors have to prep on a wide variety of subjects: geography, biology, and even ocean policy. It’s clear that guesswork is not a good strategy in this competition. Chenoweth offers a sample question.
“This is a geology question: What’s the main mineral in a coral reef? W – halite, X – calcite, Y – gypsum, or Z – feldspar?” While reefs of different kinds can be comprised of many different minerals, coral reefs are mainly made from calcite.
Chenoweth says Sitka has many resources to draw on to prepare her team; she’s been getting help and expertise from the Northern Southeast Regional Aquaculture Association and the Sitka Sound Science Center, as well as financial support from local businesses through CHARR.
The collaboration between Mt. Edgecumbe and Sitka High schools has been good so far, but she thinks it will be more productive for Sitka Team Fish to split in two. She says “That way we can spar against each other.”
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