Dolphin Talk

I am so excited about our next workshop in Matagorda March 26th - March 28th! The Matagorda Bay Nature Park is a wonderful facility and is the perfect setting as we explore the Colorado River on the last leg of its journey through Texas and its next destination as it empties into the Gulf of Mexico. We have a great group of fun-loving educators already signed up to attend and would love to have you join us - we have a few more vacancies. We are going to have so much fun kayaking and learning to use a GPS to guide us around the water. I hope to see you in Matagorda!

We had a wonderful time at Rick Tinnin's retirement party in January at Port Aransas. Rick will be sorely missed at UTMSI, but we all know that he will not be able to stay away long. I already have him booked to guide the Katy boat trip for my 4th graders next week!! :-)

We are starting to plan for our contribution to CAST in Houston. If you are interested in presenting a workshop or hosting a field trip for TMEA, please contact Nathan Veatch at nveatch@swbell.net as soon as possible! You may reach me at marolynsmith@yahoo.com

TMEA SPRING WORKSHOP

At Matagorda, Texas March 26^th-28th, 2010

A RIVER RUNS THROUGH IT

“What Happened in West Texas Didn’t Stay in West Texas”

The water that we watched bubble up from the ground in San Angelo has almost completed its journey down the Colorado River. Come join us on the beach as we say “Bon Voyage” as it starts a new phase of its journey and leaves Texas for a trip up the east coast on its way to Norway.

A special place awaits us where the lower Texas Colorado River channel meets the Gulf of Mexico. Matagorda Bay Nature Park, owned and operated by the Lower Colorado River Authority, and its staff will open their facility to help us complete our study of the water, the river and its impact on Texas. This 1600 acre park is an environmentally significant piece of property that encompasses beach, dune, estuarine, riparian and river ecosystems.

While visiting the park we will use Global Positioning System units to gather data in the estuary from a kayak. We will compare, contrast, and perform water quality analysis from the estuary, Gulf of Mexico and the old Colorado River channel. We will do a riparian analysis and look at dune defenses and beach processes. Matagorda County is once again the birding capitol of North America with 291 species identified during the last Christmas census. We will also collect and identify plankton from the channel.

We will have a discussion of the impact of man on the present condition of the river and bay system. Finally we will look at the data and knowledge collected on our journey and try to come to an understanding of what happens to this valuable resource as it crosses our state.

We will meet Friday night, for those who arrive in time, at the Rivers Bend Grill and Tavern on the bank of the Colorado River for an evening of fun and fellowship. Hotel accommodations are being arranged in Matagorda for Friday and Saturday. A continental breakfast will be provided as well as lunch on Saturday. Saturday night we will meet at the LCRA beach pavilion for a seafood boil, a night beach walk and a star watching party. Bring your favorite beverage and an appetite. On Sunday morning we will meet again at the educational facility for breakfast and several final activities before heading for home at noon.

Space is limited so reserve your spot soon!!!!

Remember…The River is the Reason.

Register now by emailing Marolyn and mail your check marolynsmith@yahoo.com http://statweb.org/TMEA/ See page 11 for the registration application and motel information.

TMEA Needs You . . .

to be a part of the TMEA Strand at CAST November 11-13, 2010 in Houston!

Present! Help improve student achievement through TEKS and STAAR-aligned topics and share these tips with your fellow educators. The brand-new proposals site is now OPEN! Please click here: http://www.statweb.org/cast/index.php to learn more information and submit your proposal online today!

Go to the link above and enter the information to be a presenter at CAST 2010. Start your title with “TMEA Presents:” Workshops should start Friday morning. We hope to again have all workshops in the same room. Short Courses and Fieldtrips should also be labeled “TMEA presents:” and will be indicated on our TMEA Strand page in the program. Email a copy of your workshop proposal to Nathan Veatch nveatch@swbell.net so he can be sure your presentation is a part of the TMEA Strand. The deadline is April 16th.

Attend! Enjoy Science in the City - all under one roof! Save the date for CAST, November 11-13, 2010 in Houston, Texas. Housing site will be open soon! Remember to register in August for the early bird rate of only $115! Students may attend for only $25!

National Ocean Sciences Bowl – Form a Team for 2011!

by Julie Massey

Fishes that spend most of their lives in freshwater but migrate to saltwater are referred to as . . . ?

What island forms the eastern shore of Baffin Bay? The Marine Mammal Protection Act was enacted in what year?

Can you hear the clock ticking as you try to answer these questions? Let’s put a buzzer in your hand and face you off with a team of enthusiastic, determined high school students! Whew! The pressure is on!

Welcome to the fast paced, fun, exciting world of National Ocean Sciences Bowl! If your students like to challenge themselves and enjoy friendly competition, then consider forming a National Ocean Sciences Bowl Team for 2011! The National Ocean Sciences Bowl (NOSB) is a nationally recognized and highly acclaimed high school academic competition that provides a forum for students to test their knowledge of the marine sciences including biology, chemistry, geography, physics, geology, social sciences and technology.

Created in 1998 in honor of the International Year of the Ocean, the NOSB competition has grown to include 300 schools and over 2,000 students participating annually. The NOSB mission is to enrich science teaching and learning across the United States through a high-profile national competition that increases high school students' knowledge of the oceans and enhances public understanding and stewardship of the oceans.

Texas Sea Grant sponsors the Regional Ocean Science Bowl Competitions in Texas. The Loggerhead Challenge is the South Texas regional competition and is held at Texas A&M Corpus Christi. The Dolphin Challenge is the northern regional competition and is held at Texas A&M in College Station.

Each team consists of four students and their coach, and may include a fifth student to serve as an alternate. Teams compete in the regional competition. The winning team advances to the two-day national competition. Galveston will host the National Competition in 2011! For more information on NOSB, the Loggerhead Challenge and Dolphin Challenge, please visit the Texas Sea Grant website at http://dolphinchallenge.tamu.edu/index.html.

Thirteen members met at the UTMSI Visitors’ Center from noon until 2 pm on January 30^th to discuss upcoming workshops and TMEA’s role in CAST 2010 in Houston.

The TMEA Constitution and Bylaws are undergoing revision. A list of Standard Operating Procedures was suggested. The proposed revisions will be available online this summer. The committee welcomes feedback before voting takes place during the TMEA annual meeting at CAST.The TMEA Googlegroup announcements, the large number of people who are in the system and the problem of bounced emails due to inaccurate email addresses were addressed.

Treasurer Luz Tellez pointed out that 70% of our members need to be members of STAT also in order for TMEA to remain an affiliate. Bottom line: more of our members need to join STAT.

The plans for TMEA at CAST 2010 in Houston are underway. Cindy Ross is renovating the TMEA booth. Nathan Veatch will coordinate the TMEA Strand requests. If you are planning on doing a short course, fieldtrip or workshop, please contact Nathan at nveatch@swbell.net so we can get STAT to schedule our Strand in the same room. TMEA may also have a “Make and Take” session. Watch for information in the fall Dolphin Talk.

It was decided to include the TMEA Luncheon/Meeting in the CAST registration this year for the sake of convenience.

Dr. Rick Tinnin was presented a Life Membership in TMEA for all his contributions to TMEA and marine education in the 36 years he served as the Director of Marine Education Services at the University of Texas Marine Science Institute. He has held workshops for hundreds of teachers and taken thousands of students into the field and on boat trips during his tenure. TMEA has benefited greatly from Rick’s unstinting enthusiasm, support and willingness to share his expertise with our organization. Rick, you have been our guiding light and you richly deserve this honor.

Over one hundred well wishers attended one of the biggest surprise parties in Port Aransas to celebrate Rick Tinnin’s retirement after 36 years as the Director of Marine Education at UT’s Marine Science Institute. The party was orchestrated by Rick’s wife Lynn, and co-workers Linda Fuiman and John Williams. This was the best kept secret in the country with people from coast to coast sending photos and making plans to attend.

The festivities started with shucking oysters and celebratory beverages and proceeded through a barbeque dinner and a special cake. The height of the evening was a “roast” directed by Pam Stryker and many reminiscences were shared about the high (and low) lights in Rick’s life.

A large number of local friends and co-workers turned out and a large group of TMEA “old salts” made a special trip to celebrate with Rick. TMEA presented Rick with a digital photo frame and a slide show of over a hundred slides that depicted his 36 years at UTMSI. Many of his NMEA friends shared photos of Rick at their functions. You can see many of the photos from the party at http://www.statweb.org/TMEA/ including a video by Calvin Buchholtz.

Everyone was glad to see long time TMEA members: Calvin Buchholtz, Bob Huntington, Billy Slingerland, Sandy Southwell and Susan Willson O’Brien. “Regulars” who attended included: Jack Clason, Susie Parkinson, Marolyn Smith, Mark Stamp and Cindy Ross, Roger and Pam Stryker, Luz Tellez, Kelly Drinnen, Shelley DuPuy, Trish Lowe, John and Kate Williams and Nathan and Jill Veatch.

Roll on, thou deep and dark blue Ocean - roll!
Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain;
Man marks the earth with ruin - his control
Stops with the shore.

Very early humans lived off the ocean’s bounty on the coast of South Africa, perhaps as long ago as164,000 years ago. They gathered shellfish, mussels, urchins, and fish from the beach and left the remains in caves for modern archaeologists to uncover. As their technology evolved, men learned to fish, build boats, and navigate the globe, but it is only in the most recent century that man can be said to have conquered the sea. The danger is that we will have changed it forever before we even understand it.

Only within our lifetime has the technology been available to truly penetrate the ocean waters. Water is opaque. Visible light disappears below 200 meters (656 feet); therefore, photosynthesis ceases. Pressure increases rapidly with depth; 200 feet down is the limit for scuba divers. According to Barron Rector, “If you can’t see it, you can’t know it”. So, given limits of visibility and safety, any understanding of the ocean bottoms was limited until sonar, satellites, and submersibles showed the topography - ridges, trenches, sea mounts, and thermal vents - and the amazing variety of creatures living in places previously assumed to be barren of life.

“The deep sea is the Earth’s largest continuous ecosystem and largest habitat for life. It is also the least studied,” says Dr. Chris German of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, one of the scientists working on the Census of Marine Life (CoML). Started in the year 2000, CoML is an international science research program uniting thousands of researchers worldwide with the goal of assessing and explaining the diversity, distribution and abundance of marine life – past, present and future – by 2010. Researchers have found an astonishing and diverse collection of 17,650 species living below 200 meters; of these, 5,722 live deeper than 1000 meters. They are a bizarre lot, including crabs, shrimp, and worms. Most have adapted to diets based on meager droppings from the sunlit layer above, others to diets of bacteria that break down oil, sulfur and methane, the sunken bones of dead whales and other implausible foods.

On a 2007 voyage in the Gulf of Mexico, a solitary tubeworm (Lamellibrachia) was found at 990 meters (~.6 miles) in what looked like ordinary surroundings. After a robotic arm lifted the worm from a hole in the Gulf floor, however, crude oil streamed from both the animal and the open hole. The “wildcat” tubeworm had hit a gusher and was dining on chemicals from decomposing oil. Also in the Gulf of Mexico, an odd transparent sea cucumber (Enypniastes) was discovered creeping forward at 2,750 meters (~1.7 miles) on its many tentacles at about 2 cm (~.8 inches) per minute while sweeping detritus-rich sediment into its mouth. At the end, it blooms into a startling curved shape and swims away to find another meal.

Paleontologists, archaeologists, historians, and ecologists are also searching for clues to past abundances of marine life to ascertain baselines to use in future conservation efforts. Using such diverse sources as old ship logs, literary texts, tax accounts, newly translated legal documents and even mounted trophies, CoML researchers are trying to understand and quantify changes that have occurred in the distribution and abundance of marine animal populations. For example, whaling records from New Zealand reveal that before the 1800’s there were 27,000 southern right whales in the surrounding ocean, whereas now there are about 900.

Studying sizes and age groups of fish, Loren McClenachan of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography compared photos of 13 groups of “trophy” fish caught in Key West between 1956 and 2007. During this time, the average fish size shrank from 20 kg to 2.3 kg and the species mix changed from large groupers and predatory fish and sharks 2 meters long to small 34.4 cm snappers caught in 2007. Initial exploitation of fish stocks yields the greatest bounty as the largest fish are caught; intensive fishing can remove 80% of the virgin fish stock in 15 years. Fish populations worldwide are currently reduced to 10% or less of their original world-wide abundance.

“Today each and every river and waterside of our realm, large and small, yields nothing due to the evil of the fishers and the device of [their] contriving, and because the fish are prevented by them from growing to their proper condition, nor have the fish any value when caught by them, nor are they any good for human consumption, but rather bad, and further it happens that they are much more costly than they used to be, which result in no moderate loss to the rich and poor of our realm.”

However, world population is orders of magnitude greater than in King Philip IV’s day, technology far more efficient, and global demand for fish products high. World fisheries are in a bad state; almost 80% are fully-to over-exploited, depleted, or in a state of collapse. Worldwide, about 90% of the stocks of large predatory fish are already gone. The world stands to lose its largest ecosystem and a valuable source of food.

A few places in the ocean have been off-limits to fishing for many years. For instance Merritt Island in Florida, was established in 1962 to protect the Kennedy Space Center. But, within 100 km of the refuge is now a hotspot for world-record-sized fish, although this was not the case previously. And fish populations are larger. It seems that fish can recover, if given enough time to be able to mature and reproduce. And, they don’t always stay on the reservation.

Worldwide, it is proposed to set aside a network of marine reserves protecting 20 - 40% of the area of the high seas, to reverse the damage done and promote sustainability. Several countries have made good progress. South Africa has committed to protect 20% of its waters and Australia protects one third of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park. The U.S. has 15 marine reserves; the newest is Papahanaumokuakea National Marine Monument, one of the largest fully protected marine conservation areas in the world, home to green turtles and Hawaiian monk seals and 7000 species of fish. We can make a difference.

To learn more:
www.coml.org Census of Marine Life
www.montereybayaquarium.org
http://sanctuaries.noaa.gov/
Kunzig, Robert. Mapping the Deep: The Extraordinary Story of Ocean Science. New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 2000.
Roberts, Callum M. The Unnatural History of the Sea. Washington, D.C.: Island Press, 2007.

Editor’s note: The following is an e-mail sent to Sara Snell by Sara’s friend, Bob Olivas, who is now on assignment with the Ocean Drilling Program. This video segment could be of interest to classes studying ocean geology. Also, it would be great to show science in action to elementary classes. It even has puppets.

From: JR Bob Olivas
Sent: Sunday, January 17, 2010 7:08 PM
Subject: Bob's Expedition to Antarctica

The first official video of Expedition 318 has been posted to YouTube. You can find the video on the Ocean Leadership YouTube channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/OceanLeadership. (This video is 9 ½ minutes long and well worth your time!) Every week a new video will be posted at these locations, so check back often!

We are very close to our first drilling site and when I woke up this morning you could see icebergs all around the ship. At this point they are not too close, perhaps half a mile away, but each is different and very beautiful. If all goes well and there is not too much ice at our primary location we should have our first samples aboard this evening.

Temperature is about freezing right now but the wind is less than 15 mph that makes for nice iceberg viewing. (Editors’ Note: It is summer in Antarctica)

The scientists want to do analysis of clays on this voyage and because one of the fume hoods I must work under is occupied by scientists working with Hydrofluoric acid (really nasty stuff) it’s going to make my job a lot harder. It should be interesting and challenging.

TMEA is an affiliate of NMEA and many of our members attend the conferences held in June/July. The next NMEA conference will be held in Gatlinburg, Tennessee, July 18-23, 2010. With lectures from world-renowned experts, fieldtrips with the host chapter to the best places, and socials that give you an opportunity to enjoy new and old friends, this NMEA experience is not to be missed! Take the NMEA10 button on the TMEA web page to find out more about the 2010 conference.

Visit the TMEA Website http://www.statweb.org/TMEA/ See our newsletter and check out a photo album our recent activies. Check it out!

As a TMEA member, you will receive periodic updates from the TMEA News Google Group. Right now TMEAers are urged to look at the first draft of the proposed Science TEKS posted at http://www.tea.state.tx.us/teks/scienceTEKS.html and submit their comments.

Do you have marine-related news or classroom activities that you are willing to share with other marine educators? Would you like to make comments or suggestions for improving the Dolphin Talk or TMEA? This is a joint effort, let us hear from you!

TMEA Workshop Registration
In Matagorda on March 26^th, 27^th, and 28^th, 2010
For “A river runs through it” The Colorado River and its Tributaries

Name:
Title/Affiliation:
Grade level(s)/Subject(s):
Home Address:
Home Phone:                                            Cell Phone:
E-mail address:
         Required for workshop confirmation notice.
         Personal email preferred, districts may block emails
Registration Deadline: March 12, 2010      Enrollment limited to 40!!!
(You are not registered until check is received!)
Registration Fee: $45 (includes breakfast, lunch, and beach cook-out on Saturday and breakfast on Sunday, activities, and materials)
TMEA Member (membership is current) $45 ______
NEW TMEA Member/Renewing TMEA Member $55 _____ (includes $10 membership)
Which newsletter delivery do you prefer?
         _____email notification/web-based OR    _____ US Mail
Make registration check payable to: Texas Marine Education Association
Mail registration form and check by March 12^th to:

         Marolyn Smith
         7208 South Brook Dr.
         Austin, TX 78736

Hotel Arrangements:
We have 12 rooms with 2 double beds with all the amenities found at a coastal “resort,” reserved for Friday and Saturday night. We have been offered a rate of $65 a night at the Shell Motel. It is conveniently located near the LCRA park where we will be both days. Please remember that we are in Spring Break and the motels will fill up quickly. The rooms will be held for TMEA until March 5^th and after that you are on your own! You will need to contact the motel and tell them you are with TMEA and give them your credit card information yourself. Please call 1-979-863-2520 to make your reservations. Matagorda is limited on the number of motels, but we have contact information for other rooms, so if the Shell Motel is booked up, please contact me marolynsmith@yahoo.com and I will give you the contact information for the other accommodations.

Dolphin Talk, TMEA NEWSLETTER
Luz Tellez, TMEA Treasurer
607 Beckman
Alice, TX 78332

Please keep your membership current! Provide the following information and send with appropriate dues money to:

City, State, Zip ________________________________________________________________

Which newsletter delivery do you prefer? ____ e-mail notification/web-based OR ____ US mail copy
Please choose one!

Your TMEA membership includes a quarterly newsletter, Dolphin Talk, meetings throughout the year, including an annual meeting at C.A.S.T., plus opportunities for tours, field trips, and workshops.

Your NMEA membership includes a subscription to Current, The Journal of Marine Education, a quarterly newsletter, and a national conference.

___ Joint TMEA ($10) / NMEA ($35)
___ TMEA ($10)
___ NMEA ($40 w/o TMEA)
___ FAMILY: active members receiving only one set of mailings per household. 1 year--$65
___ New Member

Make check out to TMEA for TMEA membership only. A separate check made out to NMEA will be forwarded if national membership is desired. Mail with this form to: Luz Tellez, TMEA Treasurer, 607 Beckman, Alice, TX 78332

If the date on your address label is highlighted, it is time to mail in your dues to Luz Tellez, TMEA Treasurer.

The Newsletter of the Texas Marine Education Association

National Ocean Sciences Bowl – Form a Team for 2011!

by Julie Massey