Research staff and educators in Carteret County have responded to an ever-growing need for personal protective equipment by turning their homes into face shield factories, using 3D printers from area institutions.

They’re donating the shields to first responders and health care workers in eastern North Carolina.

Julian Dale, lead engineer in the Marine Robotics and Remote Sensing Lab at the Duke University Marine Lab in Beaufort, transported the lab’s larger 3D printer to his garage after the Duke Marine Lab closed in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Dale’s original plan was to continue making customized drone research equipment from home.

Then he heard that others were 3D printing personal protective equipment. People around the world have been collaborating online to share and revise designs for 3D-printed face shields and other gear.

Dale confirmed the need for this equipment with Beaufort Mayor Rett Newton, also a doctoral student in the Marine Robotics and Remote Sensing Lab, who asked Beaufort fire and police chiefs.

“Our first responders enthusiastically welcomed this protective gear,” noted Newton.

Dale found a relatively easy design online for a visor that could be outfitted with a shield. Rather than wait for an online consensus on face shield designs, of which there were several options, he jumped to work.

“We should probably just have a crack at producing them,” Dale said he thought Saturday, April 4.

Since then, he’s sent out about 100 face shields and is continuing to produce more. Other 3D printers have joined the production chain too.

“IMS volunteered their printer as well that was sitting idle,” said Dale, referring to the University of North Carolina Institute of Marine Sciences in Morehead City.

Ryan Neve, IT and engineer support specialist at the institute, brought the lab’s 3D printer and Carolina blue plastic filament home for the specific purpose of printing face shields. Filament is a spool of plastic thread that feeds the printer.

UNC IMS has had their printer for almost two years, and Neve previously used it to make customized and inexpensive research equipment parts.

“We mainly used it to print out parts for field work, for profilers at Jordan Lake,” he explained. Profilers are floating platforms that release water measurement devices to the bottom of the lake every half hour.

That same 3D printer can print two plastic visors in about five hours. The larger printer in Dale’s garage can print two visors in about one and a half hours.

Todd Williamson, Project Lead the Way Teacher at Beaufort Middle School, is now using one of the middle school’s 3D printers to make the visors as well, with filament provided by UNC IMS.

The clear plastic shields that attach to the visors are ordered separately, and Dale rounds down their sharp edges for safety. The last piece of the face shield is a rubber band, which holds the back of the visor together. Dale said that each completed face shield costs about $1.30 in supplies.

The shields can be washed and reused, and the clear plastic part can be replaced when necessary. Dale said if he’s able to get enough parts they can give away extra plastic shields with the visors.

Shields protect the mouth, nose and eyes, though healthcare workers treating COVID-19 patients must also wear face masks for respiratory protection.

Dale provided Newton with face shields to distribute to Beaufort emergency medical services and fire rescue, and has left shields on the doorsteps of healthcare workers for them to distribute at their respective workplaces. Carteret General Hospital, New Bern Hospital, Carteret Medical Specialists PLLC, and Oceanside Pediatrics in Morehead City have received shields.

“This is another great example of citizens wanting to safely and effectively contribute to the fight against COVID-19,” commented Newton.

The Carteret News-Times reported Sunday that the county currently had a sufficient supply of personal protective equipment for first responders in the short term, but will likely need more face masks as the pandemic continues.

If residents want to donate extra personal protective equipment to Beaufort’s first responders, they can contact Public Information Officer Rachel Johnson at r.johnson@beaufortnc.org. For more information about 3D printing protective equipment for healthcare workers, you can visit the National Institute of Health’s collection of 3D-printable equipment.

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After visitors at the North Carolina Aquarium at Pine Knoll Shores had left for the day, the hallways came to life again on the evening of Feb. 27 for the eighth annual Scientific Research and Education Network, or SciREN, Coast event.

Researchers and educators from across North Carolina gathered among the fish, turtle and stingray exhibits to exchange lesson plans and learn about science organizations serving K-12 students.

More than 100 educators attended and had the opportunity to talk with 25 groups of science organizations and researchers, who presented lessons or programming that could be incorporated into classrooms, summer camps or after-school activities. Educators and researchers could also exchange contact information to discuss lessons or arrange classroom visits.

Researchers created the lesson plans based on their own areas of research to provide hands-on lessons that might not yet be available in a textbook. Prior to the event, SciREN hosted a lesson plan workshop for researchers to learn how to create an engaging activity that met North Carolina K-12 standards. Area teachers assisted researchers during the workshop.

One of the presented lesson plans aimed to teach students how animals use a magnetic sense to help them navigate and migrate, like sea turtles do in the ocean. University of North Carolina Chapel Hill graduate students Lewis Naisbett-Jones, Alayna Mackiewicz and Dana Lim created activities that require students to navigate using magnets and a compass.

Another activity, presented by University of North Carolina Chapel Hill graduate student Haley Plaas, taught students about the effects of excess nutrients, such as from stormwater runoff, on water quality. Her lesson instructs students to design their own experiment by obtaining water from any outdoor source, then add a chosen amount of nitrogen and phosphate and observe how much algae grow in the water.

Educators could also talk to organizations, such as Sturgeon City Institutes in Jacksonville and UNC Wilmington MarineQuest, to learn about opportunities for their students like field trips, science camps and after-school programs.

SciREN Coast is the original SciREN event, and SciREN has expanded to North Carolina’s Research Triangle and to Athens, Georgia. This year’s SciREN Coast was planned by a team of graduate students from the UNC Institute of Marine Sciences, or UNC IMS, and the Duke University Marine Lab. Mollie Yacano, a UNC IMS graduate student, led the team.

“It’s a good networking event not just for sharing lesson plans, but for getting researchers to present directly to students,” noted Adam Gold, a UNC IMS graduate student and member of the planning team.

By attending the event, educators could also gain access to an online database of lesson plans contributed by SciREN presenters.

In her workweek, Dr. Emily Christiansen might remove a tumor from a fish, perform an annual health exam on a moray eel, care for a sea turtle’s wound, treat a river otter’s injured paw and help researchers study sand tiger sharks off the North Carolina coast.

As a veterinarian for the North Carolina Aquariums, Christiansen spends about nine intense days per month checking and treating animals at the three aquariums on the state’s coast. She spends the rest of her workweek updating animal records, preparing for upcoming aquarium visits and responding to a slew of calls, texts and emails from aquarium staff, veterinary residents, researchers and concerned citizens.

Growing up in the suburbs of Philadelphia, she didn’t have her heart set on becoming an aquatic animal veterinarian from a young age. She did go through a phase of wanting to be a dolphin veterinarian but outgrew it.

In college, Christiansen almost majored in linguistics because of her fascination with language. She chose biology though, since it would satisfy course requirements in case she decided on a career in animal medicine, toward which she was starting to gravitate.

After graduating, she moved to Florida to intern at the Mote Marine Laboratory and Aquarium while applying to veterinary school. With her acceptance to Tufts University School of Veterinary Medicine, her colleagues nudged her onward.

“They kicked me out because I got into vet school. Otherwise I’d still be there, scooping turtle poop,” she laughed.

Christiansen knew she didn’t want to work with dogs or small animals, which is why Tufts’ wildlife medicine program attracted her. She earned both a Doctor of Veterinary Medicine degree and a Master of Public Health.

As a new doctor, she interned at a bird rehabilitation center in Florida, then went back to Tufts to intern in wildlife medicine and teach vet students, all while applying to residency programs. Though internships and residencies aren’t required to practice animal medicine, they’re needed for specialty certifications, Christiansen explained.

In 2011, Christiansen moved to North Carolina to start a residency program at N.C. State University’s College of Veterinary Medicine. It’s one of fewer than 20 schools in the country to offer training programs in zoological medicine, a specialty that includes wildlife, zoo animals and aquatic animals.

Christiansen spent most of her three-year residency focusing on aquatic animals at the coast, where the N.C. State Center for Marine Sciences and Technology, or CMAST, offers clinical training with nearby aquariums, sea turtle hospitals, marine mammal and turtle stranding networks. Dr. Craig Harms, director of the Aquatic Animal Health group at CMAST in Morehead City runs the residency program.

The program is fast-paced. Students must publish five research studies and prepare for a grueling two-day specialty board exam, where they’re expected to know all the latest research published in dozens of journals on zoological medicine.

After finishing, Christiansen never left the coast. Just 15 days after her residency ended, she became the N.C. Aquariums’ first full-time veterinarian. The North Carolina Aquariums initiated the position to improve animal care and comply with recommendations from the Association of Zoos and Aquariums as an upgrade from their once-a-month visits from Harms.

Christiansen kept her ties to N.C. State. She’s an adjunct faculty member and her office is based at CMAST. She helps coordinate with N.C. State zoological medicine residents in her work at the aquariums.

The three state aquariums are located at Roanoke Island on the Outer Banks, Pine Knoll Shores on Bogue Banks, and Fort Fisher just south of Wilmington. While the aquarium at Pine Knoll Shores is just a 20-minute drive from CMAST, it’s more than three hours to Roanoke Island and two and a half hours to Fort Fisher. Visits to the more distant aquariums make for long days for Christiansen and veterinary technician Heather Broadhurst, who check and treat about 30 animals per visit.

Animals can’t always wait for a scheduled vet visit, though. When asked if she was always on call, Christiansen pulled two smartphones out of her pockets. In many cases, she can guide aquarium staff through procedures over the phone. Staff are uniquely skilled to handle ailing animals, she noted, especially at the N.C. Aquarium on Roanoke Island, which is home to the Sea Turtle Assistance and Rehabilitation, or STAR, Center. Christiansen typically needs to visit the aquariums for emergency visits “only a handful of times a year,” she said.

Caring for such a wide variety of aquarium animals, from river otters to bald eagles to stingrays, seems daunting, but Christiansen responded that “they’re all animals,” meaning they have the same basic internal systems.

Her work not only benefits the aquarium animals and their 1.3 million annual visitors but also helps researchers investigate how to conserve aquatic species.

Animal cases can be used as research opportunities for veterinary residents at N.C. State and other local collaborators. Many cases the aquarium team sees aren’t in the books yet, Christiansen explained, and the aquatic animal medicine field is still relatively new. For unfamiliar cases, she’ll often need to try out a treatment and see if it works. She also consults other aquariums across the country to see what they’ve already tried for similar cases.

Wildlife researchers also seek Christiansen’s help.

“I get tapped for a lot of cool projects that need a vet or need to train graduate students,” she mentioned.

For example, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration researchers from the Beaufort Lab may need her on board while they study sea turtles. She may need to teach area graduate students, such as those from CMAST or the University of North Carolina Institute of Marine Sciences, also in Morehead City, how to surgically implant a small tracking device in a fish.

She’s also involved in fieldwork for a collaborative project on sand tiger sharks. The species is in decline and doesn’t reproduce in captivity, Christiansen said. Pregnant females hang out off the North Carolina coast around shipwrecks, and researchers are tracking them to determine where they travel and give birth. The project was started by Madeline Marens, a master’s student at UNC Wilmington and an aquarist at the N.C. Aquarium at Fort Fisher.

The N.C. Aquariums are involved in other conservation research projects as well, and spearheaded the Spot A Shark citizen science project for divers to submit photos of sharks.

Despite these efforts, the N.C. Aquariums are not always seen as a major research institution in eastern North Carolina, even though they were originally founded as the N.C. Marine Resources Centers in the 1970s and displayed researchers’ work. Christiansen is on a mission to change that. As someone straddling both worlds of aquariums and academia, she fosters collaborations between researchers, veterinary trainees and the aquariums to create win-win scenarios.

Though not in her job description, Christiansen is also seen as the friendly neighborhood wildlife expert in Beaufort, where she’s resided for the past eight years. Inquisitive children she coaches in youth soccer will come to her with turtles and other animals they find.

She also inspires students at outreach events, such as the annual Girls Exploring Science and Technology, or GEST, event for middle schoolers at the Duke University Marine Lab in Beaufort and the Women in Science Day at the N.C. Aquarium at Fort Fisher. At GEST, she spends a Saturday teaching students how to anesthetize a fish and then take measurements like weight and heart rate. She’s also participated in a GEST panel discussion, sharing her own journey to becoming a veterinarian.

Christiansen said she plans to continue developing partnerships between the research community and the aquariums, and her work as a veterinarian and community member help drive the N.C. Aquariums’ mission of “inspiring appreciation and conservation of North Carolina’s aquatic environments.”

After hooking a fish, reeling it in from the sea floor and posing for a photo, there’s a fairly good chance a recreational fisher might release their catch back into the ocean. The chance of that fish’s survival is less clear.

Rising numbers of released fish, combined with an uncertain likelihood of their survival, has made it more challenging to estimate how many fish die after release, which is a crucial factor considered when creating fishing regulations.

Researchers at North Carolina State University’s Center for Marine Science and Technology, or CMAST, have been studying the fate of released fish, called discards, to more accurately estimate death rates from fishing and to improve survival of discards.

Over the past few years, they’ve determined discard survival likelihood for several deep fish species. They’ve also confirmed that helping a fish get back to deep water, through strategies like venting and recompression, significantly increases a fish’s chance of survival.

Deepwater fish live under pressure. The pressure at 90 feet underwater is almost four times greater than at sea level. When fish from about that depth or deeper are brought to the surface, the sudden drop in pressure can lead to injuries called barotrauma.

Barotrauma looks extremely uncomfortable. The gas inside a fish’s swim bladder, an internal organ that helps them float, expands and can even push other organs out of the fish’s mouth. The fish’s eyes may bulge out of its head. A bloated swim bladder can also act like swim floaties, preventing the fish from returning to deeper water when it’s released. That fish might die at the surface or a predator might pick it off.

An angler might discard a fish if they don’t want to keep it or if it doesn’t meet regulations, such as a size limit, catch limit or closed season. Over the past 20 years, discarded black sea bass in the US Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico fisheries have outnumbered those brought to shore. In recent years, gray triggerfish discards have been two to three times higher than the number kept. This overall increase is probably from a mix of increased fishing effort, such as number of boats and amount of time spent on the water, and changes in regulations that dictate which fish can be kept.

About 15 years ago, this increase in discarded black sea bass began to concern Jeff Buckel, a professor at CMAST. Buckel is on the Scientific and Statistical Committee of the South Atlantic Fishery Management Council, or SAFMC, the agency that sets fishing regulations in waters between three to 200 nautical miles off the shores of North Carolina to Florida.

Buckel saw firsthand how uncertainty in survival rates of discarded fish translated into uncertainty in the conservation of these species.

Since then, Buckel’s research group has studied discarded fish off the coast of North Carolina to help improve fisheries management.

Their experiments begin by catching fish, often hundreds to thousands of them per experiment.

Senior research scholar Paul Rudershausen, doctoral candidate Brendan Runde, and others in the Buckel group have conducted experiments with species such as black sea bass, gray triggerfish, scamp, snowy grouper, speckled hind, dolphinfish and cobia.

“Our work on discard mortality would not have been possible without the knowledge and collaboration of both commercial and recreational fishermen,” noted Rudershausen.

Once a fish is caught, they check for any signs of barotrauma, attach a tag or transmitter to the outside of the fish, and then release the fish back into the ocean. Importantly, they also dive to the sea floor to tag fish that haven’t been brought to the surface, for comparison.

In experiments with tagged fish, the researchers go offshore several more times to see which fish they catch again. If other fishers catch the tagged fish, they can phone in to report a number on the tag. The percent of discarded fish that they recapture, compared to the percent of fish tagged on the sea floor that they recapture, can provide insight on discard survival. Roughly a quarter of all tagged fish in their experiments are recaptured in the days to years after being tagged.

For fish with attached transmitters, the researchers can retrieve data from receivers they deploy at the sea floor, which can track a fish’s movement. If a fish stops moving, it’s presumed dead.

The researchers use their experimental data in statistical models to estimate survival rates of released fish.

In an earlier study published in 2014, they found that black sea bass with barotrauma actually had a good chance of surviving, about 90%, if the fish were still able to swim back underwater and didn’t have a hook injury. However, fish with barotrauma that floated after release had just a 16% likelihood of surviving.

In a follow-up study published in 2019, they tested whether helping released fish get back underwater, either by venting or using a descending device, could increase survival.

Venting involves puncturing a fish’s bloated swim bladder with a hollow needle to release the gas, so the fish won’t float. Descending devices are weighted hooks or clips that a fisher attaches to the caught fish. The clip releases the fish once it’s back to its normal depth, and the fisher can reuse the descending device.

For black sea bass, both venting and descending devices were equally effective and improved survival likelihood.

Sometimes the researchers’ results differ from what was previously thought. For example, all deepwater grouper discards are expected to die of barotrauma, since they typically live more than 200 feet underwater. However, Runde discovered about half of released deepwater groupers will survive if they’re released with a descending device. Though not all the fish survive, the jump from none to half is huge.

The researchers also found that survival rates for released gray triggerfish were lower than expected. After a three-year study published in 2019, they found that released fish with no visible injuries had just a 40% estimated chance of survival. For fish with barotrauma, there was no chance of survival if they floated and about a 25% chance if they could get back underwater.

These findings highlight differences between fish species, which are why management strategies are customized.

Newfound discard survival rates found by the CMAST group, as well as by other researchers, will be considered in future fish stock assessments to improve how fisheries are managed. Stock assessments use mathematical models to estimate the population size and death rates of a fish species in a certain region, like the US South Atlantic.

“You need estimates of release mortality to really assess these species properly,” said Chip Collier, deputy director for Science and Statistics at SAFMC. “The Buckel Lab’s work has been extremely beneficial in figuring out ways to improve survivorship in the fishery.”

Their research on the effectiveness of descending devices has also contributed to an amendment that requires boats fishing for snapper or grouper species to carry descending devices that are ready to use. In September 2019 the SAFMC approved the amendment for the US South Atlantic, and in January submitted it for review on a national level.

“Research from the Buckel Lab, along with many others, has been instrumental in the development of regulations related to recompression tools such as descending devices,” commented Christina Wiegand, a fishery social scientist with SAFMC.

The descending device regulation is a major step forward, but requiring these devices on boats doesn’t necessarily mean people will use them. Buckel still meets fishers who haven’t heard of the devices. A cultural shift is needed so that fishers feel responsible for properly releasing fish that show signs of barotrauma.

“In my opinion, the way to do it is through education and outreach,” said Runde. Through a grant from the South Carolina Wildlife Federation, he’s taught local fishers about using descending devices and has handed out over 100 free devices.

Venting tools are still more widespread than descending devices. While venting is convenient and effective when done properly for species like black sea bass, descending devices are needed for larger and deeper species, noted Buckel.

Some descenders can cost above $50, but fishers can also make their own for much cheaper. A weighted milk crate placed on the bloated fish can descend the fish to deeper waters until it recompresses and swims away.

Runde recommends taking at least eight pounds of weight to be prepared for descending large fish. Prepping the device beforehand is also crucial to minimize time the fish spends at the surface.

Fishers can learn more by taking a quick online tutorial from the SAFMC. Many how-to videos are also available online that describe specific descender devices.

Effective management, along with tools that help discarded fish get back to deep water, can improve fishers’ chances of encountering these fish for decades to come.

BEAUFORT — The swift pace of technological development has given researchers tools that can collect more data in less time and with fewer resources than a decade ago.

Lightweight tags with long-lasting batteries can track animals as small as insects and measure the conditions around them. DNA sequencing technologies have decoded the genomes of thousands of organisms from the loblolly pine to the black bear. Drones can quickly photograph landscapes and animals in locations that may be inaccessible or unsafe for people.

Strategies for processing and analyzing this wealth of data must also keep up so scientists can efficiently interpret and share their findings. Automated methods using artificial intelligence are quickly progressing and becoming more necessary to extract useful information from collected data and visual images.

Researchers at the Duke University Marine Lab in Beaufort, along with collaborators from the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, University of California Santa Cruz and Stanford University, have developed a new automated method to identify and measure whales in drone images.

Published in Methods in Ecology and Evolution this summer, the method uses neural networks, a type of artificial intelligence and machine learning, to distinguish whale species and measure their length much quicker than a person can.

Information from these photos can teach researchers about whale health, behavior and population sizes and can ultimately help guide conservation and management strategies.

Patrick Gray, lead author and developer of the whale recognition software, said the project originated while his lab mates were amassing an overwhelming amount of photos from drone flights in Antarctica and off the California coast. Gray is a doctoral student in the Marine Robotics and Remote Sensing Lab led by professor David Johnston at the Duke Marine Lab.

Fellow doctoral student and project co-author Kevin “KC” Bierlich manages the huge imagery dataset for his dissertation research. As a drone pilot, Bierlich launches drones from a boat and captures photos of whales at opportune moments when they come to the ocean surface. He snaps hundreds of photos during each 10- to 15-minute drone flight, aiming for photos where the whale’s body is fully stretched out, rather than curved.

Back at the lab, Bierlich looks at each photo on a computer, selects the best images of each whale and then draws a digital line over the whale to measure the length in pixels. He converts photo pixels to an actual length by using the drone’s altitude and camera specifications to figure out the scale of each photo.

While Bierlich enjoys looking through the photos, managing and measuring thousands of images takes considerable time and effort that could instead be spent on interpreting and reporting their findings.

“That’s an opportunity cost,” he said.

Automating the whale identification and measurement process was an achievable goal due to continuing breakthroughs in machine learning. Machine learning refers to computer models being trained to do something, like recommending a new song for you, by finding patterns in large amounts of example data, like songs you and others already listen to.

“If you were to do this four years ago, it would be a two-year research undertaking with a team of computer scientists,” said Gray. Recent advancements in deep learning, a more powerful type of machine learning, allowed him to create the whale measurement program relatively quickly. The project started last summer, and it took Gray about two weeks of nonstop coding to build the neural network.

Deep learning relies on neural networks, computer systems that are especially useful for visual recognition since they can be trained with just labeled images. A common example of deep learning is facial recognition in applications like Facebook. The app learns to recognize someone’s features as people tag, or label, that person in photos. When you upload a new photo on Facebook, the app can then identify people in the photo and suggest you tag them (note: users can opt out of facial recognition).

To train the neural network, Gray fed it drone images that the researchers had already marked with the whale’s location and had labeled with the whale species name – either blue, minke or humpback.

Though they had a few hundred images labeled, ideally they needed many more to properly train the system. Gray therefore pretrained the neural network with a publicly available dataset from Microsoft of more than 300,000 images that were labeled with objects they contained, like toothbrushes and clocks. Although they didn’t include whales, these images could still train the network to detect objects in an image.

To measure the whale’s length after identifying it, the program extracts the whale’s body as pixels and uses a math algorithm to find the longest line through the whale.

The researchers then ran the program with a new set of whale photos to compare results from the automated program with results they found by hand. The system was exceptionally accurate in distinguishing between the three whale species, correctly predicting 98% of the images. The system also gives a confidence score with each species prediction, which can alert researchers if the system isn’t confident in its prediction and might need assistance from human eyes.

The computer’s length measurements were also quite accurate, within 5% of the manual measurements. In photos where the automated measurements differed considerably from measurements done by hand, the whale was obscured by something in the photo such as a boat or water being sprayed from the whale. If the neural network was trained with images that included other objects like boats, waves, or ice chunks, then measurement accuracy would likely improve.

While automation is accurate and saves time, Bierlich noted that manual processing also has benefits. By looking at each image, he can notice specific details that spur new research questions, or can spot things that the computer may not have been trained to recognize.

This type of automated program is the first of its kind, not only identifying the whales in images but also measuring their lengths. The program can be further modified for other research applications, like detecting other organisms, measuring additional features of an animal, and detecting an animal’s movement patterns in videos.

“The dream would be to put this system on the drone,” Gray said, which could reduce the need to sort through images back in the lab. Having direct feedback from the drone about image quality and an animal’s measurements could help direct the scientists’ research strategies while they’re still out on the water.

The code for the neural network is publicly available for others to use and modify, following the open-source culture that’s allowed the field of machine learning to quickly develop.

“We want people to run with it, we want people to expand upon it,” Bierlich explained.

Other co-authors on this study include Sydney Mantell, a Morehead-Cain Scholar at UNC; Ari Friedlaender of UC Santa Cruz’s Institute of Marine Sciences; Jeremy Goldbogen of Stanford University’s Hopkins Marine Station; and Johnston of the Duke Marine Lab. Marine Robotics and Remote Sensing Lab engineer Julian Dale and research assistant Clara Bird also assisted with the project.

BEAUFORT — Visitors to the annual Duke University Marine Lab open house Saturday had the chance to hop on the lab’s research vessel, listen to underwater snapping shrimp, handle local creatures like fiddler crabs, peer at algae through a microscope, tour the drone facility, and much more.

Established in the 1930s on Pivers Island in Beaufort, the campus includes research and teaching facilities used by a tight-knit community of faculty, graduate and undergraduate students, research scientists and outreach programs.

At the open house, students and scientists led hands-on activities and demonstrated how they conduct research in labs, at sea and abroad. Equipped with a campus map and activity descriptions, attendees were free to roam wherever curiosity took them.

Many wandered over to the popular touch tank station, where they could hold crawling starfish, slimy baby’s ear seashells, scallops with hundreds of eyes, and squirting tunicates.

Kathy Reinsel and Jim Welch, visiting professors from Wittenberg University in Ohio, collect small marine invertebrates for touch tanks each year. Reinsel and Welch spend summers at the Duke Lab to mentor undergraduates and conduct research, which focuses on how creatures like fiddler crabs forage and molt in coastal habitats.

Nearby at the Whale and Sound Discovery station, a small gray electronic box made a consistent pinging noise, which became louder when its antenna pointed towards a radio transmitter. Marine mammal researchers described how they use this technology to find small devices called digital acoustic recording tags, or DTAGs, in the open ocean. The DTAGs hitch a ride on a whale and record data about whale movement and underwater sounds.

“We essentially play a game of ‘hot and cold’,” explained Duke doctoral student Ashley Blawas, describing how they search for floating DTAGs from a research vessel after the recording is completed. Information downloaded from the DTAG can help determine how sounds in the ocean might affect whale behavior.

Open house visitors could experience the struggle of trying to find a tag, hidden on the Duke Lab campus, by using a handheld antenna just like the seafaring researchers use on a boat.

In addition to scientists that study microscopic organisms, invertebrates, and marine mammals, the Duke Lab is also home to scientists who study people.

“Social scientists go to different places around the world to learn about different people. We study how people fish,” explained postdoctoral researcher Maria del Mar Mancha-Cisneros to a group of young visitors who escaped the heat and bustle for story time. She and fellow postdoctoral researcher Crisol Mendez-Medina interacted with attentive groups of children, telling stories of how people from Mexico to Mozambique collect fish and crustaceans to eat and sell

Visitors could also step onto the research vessel Richard T. Barber with Capt. John Wilson, and imagine they were dashing offshore to tag whales or collect bacteria samples. Duke Lab Associate Director Rebecca Smith showcased the designs for a new, larger vessel to be used for research, teaching, and outreach. The vessel is currently under construction and replaces the R/V Cape Hatteras, which Cape Fear Community College purchased in 2013, and the R/V Susan Hudson, which was retired in 2014.

Opening the lab’s doors not only lets visitors learn about what goes on at the lab, but also helps them recognize the Duke Lab as a community partner. Many attendees return every year. Next summer, they’ll likely be able to view the new research vessel and see further research updates and new faces at the lab.

CARTERET COUNTY — School may be out but 42 young teens from Carteret and Craven counties spent last week dissecting, probing, examining and measuring at many of the marine science institutions in eastern North Carolina.

Area researchers and educators hosted immersive programs for rising seventh through ninth graders during the weeklong Brad Sneeden Marine Science Academy, now in its 12^th year.

Although students live close to the ocean and to marine science institutes, many don’t have opportunities to visit or learn about career paths available in marine science.

“It’s a fun way to expose them to options in this county,” said Beaufort Middle School teacher Todd Williamson, who participates in the program every year.

Middle and high school science teachers from Carteret County supervised the camp, taking students to destinations such as North Carolina State University’s Center for Marine Science and Technology in Morehead City, the North Carolina Coastal Federation in Newport and Cape Lookout National Seashore.

Students witnessed a dolphin necropsy, participated in geocaching and water sampling, and received a behind-the-scenes tour of the North Carolina Aquarium at Pine Knoll Shores. They visited the University of North Carolina Institute of Marine Sciences, or UNC-IMS, in Morehead City June 27 where scientists led hands-on activities related to current research topics, such as how oysters can clean water.

At an activity led by UNC-IMS postdoctoral research associate Jim Morley, students inquisitively prodded the slimy exteriors of fish on display: “Why is its mouth so big?” “What kind of fish is this?” “How big is this one’s brain?” “How does a puffer fish inflate?”

After explaining the adaptations and sensory systems that allow fish to live in the ocean, Morley cut a fish open to show the internal organs.

“Kids like guts,” Morley chuckled, reflecting on his previous experience leading dissections for the Sneeden camp.

The activity also demonstrated how researchers insert miniature tracking devices called acoustic tags into live fish. Morley emphasized that counting fish isn’t easy and had students brainstorm how to estimate fish population sizes based on data collected from the tags.

Aiming to cover a coastal science concept not in the school curriculum, UNC-IMS graduate students Carson Miller and Molly Bost designed an activity to demonstrate Walther’s Law. Miller’s research on marsh migration in eastern North Carolina makes use of this geologic law, which describes how layers of sediment currently on top of one another were once next to each other.

Miller and Bost created landscapes made of colored cakes, with each layer representing a different environment such as sand or marsh. Students evaluated historical land movement in the edible landscapes by boring through the layers with straws, just like researchers collect sediment cores.

Bost encouraged students to think about how landscapes will look in the future, especially with ongoing sea level rise. Rising seventh grader Elaina Sherline favored this exercise in geological methods.

“We got to learn how they take samples but at a small scale, and we got to graph it. I love graphing,” she expressed. “And we got to eat cake, which was delicious.”

Moving to a topic receiving much public attention, students learned about common sharks of North Carolina from UNC-IMS doctoral students Jeff Plumlee and Martín Benavides, and research technician Grace Roskar. While large sharks often get the most publicity, the most common sharks in North Carolina waters are only about 3 feet long, such as the Atlantic sharpnose. Roskar anticipated the activity would help students “get up close and personal with a shark to realize they’re not scary.

“I hope the students get to see what fascinating creatures they are,” she said.

By touching and dissecting a deceased Atlantic sharpnose, students learned about the external and internal adaptations sharks have to survive in the ocean. Seventh grader Rosemary Johnston learned something new about a shark’s exterior.

“Sharks have modified teeth on the outside of their skin,” she recalled, “so it felt really smooth if you rubbed it from head to tail, but like sandpaper if you rubbed it from tail to head.”

Benavides explained that the skin allows sharks to swim faster through the water.

As the researchers described functions of different internal organs, they also collected samples like muscle and vertebrae to learn more about the shark’s life history.

The late Brad Sneeden, a former Carteret County School superintendent, envisioned “a marine science academy that utilized all the marine science institutes and natural resources in our county, to get middle schoolers thinking about career options,” said Carolyn Sneeden, his wife.

She previously set up a memorial fund and applied for a community grant to continue providing opportunities for middle schoolers via the Marine Science Academy.

Any student who participates in the academy is also eligible to apply for a college scholarship from the Brad Sneeden Memorial Fund. In addition to this fund, the academy is sponsored by the Carteret Craven Electric Foundation, The North Carolina Seafood Festival, Beaufort Ole Towne Rotary Club, the North Carolina Biotechnology Center and the Carteret County Public School Foundation.