Local students participate in JASON project

Recently, two students at Valley Pathways/seeUonline participated in the JASON XIII project, which took them to Portage and Seward for different projects which required hands-on research.

Joanne Pelletier and Drew Allison, ninth-graders at Valley Pathways/seeUonline, were two of five Alaskans selected for the program. Each year, students travel with scientists and a production crew to remote locations -- the JASON XIII project was in Alaska -- as "Argonauts."

The Argonauts work closely with scientists, including Dr. Robert Ballard, the discoverer of the Titanic, on research projects important to the area.

The program is one of the most prestigious student-research programs in the country. It has been featured in National Geographic in the past, and the findings from the explorations is used as parts of national research programs.

The following two submissions are from Pelletier and Allison and detail their involvement in the JASON XIII project.

Sea lion research important

By DREW J. ALLISON-Valley Pathways/seeUonline

I received confirmation in November that I was an Argonaut for the JASON XIII project "Frozen Worlds." I was given access to the JASON project Web site which had several digital labs on frozen features, the cultural diversity of the Native Alaskans, the marine ecosystem in Price William Sound and others.

I received the books and required curriculum a few weeks later. The digital lab on the marine ecosystem in Prince William Sound was the most interesting to me and taught me about marine food chains and webs, and how the decline of one link in the food web will affect all the other species.

The Stellar sea lion has declined 80 percent in the last 20 years because of the lack of fatty fish like salmon in their diet. This is an example of the changes occurring within the Prince William Sound ecosystem. Salmon sharks are increasing within the sound, but scientists have discovered they are not eating the sea lions, just salmon and other fish. The ecosystem is changing though -- the water temperature has increased, and more salmon sharks are coming to the sound, but scientists do not think this is the reason for the decline of the Stellar sea lion.

When I met the other Argonauts in Anchorage, we instantly bonded and on the long drive to Seward we swapped stories and really got to know each other. My interest is in marine biology/mammal husbandry, so I was assigned, along with fellow Argonaut Justine, to the wet lab at the Seward Sea Life Center. Scientists there are discovering why the Stellar sea lion has declined by doing specific research with live animals.

They believe the decline may be related to their change in diet, so to rule that out, they have put the sea lions on three different diets -- one diet consisting of foods within their food web before the decline, during the decline and a diet for after the decline, or the current diet within the ecosystem available to sea lions.

This will allow them to observe changes in the sea lion's health through blood analysis, scat analysis and any health or behavioral changes that may occur. The scientists are also conducting biosampling of the marine mammals with the help of many concerned people.

The scientists receive carcasses of collected marine animals from Native hunters and through the biosampling program they can conduct experiments that tell them how much persistent organic pollutants, or POPs, like DDT and agricultural pesticides and fertilizers that have accumulated within the animals fat.

POPs are affecting the marine ecosystem and the earth's interconnecting systems. POPs used in the United States and other countries end up in the Arctic and affect Earth's ecosystems in a negative way. It would be great if we could learn to grow everything organically.

My duties were to help care for the marine mammals at the Seward Sea life Center as part of the seal team. The animals were awesome and I came to know them all by name. Each animal is trained to present any part of their body to be examined, and I leaned how to feed and care for them, and collect samples to help the researchers.

The JASON project has given me a greater understanding of the cultural diversity of my own state and how our planet's systems are interconnected and dependent on each other. I learned how scientists are exploring, working and often succeeding in finding answers to problems. And I learned how negative changes within each backyard and ecosystem affects the entire planet's ecosystems.

The JASON XIII project inspired me to learn more about science, and never give up my dream of becoming a biologist to help solve problems and preserve life in Alaska and on our Earth.

Ice worm research surprising

By JOANNE PELLETIER-seeUonline

The first big project that we did with JASON was biosampling a seal. We were in a cold lab at the Alaska Sealife Center in Seward. We started by paying our respects to the seal, saying a prayer and thanking it for giving its life to feed the community.

After listening to a talk by Native hunter John Boone on how Native hunters weigh a seal out in the field, we worked together to find a way to weigh the seal Mr. Boone provided us. We used a rope, a 2x4 piece of wood and a scale, and then lifted the seal off the table to the floor. Then we attached the rope to the scale, and worked together to lift the 2x4, which the scale was tied to and weighed the seal in at 100 pounds. Then we made the initial cut and took a measurement of the blubber thickness. We then finished the cutting and learned how to take a blubber sample.

The blubber was rubbery and felt weird when we cut through it. After that, we stood back and let Boone finish cutting open the seal. He cut a small piece of the blubber off for anyone who wanted to try it. It tasted like a rubber band and had some hints of something else, and it was quite funny to watch some of the other kids' reactions to the taste.

After that, one of the scientists gave us a lesson on the anatomy of the seal, and we got to feel all the organs and learn how they work. We then started to take samples from all the organs to be sent to the labs for testing. We inflated the lungs to see how they would work in real life. We didn't have a pump, so whoever wanted to got to blow them up manually. To inflate the lung, we wrapped a paper towel around the part of the esophagus that was still attached to the lung. Some people said that they didn't want to inflate it, because they had to put their mouth around a napkin and blow into the esophagus.

We woke up the next morning at 3 a.m. We had a quick breakfast, then we spilt into two groups. One of the groups was staying in Seward while the other group was going to the Begich Boggs Visitor Center at Portage Lake. My group went to Portage. When we arrived, we met the scientists and other people we were going to be working with, Dr. Dan Shain, an evolutionary biologist; Dr. Bruce Molnia, a glacial geologist; Moses Wassilie, a Yupik mask maker; and Monica Riedel, an Native skin sewer and executive director of the Alaska Native Harbor Seal Commission.

When we worked with Shain, we learned about ice worms. Ice worms are black-pigmented worms that live on glaciers. We don't know that much about them, but we do know they are found all over the surface of a glacier in the summer, but have yet to be found in the winter. It is thought that they go down between the new and old layers of ice and stay there until summer.

We did tests with the ice worms to try to learn more about them. In all of our tests, we used control worms, white worms and earthworms. We tested to see how worms reacted to light, whether they preferred ice to soil, whether they liked the heat better than the cold and how well they could grip the ice. In most of the tests, we were surprised to see that our theories were wrong. The ice worms seemed to prefer the warmer temperature than the colder ones. In some of the tests they ended up boiling themselves because they would 'swim' as close to the hot spot as they could and ice worms can only take a five-degree temperature change.

In some of our tests, we were also surprised to see how some of the control worms reacted. In one test, our earthworm kept escaping and "running away." In another test, the white worms seemed to hitch a ride on the earthworm.

We learned about the anatomy of the ice worm. There are little crampons of sorts on the bottoms of the worms' bellies. These are thought to be used to grip the ice. Ice worms are also only found on glaciers along the West Coast, between Washington and Alaska. There is not much known about ice worms, but scientists are trying to find out more.