After school, empty pizza boxes lay stacked on a lab bench in Shelby Surdyk’s science classroom. The smell lingered as Juneau Douglas High School’s ocean science bowl team waited for coach Shannon Easterly’s next question.
“What is the most endangered cetacean?” she asked.
One student fired off a series of wrong answers.
“Blue whale, sperm whale, bowhead whale.”
Easterly stopped him.
“It’s a teeny, tiny porpoise called the vaquita,” she said. “We don’t know for sure, but there are less than 20 individuals.”
“Oh, I hate it,” said Peyton Edmonds, one of the students, showing her teammates a vaquita on her phone. “That’s not cute.”
The team practices here three times a week, but Tuesday was their first meeting since their win at Alaska’s “Tsunami Bowl” earlier this month. It’s a statewide ocean science competition. This year, in Seward, the school swept the buzzer-style competition — the third year in a row that Juneau has won.
The freshman team, “Yeah, Buoy,” won first place in their division, while A-team “Free Radicals” and B-team “Rest-A-Shored” faced off in the final round to win first and second place, respectively.
Carson Carrlee, captain of Yeah-Buoy, was surprised. He said competing in Seward felt different from practices.
“Right after school, when you’re very tired and you have the A-team sitting right there, you’re barely buzzing in. So it can feel kind of like you don’t know anything,” he said.
In the heat of the competition, that changed.
“It really shows that you’re actually learning stuff,” he said. “You’re actually starting to become, like, kind of a scientist-ish.”
The Tsunami Bowl, which was hosted by the University of Alaska Fairbanks College of Fisheries and Ocean sciences, is more than a competition. It’s a crash course in all things ocean science, with researchers and professionals from around the state.
The Juneau teams visited a boat simulator at the Alaska Maritime Training Center, tried a tsunami evacuation drill and went behind the scenes at the Alaska Sea Life Center.
The A and B-teams also participated in the research portion of the competition, where teams presented original research papers and oral presentations. This year’s theme was mariculture in Alaska.
Juneau’s students focused on the farming of geoducks, sea cucumbers and oysters. Easterly said the student research efforts are her favorite part of the competition.
“The buzzer is fun,” she said. “But that paper writing and then the opportunity to actually practice public speaking and present your own research — to a crowd of not just your peers, but adults from all over the state — is really valuable.”
Surdyk joined as a coach last year. She said that the competition attracts students who might not have an interest in ocean science initially. Some join because their friends join. Others join for a small bribe — extra credit in science class.
“Even if they don’t feel motivated by the competition, just to enjoy the process of learning and discover that they love science, I think is a huge reward,” Surdyk said.
Carlee, a first year student, says he’ll definitely be back next year.
“I love all my other clubs,” Carlee said. “But NOSB. You really feel like you’re smart. And you’re learning stuff.”
And the ocean science bowl gets students to stick with STEM education, Easterly says. Tuesday’s practice was proof.
“We didn’t even tell them there would be pizza. And they came anyway,” she said.
Next year, Easterly will take the Free Radicals A-team to the National Ocean Sciences Bowl competition, where they’ll compete against the winning teams from across the country.
