High school students learn the basics of Great Lakes research aboard UWM's research vessel

All year round, UW-Milwaukee's research vessel, Neeskay, takes researchers out to study the Lake Michigan's changing ecosystem.

Last week, it headed out with a different agenda.

Captain Max Morgan greeted fourteen Milwaukee high school students, eager to get their hands wet doing some basic Great Lakes research. The students were participating in UWM's Watershed Expedition Program, a weeklong program to provide more knowledge about water's impact on the economy, recreational activities and public health.

Samir Qureshi, teaching, learning and technology specialist at the UWM School of Freshwater Sciences, said the goal was to give the students some practical knowledge on the Neeskay, a repurposed Army T-boat equipped with a freshwater lab.

Morgan took the boat to Milwaukee's outer harbor, where the water was about 8 meters deep, and the students split into three groups. Led by Qureshi, they took turns lowering a large net into the water to collect microscopic organisms.

"We want to see what's swimming around and what lives in the lake," Qureshi said. "There's a lot of life in the lake just below the surface."

When they pulled the net out, they detached a container from its base and poured its contents into a clear plastic bottle. The greenish brown liquid drew a mixture of curious expressions, and then disgusted grimaces, from the teenagers. Later the students would look at the contents under a microscope. Qureshi said he expected to find phytoplankton — tiny algae — and a few zooplankton — microscopic animals — in the water.

Next, they attached what looked like a metal clam shell called a Ponar sampler, to the end of a winch and lowered it to the sandy depths of the lake. The Ponar sampler helps scientists see what's at the bottom of the lake. It was invented in the Great Lakes and got its name from the first letter of the last names of its inventors: Powers, Ogle, Nobel, Ayers, and Robertson.

When the clam shell was pulled back on board, students opened it onto a sieve, where it poured out a heap of thick black sediment. Starting with a few tentative squirts, the students hosed off the mud to reveal a few shells, some wriggling worms and even a piece of plastic.

In other parts of the lake, a Ponar sample would pick up invasive zebra mussels that are devastating the lake ecosystem. But a sample in the outer harbor only got a few shells, because zebra mussels cannot survive in the sandy bottom.

At the back of the ship, Jim Lubner spoke to the students about light. A retired adjunct professor at the School of Freshwater Sciences, Lubner now volunteers his time on outreach efforts. Phytoplankton that use sunlight as a source of energy are the foundation of the lake's food chain. They are affected by how far the light goes below the surface.

Lubner showed the students how to use a Secchi disk to see just how deep the light goes. The black-and-white disk is attached to a long measuring tape. By repeatedly lowering it into the water and marking where the disk becomes invisible, the Secchi depth can be calculated. It's the measure of light penetration into water.

In a different part of the boat, students huddled in the pilot house with Morgan and Brandon Fiew, research vessel engineer. The captain showed them how he navigates the boat and stays in touch with other ships on the water. Morgan, Fiew and others on the boat also shared their unorthodox career trajectories, and how they came to their current work on the Neeskay.

Fiew said he wanted "to get across the message that there are many paths to science."

Thomas Reisel, a sophomore at Dominican High School, said he enjoyed the hands-on research experience, especially the Secchi disk experiment was his favorite.

Other students also seemed interested, although — these were teens after all — sometimes it was a little hard to tell.

At the end, when the boat was heading back to shore, the high schoolers were given the chance to wander around the boat alone. Some went off alone; some climbed on top of the pilot's cabin. They seemed to just want to soak in the view.

This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: High school students learn the basics of Great Lakes research aboard UWM's research vessel