Two Toledo-area educators will be joining Great Lakes scientists for a week aboard the Research Vessel Lake Guardian as it plies Lake Erie in search of more clues about the world’s 11th largest freshwater lake.
Amanda Miller, Imagination Station experience manager, and Ethan Jessing, a science teacher at Hull Prairie Intermediate School in Perrysburg, will board the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency vessel at the Port of Cleveland on Sunday. They are among 15 educators who will be part of the vessel’s crew until next Saturday.
“I'm hoping to learn and absorb everything I can,” Ms. Miller said.
Mr. Jessing said the opportunity will give him the chance “to do more meaningful teacher development.”
The R/V Lake Guardian is the largest research vessel in the U.S. EPA fleet and the largest research vessel operating on the Great Lakes.
It is 180 feet long. It has a 41-person capacity, including 14 crew members and 27 visiting scientists, a U.S. EPA fact sheet states.
Three laboratories are on board.
Rooted in a regular basin-wide sampling program created in 1983, the R/V Lake Guardian surveys all five Great Lakes during spring, after ice has broken up, and during the summer, when biological activity is at its peak.
Ms. Miller and Mr. Jessing will focus on three research areas: microplastics, harmful algal blooms, and the impact of invasive, filter-feeding quagga mussels and their smaller biological cousin, zebra mussels, including drawing and analyzing fresh samples.
For Ms. Miller, the trip allows her to accomplish her dream of working side by side on the Lake Guardian with her father, Chris Skryzmoski, a chief engineer who has been part of the vessel’s crew for years.
She first toured the vessel at age 12.
“I'm really excited. I love water. I want to see see what I can bring back to share,” Ms. Miller said.
Mr. Jessing said he learned about the opportunity through the Lucas Soil and Water Conservation District and was thrilled to be accepted.
The two have been briefed on what to expect during a series of Zoom training sessions.
“It's been a process,” Mr. Jessing said. “I'm sure it's still going to be a learning curve.”
Mr. Jessing also runs an after-school club called Turtle Protectors, in which students learn about turtles and make handmade crafts to raise money for turtle conservation.
Ms. Miller and Mr. Jessing are two of five educators from Ohio who are participating in what’s known as the 2024 Shipboard Science Workshop on Lake Erie.
The other three are Alyssa Mills of Cleveland; Adam Philpott of Pickerington, Ohio; and Lara Roketenetz of Akron.
They will participate in this year’s workshop with 10 other educators from Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, New York, and Pennsylvania. A stop is planned for Tuesday at Ohio State University’s Stone Laboratory on Gibraltar Island, a five-acre, university-owned island across from Put-in-Bay.
The U.S. EPA said the R/V Lake Guardian’s work helps the agency fulfill its environmental monitoring and assessment commitments specified in the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement the United States and Canada signed in 1972. It also generates sampling data required by the U.S. Clean Water Act.
The Lake Guardian is funded by the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative, a standing government program to improve the Great Lakes. It was created by the Obama administration.
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