- Chris Petrone
- Virginia Institute of Marine Science
As a kid, I really enjoyed fishing and crabbing; always trying to “outsmart” the fish onto my line or crabs onto the bait. Many times, I was quite unsuccessful. I never really thought about working on and in the water until an ecology course in college had me knee-deep in a local stream collecting scientific data and catching critters. Up until then, I was going to be a physical therapist, no ifs, ands, or buts. After about 10 years, those plans went out the door in a single afternoon; I was hooked. That summer I did an internship with who would eventually become my graduate school advisor and from then on, I knew this field was for me. As part of the internship we worked extensively out on Delaware Bay and the Atlantic Ocean catching and analyzing blue crab larvae. The amount of life, of all sizes, below the water’s surface shocked me. Literally trillions of tiny creatures, crab, barnacle, fish larvae, and the like swimming around unbeknownst to us while we play in the surf. For my senior project, and subsequently my graduate research, I became up-close and personal with the zooplankton of Delaware Bay, studying copepod diversity and dynamics of fiddler crab larvae patches, respectively. Accumulating so much time on the water, I was able to obtain my U.S. Coast Guard captain’s license.
After graduate school, I accepted a position teaching high school marine science and Advanced Placement environmental science, where I designed and taught the curricula for both classes. From there, I left academia briefly and commercially farmed oysters on the Rappahannock River, VA for just over a year. Keeping tabs on 5 million oysters ranging in size from 5 millimeters to 3+ inches, is no small feat!
Once an opportunity to become a Marine Education Specialist with Virginia Sea Grant at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science presented itself, I decided to move back into the education world and instead of teaching students, this time, I would be working with teachers. Conducting several multi-day workshops and many shorter sessions at various conferences throughout the year, I work with teachers to help them integrate many aspects of the ocean sciences into their curricula. Because ocean science is so interdisciplinary, it can be used to teach biology, physics, chemistry, math, and so much more. Much of my focus is on ocean observing systems, in which autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs), such as Fetch, the AUV used in Project SeaCAMEL, are an integral component. Utilizing my educator and science background, I also write activities for the Bridge website (http://www.marine-ed.org/bridge) that use real scientific data to illustrate all sorts of scientific concepts.
I never thought the water would play such an important role in my life. I have learned so much about the water both in the classroom and while playing and working in it, and I look forward to all the things I still have to learn about the substance that covers 70% of our planet!
