Knightly News

"To stand at the edge of the sea, to sense the ebb and flow of the tides, to feel the breath of a mist moving over a great salt marsh, to watch the flight of shore birds that have swept up and down the surf lines of the continents for untold thousands of years, to see the running of the old eels and the young shad to the sea, is to have knowledge of things that are as nearly eternal as any earthly life can be." Rachel Carson, American Marine Biologist/Conservationist

Marine Biology is a romanticized science- often the mention evokes dolphins, ocean waves, coral reefs, and warm sun. We usually don’t recognize all the other ways that the study of marine science encompasses so many other things, like muddy marshes, deep, bottom-dwelling oddities, and even the importance of microscopic plankton. Students who chose to take a semester-long course offered in our Upper School were able to travel for two days and two nights to the Dauphin Island Sea Lab on the coast of Alabama with me, their teacher, and our new service-learning coordinator, Ginny Barr. This institution, also known as the MESC (Marine Environmental Sciences Consortium), serves all colleges and universities in Alabama and serves as a hotbed of scientific research, both from resident biologists as well as visiting researchers. This unassuming, quiet island has a bevy of different environments to explore, from sandy beaches and maritime forests to saltwater marshes and the open water estuarine environment as Mobile Bay empties 62,000 cubic feet of fresh water per second into the Gulf of Mexico!

This environment creates the perfect place for our marine biology students to experience first-hand concepts we learn in class. For a class in a landlocked school, this type of field trip is crucial to their understanding of marine environments and how this translates to Louisiana and global issues like marsh loss and climate change.  With the state of Louisiana losing land mass (and other Gulf states, for that matter) along with the hits to our seafood industry, it was revealing to the students who traveled the level of importance this needs to hold for everyday citizens.

While there, the marine biology students had two particularly engaging experiences. The first was a multi-hour tour aboard the RV (research vessel) Alabama Discovery, where students were taught collection techniques like towing for plankton and using a trawl to bring up fish and invertebrates galore from the near-shore waters off the coast of the island. It’s one thing to explain to students how much biomass in the ocean is actually microscopic, and another thing to really see after a 20-minute tow, just how much a large jar can be teeming with minute zooplankton and phytoplankton, the base of the food web. While doing the tow, of course, the most mesmerizing thing was seeing the pods of dolphins collecting around the boat to eat fish from the net! Students were then brought to the back of the boat to sift through all the iridescent, prickly, and soft bodies that made up the organisms we trawled up - squid with flashing color spots, thin metallic fish, massive stingrays, worms, female crabs with “sponges” of eggs on their undersides, mantis shrimp that can split a thumb, and croaking fish. There was no shortage of surprises, including a moss-like clump of colonial animals called “bryozoans,” a variety of jellies, and even a species that they are just beginning to see in the northern gulf- a soft coral called sea pansies.

If that wasn’t enough excitement for the day, we also got into our “muddy clothes” and shoes and loaded a bus for the marsh. While there, students realized that the marsh recognizes no age or agility and quickly sucks one into sulfurous mud to the thighs. Dip nets revealed grass shrimp, little anchovies, and tiny blue crabs. Our instructor explained just how important salt marshes are in acting as storm buffers, absorbing wave energy as hurricanes batter our coasts. The marsh is also the primary nursery ground for our young seafood, including fish, shrimp, crabs, and so many other important organisms like mussels in the food web to various mammals and birds. Once just waving grasses in the breeze, names like Juncus and Spartina were the lyrical scientific names that gave students a deeper understanding of how important these plants are in the life of organisms like the periwinkle snails that climb their blades or the juvenile shrimp that eat the decaying grass.

Sarah Root Pulliam, originally from Huntsville, Alabama, has been a member of the Episcopal science faculty since 2000 and the science department chair since 2008. Sarah loves to share her love of science and nature with students both in her classroom as well as through trips to Costa Rica, Chile, and local trips as the prior sponsor of the Outdoor and Environmental Club. Mrs. Pulliam helped develop and implement the ESTAAR Program. Among the courses Mrs. Pulliam has taught are biology, AP Biology, physical science, physics, marine biology, botany, tropical ecology, environmental science, and anatomy and physiology. Sarah earned her Bachelor of Science in marine biology from Auburn University and her MEd. in the Holmes Program from Louisiana State University with a concentration in biological science.

The Episcopal School of Baton Rouge 2024-2025 application is now available! ​For more information on the application process, to schedule a tour, or learn more about the private school, contact us at [email protected] or 225-755-2685.