The world is their lab

Emily Syrjala, a 13-year-old student from Seattle Girls School, moved the glass dish containing the four tiny fish bones she had identified as pieces of a pollock's skull and began peering under the microscope at an ear bone.

"My dad's a fish counter," said Emily, explaining how she ended up spending a hot summer day inside a laboratory at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's complex of research buildings at the former Sand Point naval station in Northeast Seattle.

One of the things NOAA scientists here do with some regularity is "count fish," otherwise known as estimating and managing the health of a particular fish or marine mammal population.

Suddenly, someone said time was up, and Emily, along with maybe a dozen other middle school students, shifted their scientific focus. She and others went over to see how NOAA wildlife biologist Kym Yano identified different humpback whales by fluke characteristics.

"When I started at this job, I had 500 photos of different whales I needed to identify," Yano explained to the students. Now, she said, the images are digitized but scientists still use tail coloration, nicks or notches or other peculiarities to identify individual whales. She presented the students with sequential images to identify as matches or not.

"No, no, no, no, yes!" the group said in unison upon identifying the matching flukes.

In another part of the lab, two young women and a young man were listening to NOAA scientist Steve Withrow describe how researchers who study marine mammals "tag" them using a variety of tracking devices.

"This kind of tagger we just glue on," said Withrow, holding an orange device that looked vaguely like a clothes iron with an antenna stuck on it. He explained how scientists can use these tracking devices to watch how deep seals dive and where they go.

"It might tell us the seal is spending a lot of time at about 100 feet down, which might indicate a food source," Withrow said.

"Doesn't that hurt the seal when you have to take it off?" asked Bailey Rufer, an 11-year-old from Everett. She and her friend, Caitlyn Sohlberg-Donn, both looked concerned. But Withrow explained that the device simply falls off every year when the seal sheds its fur coat to grow a new one.

Andrew Kent, 11, of Seattle, asked how seals could dive so deep without getting decompression sickness -- or the bends, nitrogen bubbles in the blood -- that can afflict human divers if they swim too rapidly from depth to the ocean surface.

"Can a seal decompress itself?" Andrew asked.

After Withrow explained that seals are able to collapse their lungs and compartmentalize their blood supply in a way that prevents them from getting sick, Andrew wanted even more information about the precise nature of how they do this. The NOAA scientist started explaining more about the precise cellular metabolism of seals.

These are middle school kids? Listening with intensity to scientists?

"Middle school is a time when a lot of young people disengage from science, especially young girls," said Lisa Hiruki-Raring, a NOAA marine mammal biologist who organizes the scientists for the NOAA Science Camp. It's a project that was launched in 2003, with assistance from the University of Washington's Sea Grant program, aimed specifically at preventing disengagement.

"We're really trying to make it fun," said Joy Burke, director of the camp and a Seattle elementary school teacher. Burke, standing next to a group of students peering into a 50-foot water tank containing two divers talking to them by radio, said the goal is to help young people appreciate the excitement of exploration and discovery in science.

After they learn about the techniques, the 50 or so students will be given a problem -- in this case, a mysterious fish kill -- and use everything they've learned to try to solve the mystery of what caused the episode.

"All of the different information they have gathered will fit like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle," Hiruki-Raring said.

"And we're not going to tell them at the end what the 'right' answer might be," said Burke. In science, she noted, no "supreme power" ever tells scientists if they have gotten it right. It's about learning the process of elimination and finding the best answers.

There are several science camps in Seattle. The NOAA Science Camp is gaining in popularity and is one of the few educational summer science programs focused on middle-school students.

This is the first year it is holding two one-week camps and has already filled all available slots. There is a waiting list.

For other science camp opportunities, the Pacific Science Center in Seattle perhaps offers the greatest number of camps over the summer.

The Burke Museum, the Seattle Aquarium and a number of natural history or environmental organizations also offer science camps.