We’re scientists. We’re also parents. Our daughter is stuck at home as public schools in our area have been closed for 6 weeks. Yikes! How do we entertain and educate them, while we all figure out how to work from home?
We have a fantastic team of biologists at Oceans Initiative, each of whom runs at least one fascinating project. We’re planning to live stream an event Monday 16 March 2020 at 11 am (Pacific). Choose your favourite platform. We’ll be streaming simultaneously on Instagram and Facebook. No need to sign up. Just like and follow the pages, and we’ll “see” you Monday at 11. (When we studied at University of St Andrews, we loved the tradition of “elevenses” when scientists met in the lobby every morning at 11 to drink tea and coffee, eat pastries, and talk about science.)
Feel free to email us your questions ahead of time, to get the conversation started. We’ll start out by talking about southern resident killer whales. But let’s brainstorm the next topic for our meeting. This quarantine may last a while. We could talk about Pacific white-sided dolphins, including Erin’s work collecting breath samples to understand diseases in wild dolphins. (That may be an age-appropriate way to talk about viruses.) We could talk about our efforts to keep whales, dolphins, and porpoises safe from fishing gear. One of our team, Natalie Mastick, could talk about her studies of parasites in marine mammals — if we talk on a Thursday, she could stream from her lab and show you some worms, in jars. Or maybe we can figure out how to invite guest speakers when we run out of topics.
Let us know in the comments below if this is a community service you’d use. How are you keeping your kids entertained and educated at home these days? We’re all in this together.
