Sanctuary Steward: Robyn Grahn

 

What drew you to volunteer with the Farallones Marine Sanctuary Association?

The first thing that attracted me was the marine biology and education opportunities. So many people are so clueless about the ocean, and have no idea about its importance or significance to us. NASA is a priority to people, exploring space is a priority, even war is a priority, but 80 percent of our earth is the ocean and people don’t know about it!

Where did your interest in marine biology come from?

Well, I’ve always loved tidepooling. I mean who doesn’t? It’s one of the best things in the world to do. Just walking around and poking at things, seeing what they are. [Robyn laughs.] So many creatures are weird looking! They don’t even look like they’re alive, and then you realize they are animals. Animals! It’s just weird. I guess I’ve always been interested in marine life. I remember in high school I did a report on nudibranchs. So I call up the Monterey Bay Aquarium and say, “I’m doing a report on nudibranchs, what can you tell me about them?” And the guy there tells me, “Why don’t you come on down, and I’ll pull them out for you.” So I did, and they actually pulled out the “nudis” and put them in a bucket, told me about about them and even let me handle them! I continued my interest in biology, so I went and got my BS in Marine Biology in Santa Cruz.

Do you have an interest in teaching? Oh yeah.

What are your plans? I want to broaden and explore all the options available, whether it’s teaching, research, or conservation. Teaching seems like such an easy field to get into. It’s a hard job, it’s hard to be a good teacher, but it’s not hard to get that type of job because there’s such a need for it everywhere, especially science. You could continue for years to perfect teaching and perfect your methods, so I don’t want to start straight into it. I would like to do something else first, not box myself in. I’ve already applied to the Peace Corps in Central or South America or Asia.

How do you think people can most effectively teach? It’s important to have them [children] draw a personal connection to the sanctuary, especially with words like upwelling. You have to relate the subject to things that happen to them in everyday life, and what they can relate to. maybe like what they eat, what they see in the sky, what they hear on the beaches. For example, if you ask, “Have you ever wondered why it’s foggy so much in San Francisco?” They can relate to the fog and know what it is and when it is. Then when you say it’s mostly due to upwelling, they can put an image to the them and ultimately remember it later on.  If they can relate to something that happens a lot or already know about, they’re likely to understand and remember the information. However, I’m 23, so I’m going off summer camp experience.

What are some of the greatest challenges of the education programs?Presenting the information linearly. In front of the aquariums it’s hard to not just go “Oh, and then there’s the eel, oh! And then there’s the giant green anenome and hey! Check out the crab!” I tend to jump from subject to subject and I try not to, but it’s really difficult.

Well, there’s a number of cool animals in the aquariums, and it’s hard to not get sidetracked when the kids are so excited to see all the different animals and are asking so many different questions. Yes! And they have so many questions, and you want to answer them all.

What’s your favorite animal or plant? Favorite? Only one? Marine? [Robyn giggles.] Well first thing that pops to mind is the Orca. Yeah, I think I’ll go with them. There’s this rad story of them taking out a white shark. In September of 1997, there were two Orcas spotted off the Farallones. There was no real reason for them being there, so the fishers go to see them. There were two females, one a little larger, and earlier that morning, they killed a sea lion and in doing so created an oil slick on the surface of the water from the sea lion’s blubber. So an hour later a white shark shows up. It’s rare to see them skimming the water’s surface like that, and then all of a sudden one of the Orca comes up from underneath and bites the white shark on the dorsal fin and flips it over and they just start eating it. There’s even been speculation that they were hunting for a white shark.

How’s that? I’ve never heard of that theory, that Orcas would hunt for the white shark deliberately.  Yes, I know, it sounds like science fiction, but I read it in the Marine Mammal Journal if you want to read it. It’s a good read. And this is the best part: after that kill, there were no more white sharks spotted for the rest of the entire hunting season! It’s like they knew that someone bigger was around and they were out of there.

Could you share the best quote from a kid, or the best kid story? [Robyn laughs.] When they’re so busy looking around at everything that they trip! No, let me think about that for a second. [She pauses.] I think a lot of the times it’s always wonderful to hear when some kid knows the most bizarre factoid. Like you ask them a question, one you don’t really expect them to know the answer to, and they answer “Upwelling”! I think it’s great, you look at them, thinking how did you possibly know that, and they just shrug, and say they watch Animal Planet or The Discovery Channel.

Tell me what you would like to impress on youth and adults.

How little we know [about the ocean]. Because once they realize that our backyard right outside [the Golden Gate] is not well known, it brings it home. Killer whales might be at Marine World, and we might know a lot about them in captivity, but their populations are a mystery to us. We think they eat sea otters in the Aleutian islands, because the sea otter population is crashing there, but we’re just assuming that they eat the sea otters. We need more money and attention in the area for research and education. [Robyn laughs uproariously at herself.] I’m so biased! We should not spend so much money on outer space, we should spend it on the ocean.

Based the low amount of coverage in either news or other media, I think people don’t have an understanding of how important the ocean is to us. There’s always a story in the paper about the moon, but nothing about the sea. I guess people think it’s depressing because everything’s gone to hell in a handbasket, but we can’t just not talk about it. There is definitely value in trying to conserve the ocean and save it. If ecology of keystone species and food webs and how they interact could really be spread to the general public… It’s fantastic knowledge but it doesn’t feel like general knowledge, and it should be.

What do you like best about volunteering?

That’s still hard to answer. I’ve been volunteering at so many places, and I’ve done it for so long. It feels good to me anyway. Something keeps me out volunteering, I hope it helps me professionally. If I could volunteer professionally, that would be rad, I’d be all over that! It’s just that you feel like you’re doing good, it’s not fake, you just do it because you love it.

 

 

Interviewed by Mara Flores Naumann