Rising Mathews High School senior Ivan Schaible recently spent an afternoon gathering data about the Chesapeake Bay with a team of scientists from the National Geographic Explorers Club, and the experience just might have changed his life.
Club members were in Mathews last month to resurvey underwater sites visited and written about in the 1950s by the late Mathews explorer and boatbuilder Gilbert Klingel. Alongside famed undersea explorer Sylvia Earle, whose nonprofit Mission Blue co-sponsored the expedition, the team used advanced scientific methods and modern photographic equipment to identify species and document ecological conditions in waters off Gwynn’s Island.
One of the scientific methods the scientists employed is a test on environmental DNA, or DNA that is left behind in the water by whatever species occupy it. In order to do this, they needed samples from the water, and that was what Schaible spent much of the day doing after the team picked him up at the public landing at ...