Scientific Utility in Ecological Education Programs: A Case Study of the Island Seas Education Association, Sutton's Bay, MI

Abstract

This practicum originated from an internship with the Inland Seas Education Association (ISEA), Suttons Bay, MI in summer of 2009. Through its educational programs aboard schooners on Grand Traverse Bay, MI ISEA generates a large volume of physical and biological data. At its core, this project had three primary objectives: I. Determine general trends from ISEA’s fish, zooplankton, and benthos data II. Determine the scientific validity and utility of ISEA’s data III. Develop recommendations for ISEA and other programs that would improve the consistency, validity, and applications of water quality or ecological sampling programs General trends within ISEA data were analyzed by digitizing data from 1989-1992, 1995-2001, and 2005-2010 and generating graphs to display changes in the fish, zooplankton, and benthos populations over time. To determine the scientific validity of the data, independent fish, zooplankton, and benthos samples were collected in June, July, and September, 2010 following currently accepted scientific protocols and compared with ISEA’s 2010 data. Based on the comparison, it was determined that ISEA’s fish data can be utilized with caution for examining fluctuations in populations, while zooplankton and benthos data are only usable for casual long-term trend analyses. Based on these inferences, a series of recommendations for data processing, data analysis, and volunteer training were generated for ISEA and other ecological education programs to improve the scientific utility of resulting datasets.