05x01 - High Tech Tide

[bunniefuu]

[girls] ♪ S-C-I-G-I-R-L-S ♪

[Izzie] We need you!

[girls] ♪ S-C-I-G-I-R-L-S ♪

[Izzie] Come on!

[girls] ♪ When I need help and I've got a question ♪

♪ There's a place I go for inspiration ♪

♪ Got to get to the web, check the girls' investigation ♪

♪ What girls? ♪

♪ SciGirls! ♪

Whoo!

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[Izzie] I need you!

[girls] ♪ S-C-I-G-I-R-L-S ♪

Come on!

♪ You've got to log on, post ♪

♪ Upload, pitch in ♪ Yeah!

♪ Want to get inside a world that's fascinating? ♪

♪ The time is right 'cause SciGirls are waiting ♪

[girls] ♪ S-C-I-G-I-R-L-S ♪

[Izzie] We need you!

[girls] ♪ S-C-I-G-I-R-L-S ♪

[Izzie] SciGirls!

[light, mellow music]

♪ ♪

[Jake] And the fish are in the pond.

[Izzie] Oh, yay.

We finally have a pond full of fish in our garden.

But I can't see any of them.

[Jake] Uh, is the water supposed to be this murky.

[Izzie] Ah, I don't think so. Yuck.

[water gurgles]

Yuck. [Jake] Ugh.

That's a lot of pond scum.

[Izzie] I think it's algae.

[Jake] How do we fix it so we can see our fish?

[Izzie] I don't know but know who might have some ideas.

SciGirls? We need you.

[device beeps]

[Jake] Whoa, whoa, whoa.

[Izzie] [grunting, sighs]

Something's fishy. Or not fishy enough.

Let's see.

Ponds, algae...

[gasps] oh, what's this?

[upbeat music]

[all clap, giggle]

[Byrne] That's a good one.

[Laila] One thing I really love about the ocean

is that it's just a big mystery.

My name is Laila.

Every time you go into the ocean,

you can learn something even more exciting.

[Claire] I found one. [Byrne] Oh, cool.

[Laila] Yeah, it's a little coquina.

[Byrne] My name is Byrne.

I love being in the ocean because it's like,

just a place you can get away from everything else.

It's kinda nice and quiet and just very peaceful.

Oh, it's so pretty.

So pretty. Look at the little display.

[Claire] My name is Claire.

The areas that I'm interested in the most

are science, which I like veterinary science,

technology, and I enjoy math.

It's alive, it just moved. Oh, there we go.

Sarasota is located on the west side of Florida,

right by the Gulf of Mexico.

It has super soft sand, and it's beautiful.

[Laila] Watch out, okay.

[Byrne] [laughs] You watch out.

[rock music]

[Claire] I know Laila and Byrne because we've all taken

camps at Mote Marine Laboratory and Aquarium.

[Laila] Dr. Eugenie Clark, known as "The Shark Lady,"

founded Mote Marine Laboratory in .

Find her picture in the aquarium

and take a group selfie with her.

[laughter]

[Claire] Mote Marine has a laboratory and an aquarium,

so in their laboratory, they learn

all about the animals and collect data.

And they also have an education program,

and that allows kids and adults to go

and actually help with the data

and learn about all the different animals.

[Laila] The buffet is open. [Claire] Okay.

That feels so weird.

[Byrne] Feeding rays was awesome.

They feel like squishy vacuum cleaners.

[laughs]

all: Hi.

[Claire] Today, we met Kim, who's a marine biologist

who studies eagle rays.

[Kim] This is a spotted eagle ray skull.

They have these teeth and layers,

and they're able to take a mollusk

and crush them up and they spit out the shell parts,

which you see here, and ingest the meaty part of the shell.

[Byrne] Kim's studying where spotted eagle rays go

and what they eat.

[Claire] So they wanna know where they go

in the seasons that they're not here.

[Laila] How do you study how the different animals move?

[Kim] With the eagle rays we use something called acoustic tags.

Would you gals like to learn

about our acoustic technologies?

all: Yeah.

[Byrne] I'm excited to learn about what technology

Kim uses to be able to track all those different rays.

[upbeat music]

[Laila] We are at the Mote Chickee Hut,

and Ms. Kim is describing

the different technology.

[Kim] We have some special equipment here.

Acoustic tags.

[Laila] Why do you have different sized tags?

[Kim] Because of the battery power that they have.

We pick what size tag

we can use based on the size of the animal.

This is a passive acoustic receiver.

These are what we have in the bay in certain areas

and then in the passes.

[Byrne] You said they're acoustic tags.

Does that mean that they make noise?

[Kim] They do make noise, and that's how we can tell

individual tags apart.

And I can actually show you.

[pinging]

You can hear there's a unique pinging.

It's called a coded pinging tag.

[Byrne] So the acoustic transmitter, every time it gets

within range of the receiver,

it makes a little ping that's specific to that transmitter.

[Kim] So guys, I just got some new small tags in,

and I need to test the range on them.

Do you guys wanna help me do a range test today?

both: Yeah. [Laila] Yes.

[Kim] Let's go.

[upbeat rock music]

[Byrne] We went out on the kayaks

and we all got different sized tags.

[Kim] You get out a little bit, you can drop in your tags.

[Claire] So we could test how far away from the receiver

we could be with the transmitter still working.

[Kim] So I'm gonna have you go out to the furthest marker.

[Laila] So on the kayaks,

we were mimicking the spotted eagle rays

so we could see how far they can be

so we can still detect them.

♪ ♪

[Claire] Next, we're going to go on a research boat

and download spotted eagle ray data

from a receiver.

[smooth, upbeat music]

♪ ♪

So what time of year

do you usually find spotted eagle rays?

[Kim] The typical time we'll find 'em is

kind of March through about this time of year.

They tend to go somewhere else in the winter,

and that's one of the reasons we're interested

in tagging them.

So they'll--the lighter color is where it's shallower,

and the water in general right now

has a lot of--we have red tide in the area.

[Claire] Red tide is an algae that emits a toxin,

which affects the animals in the bay.

[Byrne] It's normal for it to occur

occasionally on lower levels,

but what's happening recently, there's been

very high levels and a lot more.

It's not good for the humans or the fish.

If you go to the beach during a higher tide bloom,

then you just--all around the shoreline, it's devastating.

[Greg] Hey Chuck, I'm gonna throw the flag in.

[Kim] This is all the receivers.

The two that are highlighted in yellow

are our New Pass receivers,

so these are the two that we're focusing on today.

We're gonna be doing our south receiver first,

and then we're going over to do our north receiver.

[Greg] Alright, going in.

[Claire] Once we got to the place

where the receiver was,

the divers went in and got the receiver.

[Laila] And we timed them from when they went

off the boat and then when they grabbed it.

[Byrne] The receiver, even though it's underwater

and you know, it might be like,

pretty far away--you can still pick up on the noise.

With all the noise that's going on in the ocean,

that's pretty cool. [laughs]

[Kim] Thanks, Greg. All right.

This is precious data on here.

Here we go.

[Claire] The protocol for downloading the data

from the receiver is put the key

into the receiver which allowed,

via Bluetooth, the computer

to get the information from the receiver.

[Kim] And any tagged animals that showed up

on that receiver, they're gonna come up

in our detections list.

[Byrne] From the receiver we got to know

when it passed through and the ID number.

[Kim] Number .

[Byrne] --yeah.

[Kim] What kinda ray-- is it a male or a female?

all: It's a female. [Kim] When was it tagged?

[Byrne] .

[Kim] . [Laila] On April th.

[Kim] I am going to clear all the data off this receiver

and get it back to Captain Greg.

[Kim] Afterwards, we took the time

for when they dove off of the boat,

and when they put the receiver back down.

[Claire] Kim and her team placed the receivers

where they are because of the distance

that they can detect.

[Laila] She put the two receivers

maybe to meters apart

so it can form the gate, so the spotted eagle rays

pass by, they can make sure they detect it.

[Claire] The most interesting thing from the data sets

that we found were that we went to two different receivers

that were pretty close together.

One of them detected a lot more animals

than the other one.

[Laila] The south one had over ,,

and then the north one had ,.

How is the visibility down there?

[Greg] It's low. It's tough here

because the visibility in the passes are always low.

This just makes it worse with the red tide.

[Byrne] The most fun part of the day

was definitely going out on the research boat

and just see everything happen and be able to help out.

[Laila] It was pretty cool to

be like a marine biologist for a day.

[Claire] Hi, I'm Claire and I'm years old.

As you can see, I really like to play instruments.

I play ukulele, guitar, and viola.

I play viola in orchestra at school.

[plays gentle melody]

I love hula hooping; I've been hula hooping for six years.

Bye.

The three of us decided that we should answer

one of our own questions

using the data that we downloaded from the receiver.

[Krystan] Hi guys.

[Byrne] Today, we got to meet Krystan,

who's a researcher and specializes in analyzing data.

[Laila] We started brainstorming ideas

of what we wanted to answer.

Why is there more southern detections

than there is northern detections?

[Krystan] That's a great question.

[Byrne] And do you think the female rays

pass through more than the males?

[Kim] It's possible because we see pups

at a certain times a year

and the females might be using the area more.

[Laila] Do you think the climate change

affects the time the rays stay?

[Byrne] Do you think red tide has effect on the rays?

[Krystan] So we have a few different questions

that we can ask with the data that Kim has collected.

[Claire] We went through and ruled out the ones

that we needed more factors

and we couldn't easily answer with the data that we had.

[Krystan] In climate change, that's kind of a big question.

And so that might be bigger than we can look at right now.

[Byrne] We decided to investigate if red tide

affects where the spotted eagle rays are.

[Krystan] That's a good question

because we know when the red tide is here,

and last year the red tide wasn't here,

so we have two years that we can compare.

So let's go in the lab and look at the data.

[Byrne] Studying and getting to answer our own question

is like being an actual marine biologist, which is awesome.

[Krystan] So now that you have your question of interest,

we're going to refine the question a little bit.

So yesterday you were out in New Pass,

and so we'll look at the data collected from those receivers.

So are you interested in

understanding the number of detections

or are you interested in understanding

the number of unique rays that we see

because an animal can be detected more than once?

[Claire] I think it would be interesting to see

the number of detections, so we're able to see

when the rays as a whole left versus when they were here.

[Byrne] Once we had our question,

we made our hypothesis that when red tide is present,

there are less spotted eagle rays in the area.

[Krystan] This spans our last two years of data,

so I've combined what you've collected yesterday

into what we've collected before.

[Byrne] So how many total detections did we get?

[Krystan] We have over a hundred thousand detections

in this file right now.

So this is what we call big data.

[Laila] Miss Krystan, what she meant

about the term "big data,"

is just that there's a lot of data.

[Claire] So how do we make a graph of that much data?

[Krystan] I think we should use a program called "R,"

and with that program

we can write some computer code to make our graphs.

[Byrne] R is free computer programming software.

[Laila] So a lot of researchers use R

so they can create different graphs

or scatter plots if they need.

[Krystan] So let's meet tomorrow

and we can start making our code, all right?

[Claire] Great. [Krystan] Hands in.

One, two, three. all: Coding.

[laughter]

[mysterious music]

[Jake, Australian accent] Here we are,

in the wild waters of the Bakersfield aquarium

where we observe colorful, untamed fish.

Like her. Crikey, she's a beauty.

[Izzie] Hey, Jake. [Jake, normal voice] Oh.

Hey. What did you find out?

[Izzie] This is all part of an exhibit

called "All About Algae."

[breezy music]

To b*at algae, we have to understand it.

[Jake] Oh.

Play mind tricks with it. Got it.

[Izzie] Yeah, right.

There are many different kinds of algae.

Some are so small they can pass through most filters.

That could be how it got into our pond.

[Jake] One kind of algae, called hair algae,

grows in strands like hair.

[chuckles] How do I look?

[Izzie] [laughs] Oh, like a friendly sea monster.

[Jake] Exactly what I was going for.

[Izzie] Some animals, like mussels and clams,

eat algae, which helps keep the water clean.

[both gasp]

Jake. We need to get some muscles.

[Jake] And clams.

[Byrne] This morning we were designing our graph at the park

and we chose to go with a bar graph

to help represent when the red tide

was absent and when it was present,

so that we could easily see the number of detections.

Are we gonna have a different graph for each month?

[Claire] I'm thinking maybe we can do two separate graphs.

[Krystan] Hi girls, can you show me what you've been doing?

[Claire] So initially, we were thinking

to have a lot of months or multiple graphs,

but Krystan helped us and narrowed it down

to having it on one graph.

[Krystan] One important thing to note that red tide

hasn't been present in all of this year,

so it really started in our area in about August.

[Claire] So we decided we wanted to graph

August of last year, which was clear

of red tide, and August of this year,

which was when most of the red tide was here.

[Byrne] So are we just gonna do one month versus one month?

Because it might just be like a coincidence

that the rays are gone.

[Krystan] Maybe we start with one month to one month,

and then we can expand it to include more months.

The nice thing about computers

is that you can constantly revise your hypotheses

and your visualization

of the data with very few lines of code.

Are you all ready to code? all: Yeah.

[Claire] Thank you. [Laila] Why thank you.

[Krystan] Thank you, Byrne.

[Byrne] I had a little bit of coding experience,

but just using blocks.

[Claire] I've done HTML, Java, EV, and Scratch.

[Laila] I thought it was like pretty cool

that I was gonna be able to code a whole thing in R.

[Krystan] So I've printed a few materials

to help you with the coding. So what's our first step?

[Laila] To load data. [Krystan] Excellent.

[Byrne] Krystan told us that we should start off simple

because with a computer we could always add on

if we wanna have more information.

[Krystan] And these data have already been narrowed down

for you; these are only the eagle rays.

So let's move on to step three.

[Claire] So now we have to pull out the monthly data.

[Krystan] Yeah.

So you're gonna create some subsets using your code packet.

[Byrne] Subset is when you pull out a part of a data

that's important for answering your question.

[Krystan] You girls are all set up.

I'll be right next door if you need me.

[Byrne] The most fun part about learning to code with R,

it's definitely fun to do it with friends,

'cause then it just makes it more of a fun experience.

And when you learn together you can help each other out.

[Claire] Do we wanna just do the date?

'Cause that gives you the years and the month.

[Laila] I think 'cause then it'll only be--

[Byrne] But remember, we're separating them.

[Laila] Specified that one date if you do that.

[Byrne] Yeah. [Laila] So it'll probably be

better to do the month. [Byrne] Month, equal, equal.

[Claire] Yeah. So month, equal, equal.

[Byrne] And then the quotation marks.

[Claire] Ah, first, yes.

[Claire] So now are we on the power plot piece?

[Laila] Yes. [Claire] All right.

[Byrne] Which one do we wanna do?

[Claire] So let's start with r.

[Byrne] Okay. Let's run it.

[Claire] Alright, so-- [Byrne] .

[Claire] And let's look at r now.

[Byrne] Also .

[Claire] So also . Okay. So we know the numbers--

[Byrne] I just wanna double check that.

When we were plotting the graph,

a lot of the times we did have some trouble with that.

[Claire] We got for both of them,

so it just didn't make sense with the data.

[Byrne] If you like just forgot

something as simple as a comma,

it would mess us the entire thing

and you just would have to redo it.

[Laila] You gotta do capital V, I think.

[Byrne] That's right, I was like caps into the--

[Claire] I'd copy and paste it into the other one.

[Byrne] Wow, is this right?

This is like crazy different way.

I'm just gonna double-check, make sure it has

like the A and everything.

Yeah, there were definitely moments

where I just kinda wanted to give up and call it a day,

but we kept going, and it worked.

[Laila] So what type of colors do you think we should do?

[Byrne] I think we should have red for red tide

and then blue for like, clear water.

[Laila] Okay. [Claire] For blue.

I'm thinking darkslategray.

[Byrne] So color one would be darkslategray.

[Laila] Two? Two.

[Byrne] Yeah. [Laila] Okay.

[Claire] And then a comma. both: Comma.

[Byrne] And then firebrick.

[Laila] Ready? [Byrne] Check.

all: Yay. [laughter]

[Laila] We did it. Whoo.

That was probably the most exciting part for me too

because it was done and we was like,

"Yay, we actually did this.

We coded it all by ourself, and this is what happened."

[Byrne] Hi, I'm Byrne and I'm years old.

One of my favorite things to do is play electric bass guitar.

I play bass guitar in a band called "Starstruck."

[Man] And you gotta play C Sharp here.

[Byrne] Another thing I love to do

is play video games, board games, and card games.

I really love taking pictures of the beach.

Something that I spend a lot of my time doing

is Project TAC: Tourist Awareness Commission.

It's my service project, and we try to educate

the public about eco-tourism. Bye.

[Krystan] Hi, girls. all: Hi.

[Kim] How's it going today? all: Good.

[Claire] I feel like Krystan and Kim will be impressed

because we put a lot of work into what we've done.

We titled our graph

"Red Tide Presence

Versus the Number of Spotted Eagle Ray Detections."

[Laila] And our hypothesis was that

there would be more detections

when red tide wasn't present.

[Byrne] You can tell it's a very big difference.

There was only detections this August, with red tide.

And then , I think?

[Claire] Yeah, that was the number.

[Laila] Yeah. When it--last year.

[Kim] Yeah, you guys did an excellent job,

and this is really interesting to see.

[Krystan] Do y'all have any further questions

you'd like to ask with the data after seeing these results?

[Byrne] We could do more months to see

if there's a trend over time.

Just so we'll have more information

so that it's as accurate as it can be.

[Laila] The plan that we came up with

is we decided to do two different graphs:

one for the season of last year

and one for the season of this year.

And that's where we decided that we was gonna do

detections from March through September.

[Byrne] We changed our code by adding more bars

so we could hold more information.

[Laila] Delete this, and then--

[Claire] I think we just have to highlight all of that

and run it.

[Laila] Ready? [Claire] Yeah.

Yay. [Byrne] Awesome.

[Claire] There, so now we can compare them.

[Laila] Yeah, so let's go ahead and export this

and print it out so we can show Miss Kim and Miss Krystan.

[Krystan] So what did you find?

[Byrne] So the trends are similar

between the two years,

but you can kind of see when the red tide is present.

It does change it. [Krystan] Wow.

You have some really, really interesting results.

[Kim] So this I really important for our research

to look at how rays respond to environmental conditions.

And I think these results are really timely,

and in fact, we are doing a livestream

called "Rays-ing Awareness."

[Claire] They told us that our graphs

were very important to their research

and they'll be able to use them.

[Byrne] Kim and Krystan invited us

to their Rays-ing Awareness livestream

to share about our project.

[woman] Or even our friends, the terrapins.

[Byrne] Livestream is a live presentation

that anyone can watch online.

[Laila] Mote does these livestreams often,

and it's pretty cool that Mote wants us to be a part of it.

So you guys ready to get started on our presentation?

[Claire] Yeah. [Byrne] Yeah, let's do it.

[Laila] So we're at Claire's house and we're working

on our presentation for the livestream.

[Claire] I think they might wanna put something

about red tide and how it's affecting us

and also how it's affecting the rays.

[Byrne] In our livestream, we're gonna talk about red tide

and spotted eagle rays,

and then we're gonna share our results.

I was thinking we could do the like, original graph first.

[Laila] And after that we're just gonna see

if there's any questions from our viewers,

and that's that.

Hi, my name is Laila, and I love to sit back

and read a good book. I also love collecting things.

I collect snow globes, books, coins.

At my school, I do band, and I play the saxophone.

I also do different sports.

One of my favorite dessert is a cookie,

but do you know what I love more than cookies?

Edible cookie dough. Mmm.

I love shopping for new clothes.

What do you think?

But do you know what I really love?

Sleep. And guess what time it is?

My naptime.

[Byrne] We have our presentation done.

I think it's time to go over the livestream.

[Claire] Yeah, sounds great.

So who wants to talk about spotted eagle rays?

[Laila] I can do that.

So today we're at Claire's house.

and we're finishing our presentation,

and we're practicing for our livestream.

So over the course of the week

we have been studying spotted eagle rays

and we've been learning all about them.

[Byrne] We did some run-throughs,

we edited some stuff,

added some pictures, took some out,

and made some cue cards, just to get it ready.

[Claire] I feel more confident being part of a team.

'Cause I feel if someone messes up we'll be able

to help each other and support each other.

[Byrne] I'm excited for the livestream,

but I'm also a little anxious,

and I really don't wanna mess up.

[Laila] I feel pretty ready.

I feel that me, Claire, and Byrne,

we can rock this presentation livestream out.

[upbeat music]

♪ ♪

[Claire] Today we're at Mote SEAtrek Studio,

and we're going to present our livestream.

[Greg] Hello and thank you so much for joining us today.

My name is Ross, and I'm coming to you live

from Mote Marine Labs in Sarasota, Florida.

[Byrne] Today, in the livestream, we had classes

from New Mexico, Florida, Washington,

South Carolina,

and Minnesota.

So this week we got

the opportunity to go out on the research boat

and since the receivers are underwater,

we had two divers come with us to collect the receivers.

[Laila] So we made our first graph

based on our original question,

which was, "Is there more detections this year

"when red tide was present,

"or is there more detections last year,

when red tide wasn't present?"

[Byrne] And on our second graph, we thought

to get more information,

we could do the whole spotted eagle ray season.

So that tells us that rays are leaving during red tide.

We don't know whether it's 'cause their food supply

or just the reason why they left or where they went,

so that could be a cool follow up question.

[Ross] We're gonna have our audience ask us some questions.

"What would you girls like to do next to continue learning

about marine biology and coding?

[Byrne] I would definitely like to, next year,

do some more research with these spotted eagle rays

'cause that was awesome.

[Claire] After hearing about our project,

I hope the audience members really understand

that what they do really affects the ocean.

[Byrne] Today I hope that all the people watching

the livestream took away that

no matter how young you are,

or even if it's just you, that you can make a difference.

[Ross] So we are signing off from Mote Marine Lab.

Hope you have a great one.

And remember, continue to dive deeper.

[cheering]

[Claire] Kim and Krystan said the livestream went well.

They thought we did a good job

presenting what we've learned throughout this week.

[Laila] Thank you so much for everything

that you have taught us

and being our mentors for this week.

[Krystan] Well, you girls are very welcome.

Really, it was our pleasure to have you here this week.

[Kim] You know, you guys really did help with

starting the initial question we do have,

and about how red tide affects movement of these rays.

[Claire] Having Kim as a mentor was inspiring,

not only because she's a female scientist,

but she also has other interests.

[Kim] Let it stay on your hand

and then you just keep it going.

[Claire] Being a scientist, you don't only have to be

focused on what you study.

You can also have other interests.

[Krystan] I like my jump rope. [Kim] Right.

[Claire] Having Krystan as a mentor

was also really inspiring.

We got to see someone who is really passionate

and really focused on their work,

but someone who's also really--enjoys their work.

[Krystan] Wow, that's really cool.

[Kim] That's awesome.

[rock music]

[Laila] It feels pretty good to share your work

because people can see all the hard work that you put in.

[Byrne] It was really cool to share our work

with students across the country.

It's always cool to be able to reach out to people all over.

[Claire] I'm sad that this incredible experience is over,

but I'm happy that we were able to educate kids

and their teachers about red tide

and what we've been learning this entire week.

[Byrne] Think we're done. both: Yeah.

[Laila] Looks pretty good.

[Claire] Yeah, it really looks like a spotted eagle ray.

Great job. [Laila] Yeah!

[Izzie straining]

[light instrumental music]

Clams are ready to go.

[Jake] I've got the mussels and the muscles.

[grunting]

Whoa, whoa, whoa.

[Izzie] Jake?

[Jake] Oh hey.

♪ ♪

[water splashes]

[soft piano music]

[birds chirping]

[breezy music]

[Izzie] We can finally see the fish in our pond.

Thanks clams.

[Jake] And mussels. [grunts]

Which was to the beach? [Izzie laughs]

[Australian accent] Crikey!

They're beauties.

♪