March 13, 2015 — It was a win four years in the making. The high school seniors started as freshmen, filling their brains with information about the ocean — its currents, its creatures, its history and its geography.
Then they had one day to spill it all. During the Sea Lion Bowl at Stanford, the Mission San Jose High School varsity marine science team survived each round of the quiz show–style competition. And in the final square-off, the students from Fremont beat their opponents 85–45.
“This year, I knew we finally had a chance,” added Hung, who was carting a pink squid hat around Stanford’s Huang Engineering Center, where the competition took place Feb. 28. (She kept it on her lap while competing.) Hung and her teammates had decided to divide and conquer, with each member focusing on a specialty such as marine mammals or ocean geography. The strategy clearly paid off.
The Consortium for Ocean Leadership began sponsoring marine science bowls for high school students 18 years ago to fill an educational gap according to Kristen Yarincik, director of the National Ocean Sciences Bowl. “Fewer than half of high schools offer earth or environmental sciences classes. This is often the only way kids are exposed to oceanography,” Yarincik said.
In the past, San Francisco State hosted the Sea Lion Bowl, Northern California’s regional qualifying event, but budget constraints prevented the university from hosting last year. Students who wanted to compete headed to Oregon for the Salmon Bowl or Los Angeles for the Surf Bowl.
So, for the 2015 competition, Stanford stepped in. “We wanted to keep it going,” said Stanford professor Rob Dunbar, who was both the faculty sponsor for the event and a science judge during the competition. “It’s also spectacularly fun. It’s impressive when you see high school students perform at what is grad student level.” A leading oceanographer and climate scientist, Dunbar is the W.M. Keck Professor of Earth, Energy & Environmental Sciences at Stanford.
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