(all) Welcome to Seward!

(Gracie) We're surrounded by water and mountains.

So y'all want to head out there?

- (Gracie) Yeah, let's go.

- (Indigo) Sure.

(Gracie) I'm really excited to do some citizen science.

(Indigo) We saw lots of different shells and plants.

Whoa!

[laughs] (cheerful music) - Major funding for "Sci Girls" is provided by the National Science Foundation.

Supporting education and research across all fields of science and engineering.

The National Science Foundation, where discoveries begin.

Additional funding is provided by the PPG Foundation which aims to bring color and brightness to communities around the world.

(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!

(girls) ♪ S-C-I-G-I-R-L-S (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!

Oh, wow.

Yesterday's storm made a mess.

Oh, no.

Izzy, look!

Our home base for tag.

Oh.

And our lunch table.

[mysterious music] (both) Ugh!

It's too heavy!

Oh.

We're supposed to take yearbook pictures here tomorrow.

We've got to clean this place up.

This could take all day.

[gasps] And Dad's making tacos for dinner.

Izzy, I can't miss taco night!

[laughs] Here.

Eat this while I check with the SciGirls.

They'll know what to do.

[upbeat music] [grunts] Oh, nice.

Mm, cool, but, hmm, maybe later.

[gasps] Ooh!

Yep.

This should do the trick.

♪ ♪ (Indigo) Look at that.

It, like, comes in.

It splits, and then it goes out there.

Whoa.

[laughter] (all) Welcome to Seward!

When I heard I was moving to Alaska, I was really excited because I knew that I'd have a lot more experiences.

Pretty much wherever you go in Seward, you're surrounded by nature-- probably one of the best parts about this town.

I feel like I learn where a new mural is every time I talk to a tourist.

(Evie) Seward is a small little tourist town in the southern part of Alaska.

It is on the Kenai Peninsula, so we're surrounded by water and mountains.

So this is kind of the state of Alaska.

Seward's located around here.

It's exposed to the Gulf of Alaska around here, and it's just south of Anchorage.

(Indigo) And it's a lot bigger than people think.

Alaska is huge.

(Evie) Seward is surrounded by glaciers.

(Gracie) We have oceans.

We have mountains.

We have forests.

We also have a lot of distinct animals.

Sea otters are, like, weirdly big.

(Indigo) They remind me of my cat Mavis.

It's just sort of, like, mixed into your everyday life.

Like, there'll be a bear in your backyard.

A lot of time we have to, like, stop traffic because there's a mama and a baby, like, crossing the road, which is awesome.

[upbeat music] Hi, my name is Indigo.

♪ ♪ I started being interested in STEM when I was in, like, fourth grade.

I learned that asking questions was, like, a big part of learning, and it didn't mean you didn't know what was happening.

It was just sort of like a way of understanding.

I feel like I'm good at, like, making other people feel calm.

Like, I freak out a lot.

Careful.

[laughs] Don't hurt yourself.

(Indigo) But I'm very reassuring to other people.

Indigo is one of the most delightful people to be around.

She's really relatable, and she's one of the nicest people I've ever met.

My name is Gracie.

I would say I'm pretty observant and resourceful.

I like thinking outside of the box.

I play guitar, and I listen to music on my free time a lot.

I'm really passionate about science and nature.

I just really like being able to observe my surroundings, and definitely living in Seward really just fosters that.

(Indigo) Gracie's super fun.

She's always just been, like, super supportive.

(Evie) I love listening to her take on things.

She just has great input and advice.

My name is Evie.

I love to learn, regardless of the subject.

I really enjoy biology and, branching off of that, psychology.

I think humans are really interesting, and I'd love to know more about how the human brain works.

My favorite outdoor activity is hiking.

I love just walking through the woods.

It's more fun than walking on the sidewalk.

You see more things.

Red-legged kittiwakes live a little farther up north because they don't do as well with humans in their society.

(Gracie) Man, Evie is one of the most intelligent people I've ever met.

Half the time, I don't know what she means because she's so smart.

(Evie) Gracie, Indigo, and I are all academically focused, but we have very different interests.

We all work really well together.

(Indigo) We just, like, order of coffee, and we just, like, talk about things because we're all in different schools, and we just sort of, like, talk about what's going on in all of our different worlds.

[laughter] This year was a really big year for bird rehab.

We got a lot of eagles that weren't doing well or trapped.

I work at the Alaska Sealife Center, which is a research and rehabilitation facility, and they also are a public aquarium.

I'd love to head over to the Alaska Sealife Center today.

Would you guys like to join me?

That would be awesome.

Definitely.

Can't wait.

I'm really excited to explore the Sealife Center with Evie and Indigo because I know that Evie has a lot of information about the Sealife Center.

I work as a ticketer and an interpreter.

I'm looking at the animals, and I'm telling the guests about them.

If you put your finger just between the spines on the sea urchin, it'll give your finger a little hug.

[Indigo gasps] I really like seeing the two sea lions, Mara and Pilot.

Pilot reached 2,000 pounds earlier this summer.

♪ (Evie) "Observance without disturbance."

It's really just them interacting in their natural environment.

(Indigo) Yeah, they're, like, being observed, but, like, we're not intruding on their space.

I'm having a lot of fun.

It's really fun to, like, hear Evie, 'cause she's, like, a professional.

(Evie) I have been waiting to info-dump a lot of this information for a very long time.

♪ ♪ Hello, I'm Evie, and one of my favorite things to do with my free time is to play tabletop role-playing games.

I actually run quite a few for local kids, including my little siblings.

One of my favorite things in the world is language, especially the words that make it up.

My favorite word is actually "temerity," which means an excess of boldness.

It's also a synonym for "audacity."

I told my friend that once, and he said, oh, so you, right?

[chuckles] This is one of my most prized possessions.

He's a fake human skull, and his name is Victor.

My little siblings gave him to me for Christmas one year, and he's sat at my desk ever since, staring at me always.

One of my favorite things to do is read.

I really like all types of fiction.

I write down all the little snippets and quotes that I find that I like, and I put them on this little quote wall.

It makes me really happy, and it's something I've been doing for years and years.

Cheers.

♪ ♪ Today we're meeting Kristen, who studies Alaska's birds and who works at the Sealife Center.

- Hey, guys.

- (Gracie) Hey!

Welcome to the Alaska Sealife Center.

I have the fun job of taking care of all the different seabirds that we have here.

If you look right behind you, we have our spectacled eiders, and that's what we're going to be working with today.

And this particular bird is a threatened species in the state of Alaska, so there is a recovery team in place to help this threatened species recover in the wild from some pretty drastic population declines that have happened.

What we're able to do is collect really valuable baseline information, so that's what you're going to do with me today.

All right, you guys ready?

- (Gracie) Absolutely.

- Awesome.

Let's go.

(Indigo) The first thing we had to do was to corral the birds into a smaller enclosure.

This way a little bit.

[birds squawking softly] Nice try.

So now we're going to go out and get set up to start processing the birds we just put into our capture cage, cool?

Sounds good.

All right.

Kristen invited us to help weigh and swap the spectacled eiders.

Dr. Emm's our veterinarian.

She's going to help just make sure we've got healthy birds on our hands.

Perfect.

All right, let's go put him in his weight bucket.

I would help pick up the spectacled eider, put it in a bucket, which had a scale on top of it, and from there, we were able to gather its weight, which I then told Evie, and she wrote down.

You're also swabbing them to test them for avian influenza.

These guys are called spectacled eiders because they get a ring around their eye.

Oh, yeah.

Spectacled eiders are a bigger duck.

They make little throat noises.

[all squawking softly] (Evie) It's important for scientists to collect data from different species of animals because that gives them a baseline to compare other animals of that species, too.

(Gracie) Spectacled eiders in particular are kind of a threatened species, so it's really important to just kind of learn what we can do to help keep them off the Endangered Species List.

It was really interesting handling the spectacled eiders.

They are very, like, wiggly.

- Oh!

- Oh!

There she goes!

There she goes!

Escaped!

(Gracie) They were really big, and they were pretty strong.

They were really cool to handle.

After we finished collecting data out in the enclosure, we headed inside and took blood samples from two of the birds.

And what are you looking for in their blood?

This is kind of just our baseline of trying to get normal parameters.

There's not that many spectacled eiders out there, so we don't have that big of a database of healthy kiddos to compare to.

(Evie) The scientists at the Alaska Sealife Center analyze the blood to look more closely at how their animals are doing.

The spectacled eiders don't really show outward signs of sickness, and then they kind of slowly get worse and worse and worse.

And if we don't take the blood, then we don't see what's happening until it gets really serious.

♪ ♪ We took a look in the lab with Hanna.

The next thing we're going to be doing is processing the blood.

These are ready to go in the centrifuge.

Do you know the ride where you stand and it spins really fast?

Yep, this is the same method to pull those red blood cells down.

It was really amazing to work with Hanna and watch her use the centrifuge, microscope, and refractometer.

Holding it up to the light, do you see how it's kind of darker and then it gets that rainbow lighter color, kind of like an oil slick?

Yeah.

So when I'm actually looking at the blood itself and counting white blood cells, this is what I'm going to be looking at.

(Gracie) There's a lot of white blood cells in an area that could tell us that there's a virus or just something wrong, and the blood is working to try to protect it.

Hanna, what's your favorite part of your job?

I really like being able to have hands on the animals, like we did earlier with the eiders, but then come into the lab and get our vets the puzzle pieces they need to look at animal health as a whole.

If I were to work at the Alaska Sealife Center, I would like to be, like, up close with the animals helping out.

(Evie) It is a compact facility that does such a broad range of things.

Everyone works really well together.

I could honestly see myself enjoying working in almost any department there.

Hi, I'm Gracie.

I'm 15.

I live in Seward, Alaska.

And here are a few things that I like to do.

One of my favorite hobbies is playing guitar.

[light melody playing] ♪ ♪ This is my cat Fifi.

[purrs and meows] Along with the electric guitar, I also enjoy playing the acoustic guitar.

♪ ♪ This is my dog Zoe.

[whines softly] This is my leopard gecko Toothless.

All right.

See you next time.

Bye.

[upbeat music] (Indigo) This is amazing.

We ended the day with Kristen in the aviary, where we got to weigh some more birds and feed them.

The aviary at the Alaska Sealife Center is really interesting because there's a lot of different birds all going about their business at the same time.

The gulls are squawking, the birds are splashing, and it's just this really chaotic but also very well fitting environment.

We just sat with a scale, and the birds just came up onto the scale.

So this is a horned puffin, Denali.

Her weight was 548 grams.

Horned puffins are called horned puffins because they do get a little horn.

It's that little line right above their eye.

And they grow it just for the breeding season.

Like bird mascara.

It is, yeah.

[laughter] The birds have been trained that if they get on the scale, they get food.

So they sort of, over time, slowly lined up and hopped on, and we got their weight, and we fed them fish, and then they would go on their way.

What we're able to do with this data is collect that over time and over the course of the year to kind of just show weight trends for the species.

My favorite bird was probably Portland.

Is that Portland?

The one-- It is, yes.

Good job.

[laughs] Portland was a red-legged kittiwake.

He was the first bird that I was able to, by looking at the sheet, like, identify without any help.

He was very cute.

[laughs] What are some ways that we can help research and observe just in our community?

That's a great question.

One of the best things you can do is just go outside and look for birds.

And there's a few different ways that you can report the birds that you see in your area, and that actually is awesome information for scientists to be able to use.

(Indigo) I had, like, a lot of fun at the Alaska Sealife Center because I normally just, like, look at the exhibits, but for the first time, I got to go, like, behind the scenes and sort of see what it's actually like and, like, all the care that has to go into the animals, and it's not just like, they're there and they're healthy.

Okay, now that I'm, like, getting into it, I sort of love this.

I think that what we learned at the Alaska Sealife Center was really valuable.

We were inspired to go collect some data of our own.

Data collection is an everyday life skill.

It really can just help you understand how the world works in general.

♪ ♪ (Indigo) Today we're on Afognak Beach looking at plants and organisms and collecting data.

We learned so much from Kristen that we're really excited to come out today and apply some of those skills out here.

[camera shutter clicks] (Indigo) It's really low tide, and we got tons of beach.

I'm thinking we'll see maybe some worms, a lot of marine plant life.

We have some really nice tide pools today.

(Evie) I'm excited to kind of trudge around the beach and, you know, hopefully not get my feet too wet.

I got some boots on, but we'll see.

Y'all want to head out there?

- (Gracie) Yeah, let's go.

- (Indigo) Sure.

I'm really excited to be out here today and do some citizen science of our own.

Citizen science is science that nonprofessionals can participate in.

(Indigo) Just, like, normal people going out and sort of documenting what they see in every day, like, nature and what's around them.

It's really just science that you do yourself and can give back to your community.

- What is that?

- (Gracie) Ooh, is that?

It kind of looks like a crab shell or something.

I think it's a mushroom.

♪ ♪ - Do we want to share it?

- (Indigo) Yeah.

Just broadcast it to the whole world.

Today we're using iNaturalist app for collecting data.

(Indigo) And then that data, that can be used for scientists to, like, see what's growing where and where animals are.

Oh, I think it's a jellyfish.

Is this, like, a sea nettle?

(Indigo) I think your phone will know.

[camera shutter clicks] Nice.

(Indigo) I want to say it has to do with a lion.

Or the lion's mane?

Okay.

Share.

[vocalizing] So most of the species I didn't know at all, but that app identifies it for you.

While we were on the beach, we saw lots of different, like, plants and shells.

Look at that photogenic green goop.

- (Indigo) Yeah.

- Look at it.

Look at it go.

Got some gutweed on our hands.

(Gracie) Cool.

(Evie) We saw a lot of kelp.

That was pretty predominant.

A couple of species of birds, mainly eagles and some seagulls.

I think it's a juvenile.

I think it's, like, a juvenile bald eagle.

(Indigo) We even got to see a family of river otters.

(Evie) Are those otters?

I think they're river otters.

(Gracie) Most of the time when I'm identifying things, I'm doing it alone.

But it was really nice to have Evie and Indigo join me.

They knew some information.

I knew some information.

We were able to gather some really good identifications and observations.

It kind of looks like the tide's coming in a little bit.

- (Indigo) Yeah.

- I think we should head back and don't get washed away.

Cool.

♪ ♪ Hi.

I'm Indigo.

I'm 13 years old, and I'm in 8th grade.

We're hiking up Mount Alice to go blueberry picking, and here's Seward.

Welcome to my room!

I love animals, and here's my hamster, Coco Puff, and my cat.

No.

I got Emma from the Seward Animal Shelter three years ago.

I love sewing, and one of my most recent projects was making a Victorian-era fan front dress.

Bye!

♪ ♪ So, after collecting data at the beach, we went and sat down, looked at all the data we collected.

(Indigo) We looked at the surrounding area and if other people had seen what we had seen and other different things that maybe we had missed.

- So here are our observations.

- (Gracie) So cool.

We made 14 this morning, and 10 of the species were identified.

(Gracie) It was really interesting to come back and look at the data on a computer, because we were able to obviously see the ones that we identified, but we could also see other people's identifications in our area.

One observation.

So does that mean, like, someone looked at it?

There were a few species that we didn't know that we identified, but after a few hours, we had some people identify them for us.

Just getting a better understanding of what we saw was really helpful.

(Evie) So there's Afognak, and there's Seward across the bay.

(Gracie) Yeah.

(Evie) It's kind of cool how data points even go up into Mount Marathon.

(Indigo) Yeah, and on the water.

The more people that document what they see by collecting data, the better baseline we have.

You know, if we were to sometime go out there with more people, imagine how much data we could gather to track these species.

(Indigo) We're really excited to bring our friends and show them what we've learned and also have them help us out with collecting further data.

We could get so much more done if we round up a team.

Clean up!

Clean up over here!

You can hold Fang if you help us!

Huh.

Uh, how about we start by asking some students?

Great idea.

And I'll order pizza, lots of pizza.

♪ Thanks for coming today!

Together we'll make Bakersfield schoolyard even better than before!

[all cheering] [laughs] Jake, look!

We call ourselves The Hammerheads.

[laughs] What are you making?

It's a friend bench.

We recycled the wood from the picnic table.

I love it.

So if you need a friend, you sit here, and someone comes over.

That's the idea.

[sniffing] Mmm.

What's that sweet smell?

Ah, lavender.

Butterflies love its nectar.

Just call us the Butterfly Buds.

Yeah.

Oh, check out all the Kindness Rocks.

[gasps] Here's mine!

"Be kind."

[laughs] Sweet.

[school bell rings] Uh-oh.

It's getting late, Izz.

Do you think we'll finish everything before Picture Day tomorrow?

Oh, you're right.

We need more help.

And I know just who to ask.

Come on.

(Gracie) Today we're back at the beach to collect some more data.

Thank you guys so much for coming to join us to collect more data.

I'm super excited.

Sorry it's a little rainy.

But, you know, that's okay.

(Gracie) We decided to invite Josie and Izzie to help us collect more data.

(Indigo) We decided to split up in groups so that we could collect more data in different areas.

Boom, boom, boom, smack.

♪ (Izzie) It could be a black mussel.

Share?

Yeah, I think that's awesome.

And then we're all good if you want to press share.

Fun.

Nice.

(Indigo) Oh, look at this.

(Gracie) It's a little bit rainy, but it's made these really awesome tide pools.

We've been able to find some new species that we didn't find yesterday.

(Izzie) Oh, wow!

(Indigo) You see, it has, like, neon pink on it.

The coolest thing I saw today was probably the jellyfish that was flipped upside down.

It looked like it had pink neon spots on it.

It was really pretty.

(Gracie) Oh, this is a moon jelly.

So we just found a moon jelly over there, and we were kind of looking at it, and it looked like it was still moving, so we decided to help release it back into the ocean.

Be free.

♪ The mud sometimes made it really difficult to get around, but it was also great for doing the splits.

Whoa!

You're going to fall in the puddle!

(Evie) Because we split into two groups, we actually got different data points.

Indigo and Izzie figured out they could record sound, so they got some data on bird noises, and we found the isopods.

We were really excited to share our findings with each other at the end.

Whoa!

(Izzie) Give me this one.

It was really fun and cool to come out here and do some citizen science with my friends.

I would totally do this again.

Working it!

(Josie) I'm done working it.

[laughs] Let's see how many data points we collected today.

- (Gracie) Yeah.

- (Indigo) Yeah.

It looks like we got 31 because we got 14 yesterday, and in total we have 45-- that's a lot.

- (Gracie) Yeah.

- (Evie) Yeah.

Over double.

- Yay!

- Good job.

Yeah, good job, guys.

[laughter] It was really rewarding to go out with friends and collect more data, and it was awesome to see the results that we had actually gained a lot more information.

Today we're back at the Alaska Sealife Center to talk to Kristen again and show her all the data we collected.

So tell me a little bit about what you guys have been up to.

(Gracie) There's a little bit more data on the second day - of that path.

- (Kristen) Mm-hmm.

That's because we actually invited two more friends to help us, and we split up into groups so we could cover more ground.

Yeah.

And that definitely helped.

We were able to collect a lot more information and data.

(Kristen) I didn't realize you guys were looking at all different types of organisms out there.

(Evie) Yeah.

(Kristen) You guys were maybe, like, tide pooling out there a little bit, too, it looks like?

- (Indigo) Yeah, definitely.

- That's really cool.

It was really nice sharing our data with Kristen because she was kind of the reason why we went out and did this citizen science.

We took what we learned from her and then went out and used it.

And then there was another example of one organism that we didn't know, and someone actually identified it, and they were, like, a professional researcher.

There's just so many people that are, like, really qualified in what they're doing, helping us to identify things that we didn't know.

Kristen seemed really impressed by everything we've done over the past couple of days.

Not only are you guys learning a bunch of information for yourselves about what's in our ecosystem - that we live in.

- (Gracie) Yeah.

Now you're posting it online in a fashion that's readily available for any scientist.

(Evie) Citizen science isn't just useful for scientists.

It's also really useful for people in general, because they get the information, scientists get other information, and it all comes together in the end.

I think it's amazing that you guys took the initiative to do this-- go out and collect data on what's in our local environment, put it on this website where people across the world can access the data that you collected right here in our backyard, and it provides information to researchers all over the world, which is really, really awesome.

I think you guys should be really proud of what you did.

Yeah.

Well, thank you so much because you're really the reason that we went out and did this.

You really inspired us.

- Go, team!

- (Kristen) Go, science!

- (Gracie) Yeah.

- (Evie) Science.

[laughter] We're so lucky.

Like, look up.

It's, like, blue.

Like, actual blue.

[soft music] (Evie) I think one of the most important things I've taken away from this experience is that you can do a little bit, and it can still make an impact.

You just got to try a little bit.

(Indigo) It really feels great to know that I'm an active member in the community and that I am helping out.

I think it's crazy how, like, abrupt it is.

- You know, it's like... - (Gracie) Yeah.

It's like a wall kind of.

Just looking in those two days, the amount of things we were able to identify was really impressive.

I was really inspired by my experiences with Kristen.

She really taught me a lot.

(Indigo) Citizen science is really fun, especially to do with friends, but it's awesome to also know that it's helping researchers out.

It's really just something that you're doing to help your community.

I mean-- Ooh, moon jelly!

(Gracie) Ooh!

(Indigo) I'm really excited that I'll be able to continue doing this, even after all this has happened and be able to keep helping out researchers and keep documenting things I see in nature.

I think was really awesome to be able to do this with Gracie and Evie because we all had already known each other, but I think we got a lot closer, and they are just a great team to work with.

My house will be appearing on the left.

(Gracie) I'm so grateful that I'm able to live in Seward because it's such a unique place to live.

(Evie) It's just so cool to live in this unique place and to see how people are using this location to help the broader world.

It was so cool that we planted tomatoes and cucumbers for our school lunches.

[laughs] I can't believe Bakersfield has a garden now.

I know.

Our yearbook pictures are going to be so fresh.

You know, we never would have been able to make this by ourselves.

Yep.

Teamwork rocks.

Oh, yeah.

This place rocks.

Looks like we're not the only ones who think so.

[laughter] (Krista) Welcome to the Mississippi River.

(Laura) What are some things that end up polluting our watershed?

(Hope) Here's another can.

We are making an art project so it inspires other people to help the environment.

(Krista) It's a team effort.

(all) River Rescuers!

(Reagan) Congaree National Park is very beautiful.

(Jayden) And it has a very unique firefly because they can blink their lights at the same time.

In elementary school, that's, like, the last time I saw a firefly.

(Reagan) Where they at now?

I'm excited to see a firefly.

- Ooh.

- (Jayden) That is so cool.

(cheerful music) - Major funding for "Sci Girls" is provided by the National Science Foundation.

Supporting education and research across all fields of science and engineering.

The National Science Foundation, where discoveries begin.

Additional funding is provided by the PPG Foundation which aims to bring color and brightness to communities around the world.

[upbeat music] ♪ (person) There's more fun on the "SciGirls" website.

You can watch videos, play games, and look for creatures in the great outdoors.

See you soon at pbskids.org.

(girls) ♪ S-C-I-G-I-R-L-S