photo by: Dylan Lysen/Lawrence Journal-World

Lisa Ball, an advanced biology and AP environmental science teacher at Lawrence High School, will soon join the Ocean Exploration Trust’s expedition program to explore Chautauqua Seamounts near Hawaii.

A Lawrence high school teacher will soon take her class on a trip to the bottom of the ocean through an expedition she is joining.

Lisa Ball, a science teacher at Lawrence High School, was recently selected to serve as a communication fellow for the Ocean Exploration Trust’s expedition program exploring Chautauqua Seamounts in the Pacific Ocean near Hawaii.

Through the expedition, Ball will board the E/V Nautilus to help scientists with their research on a chain of deep-sea mountains. They will specifically be working to generate high-quality maps of the seamounts to help identify areas for future dives to collect geological samples for analysis.

The chain of seven seamounts rise more than 2 kilometers, or a little more than a mile, from seafloor and have mostly been unobserved by science, according to a news release from the school district.

Collecting that information from the seamount chain could help scientists better understand the mysteries of the deep sea, such as what organisms live off the seamounts and how their ecosystems work, Ball told the Journal-World recently.

“They are unexplored sea mountains under the ocean,” Ball said of the chain. “(Scientists) don’t know what the geological origin of the chain is, but they think it is probably older than the Hawaiian islands.”

photo by: Ocean Exploration Trust/Nautilus Live

A researcher looks at mapping data collected from the seafloor. Lawrence High School science teacher Lisa Ball will join a Ocean Exploration Trust expedition to map seamounts near Hawaii in December.

But the expedition won’t just be scientific work for Ball. She will also be providing lessons to her class back in Lawrence during the trip.

During the expedition, she will serve two roles related to communicating science. First, she will host science classes for LHS and other secondary schools in Lawrence about the expedition, providing opportunities for the students to speak to crew members about their work, their careers, the exploration process and “real science in action,” Ball said.

Ball is excited about that aspect because many of her students have never been to an ocean and may not know much yet about their importance. An example is the oxygen humans breathe. According to the National Ocean Service, at least half — and likely more — of Earth’s oxygen is produced in the world’s oceans.

“We need to find a way to connect students to the ocean because it’s an important part of all of our daily lives, whether we feel the connection or not,” she said. “It also shows them that they can chase their dreams and science exploration is not dead. There is still so much to learn.”

Secondly, she will also serve as a science communicator for the general public, who will have an opportunity to follow the live data the scientists collect during the expedition. She said she would serve as a facilitator for the scientists and help them translate their work to people in simple terms.

photo by: Ocean Exploration Trust/Nautilus Live

E/V Nautilus

Participating in scientific projects is nothing new for Ball. Several times during her career she has gone out into the field through teacher-research opportunities, she said. Additionally, during her graduate studies at the University of Kansas, she specialized in the ecology and conservation of tropical birds, with fieldwork and coursework in Costa Rica and Oaxaca, Mexico.

Although she’s been teaching at LHS for 10 years, Ball said she would continue to do fieldwork when opportunities arose.

“Fieldwork has always been a passion of mine,” she said. “I love teaching as well, but going back out in the field and doing real science keeps me grounded.”