Brandon Jones







						What is your role in Extreme 2001? My role is “Educational Coordinator.” Essentially, I will be one of two shipboard reporters whose daily responsibilities will range from interviewing crew members and scientists, taking still/video footage, answering students’ questions, coordinating real-time phone calls, and writing daily reports — all of which will be sent via FTP back to shore for uploading to the Web site.

Why is this work important? What are the benefits?

For students from all backgrounds to be involved in a project such as Extreme 2001 is “extremely” important in this day and age. Everything that students are exposed to in the media today is “real.” Real programming on television is becoming as common as the news. Live, interactive Web sites are everywhere. If students are to be exposed to so much reality, then there should be some real, interactive “stuff” with some substance. Extreme 2001 is going to be that.

What’s your educational background and what lured you into marine research?

I received my B.A. in 1991 from Lincoln University in Pennsylvania, an M.S. in marine biology-biochemistry in 1994 from the University of Delaware College of Marine and Earth Studies (CMS), and currently, I am working on my Ph.D. at CMS.

I think everyone has some primal connection to the water, but mine was cultivated through my grandparents taking me to Lake Erie and fishing around the various lakes and rivers in Ohio. I think I made my connection with the ocean there in those freshwater habitats. I always wondered what was in the water, especially since it covers most of the planet.