Frederick saw the problem. "Look around the state," he says. "There's only one Foor-Hogue." Let's call the problem the Foor-Hogue singularity.

Could you bottle his approach and sell it to other teachers? Especially to new science teachers who were trying to find their way in a profession that focused on teaching for test taking? Or to experienced teachers who were facing burnout? Or thinking of quitting? If you couldn't clone a Foor-Hogue, could you codify his tactics?

Frederick, like Foor-Hogue, saw science as problem solving. When he went to work as an Education Specialist with Maryland Sea Grant Extension, his job was to develop programs and partnerships connecting the University and the state's teaching community, partnerships that could help improve science teaching. One of his first projects: try to solve the Foor-Hogue singularity.

He drove out to visit Foor-Hogue in his aquaculture kingdom. His huge, garage-like space now held 13 major fish tanks and scattered aquaria. In a busy year his students were raising up to 20 species of fish as well as mussels and turtles. They were routing wastewater from the fish tanks out to a greenhouse to grow seagrasses. How do you replicate this kind of setup – on a small scale, at least – at other schools around the state?

It was clear that a lot of the students were hooked on solving the mystery. If the fish were going to get well, students would have to help.

Frederick's proposal: a program he wanted to call Aquaculture in Action. Maryland Sea Grant Extension would work with Foor-Hogue to design and organize week-long workshops for science teachers. They would cover the basics, build a tank system with each new teacher, teach them how to look for funding. They would even bring them the fish. He got a typical Foor-Hogue response. "Let's do it," he said. "Let's start tomorrow."

They started in 1997 by writing a funding grant and a working manual on how to build tanks, raise fish and bring students into project-based science. In 1998, with funding from the Chesapeake Bay Trust and Sea Grant Extension, they brought a dozen teachers over to South Carroll High School and went to work. Every other summer since they've re-staged the workshop. With Frederick as master of ceremonies and Foor-Hogue as master teacher, the new recruits get to build their own tanks and tour the research hatcheries at Horn Point and at the Center for Marine Biotechnology in Baltimore.

Every October, Adam Frederick and Jackie Takacs fill up their water bags and coolers with Andy Lazur's striped bass and hit the road with hope and trepidation. The singularity problem remains. You can't boil the experience of a decade down to a one-week workshop. Aquaculture is problem solving, and their new teachers and students will have to solve problems they've never seen before.

When the new stripers came to Wootton High School in Rockville, it looked like they were going to die pretty quickly. Judy Parsons, a calm veteran with 30 years experience, was soon nervous. A new recruit to striped bass aquaculture, she had hustled to get her tanks ready. She set up a good salt balance, got her water temperature right on the money, and tested for pH levels. Her biofilters were ready with bacteria that were supposed to break down ammonia and nitrites, two of the waste products of fish.

As soon as Adam Frederick walked in, lugging his fish cooler, she went to work with her students, trying to acclimate the water-bagged stripers to their brand new tank. Within a day the stripers started getting sick.

Parsons called Frederick. She told him the fish looked sick, and they began working the problem. The fish, she told him, were floating near the top of the water, struggling to breathe. According to her reading these were some of the classic symptoms of fish under stress. The result was a teacher under stress. This was her first foray with stripers in the classroom, and it was not going well.

She called Frederick again. "We were changing 20 percent of the water," says Parsons, and the fish were coming apart." Now the fish had lesions, and the teacher seemed to be coming apart. "I was thinking, oh my God, I've got a flesh-eating bacteria," she says. "I thought I had Pfiesteria

She called Frederick nearly every day now, and then Andy Lazur down at the Horn Point hatchery. She went online, searching and downloading articles from science journals. The nitrite levels were climbing. Every time her students stuck their test sticks in the water, they turned deep purple. The fish, Frederick feared, were toast. It was clear by now that one of the bacteria in the biofilter was not kicking in and cleaning out the nitrites.

It was also clear that a lot of the students were hooked on solving the mystery. They were clearly upset and kept asking Parsons why the fish were so sick. This wasn't a problem in a textbook or in a river miles away. These fish were getting sick in a water tank sitting in the back of their classroom. If they were going to get well, students would have to help with researching the literature and reworking the water system.

Some mysteries are solved but never completely explained. Students and teacher decided that the culprit was nitrobacter, the bacteria that is supposed to decompose nitrites. Answers, in science, always lead to questions. Why do nitrobacter populations sometimes grow more slowly than predicted? So slowly they can't keep up with the waste from 25 tiny, four-inch fish. Questions don't always lead to answers.

Parsons and her students tried a 20 percent water change, and then 50 percent. A water change in a fish tank can be a tricky, time-consuming maneuver. As they drain off the old water (and its overload of nitrites), they have to add new water that is warm enough, salty enough and dechlorinated enough to keep the fish from stressing out even more.

The second change was the charm. The solution to pollution is (sometimes) dilution. With new water, the fish began moving around again, instead of clinging to the surface and sucking air. When nitrobacter finally kicked off a population explosion, nitrite levels began dropping to acceptable levels. Fish are incredible, thought Parsons. Within three days they were back to a semblance of normal life in a fish tank world.

Her students, by now, had worked through some real-world science. The near-death episode made a convert out of Parsons and a lot of her students. Several students from her Advanced Placement courses applied for in-school internships to work another year with the next batch of fish. "These kids learned so much about real-life application." says Parsons. "They have to know the nitrogen cycle on the AP test, and the kids who were working with these fish and trying to keep them alive, they understood the issues of nitrites. No question about that."

Over three decades of teaching, she has seen her field swing away from classic descriptive biology towards a stronger focus on molecular biology. Hands-on, project-based programs like environmental education and Aquaculture in Action, she believes, help recapture some of the excitement of the old biology.

She can see the response even in her students' basic data-gathering work. To weigh and measure the fish, they learn how to anesthetize fish with clove oil, giving them a 30-second window to work in. "These kids are never going to get an opportunity to handle fish like this again," she says. "First when they put them to sleep, they think they've killed the fish." Then the fish wake up, and so do many of the students. "They love it. Not only that: they are amazed."

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