AEDC’s Mary Fedde dives with the sharks for STEM

  • Published
  • By Raquel March
  • AEDC/PA
ARNOLD AIR FORCE BASE, TENN. --  Many Arnold Engineering Development Complex (AEDC) personnel make sacrifices to volunteer with Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) programs. But how many people would swim with sharks to foster a young person's fascination with science?

Mary Fedde, a physicist in the Aerospace Testing Alliance (ATA) Integrated Test and Evaluation Department, swims with the sandbar sharks and sand tiger sharks as a volunteer diver at the Tennessee Aquarium's Ocean Journey Secret Reef tank in Chattanooga. The program in which Fedde volunteers gives youth an overview of the different inhabitants of fresh water, coastal waters and open oceans.

"They have a lot of programs for kids like the Keeper Kids programs that they run during the summer and over school breaks where children can learn about the animals and what is necessary to responsibly care for them," Fedde said.

The Keeper Kids programs offer children in kindergarten to 12th grade activities such as learning about sharks, going behind the scenes with scuba divers or recording penguin observations.

Fedde became a Tennessee Aquarium volunteer diver in 2007. Her diving duties range from cleaning and feeding to conducting a show. Cleaning and feeding dives last 45 minutes to one hour, while a show may only take 15-20 minutes.

"Each dive team has six members and each team is on a 28-day rotation," she said. "We do two to three dives before lunch then one or two more [dives] after lunch.

"About an hour before the aquarium opens for the day, five divers enter the Ocean Journey Secret Reef tank to scrub about a quarter of the tank and to wipe down the windows. Three divers will do the scrubbing and window cleaning while the other two [divers] in the water will be the shark guards. The sixth team member remains topside as our safety surface support."

When a portion of the cleaning dive is complete, the team splits into two groups of three people to perform the dive show and cleaning for other tanks such as the fresh water tanks Nickajack Lake or River Giants.

"The dive show team will do four shows," Fedde continued. "One diver wears a surface supplied full-face mask that is rigged with a microphone and speakers; that diver will speak to the educator on the other side of the [tank] window. A second diver will be the guard diver to steer the sharks away from the other [speaking] diver. The third diver controls the show diver's microphone and monitors his or her air tanks."

The sharks in the tank aren't aggressive. But due to the speaking diver's limited vision while wearing goggles, the diver may be startled by the sharks' close swimming proximity.

Fedde recalls a too close encounter at the aquarium when she was "bitten by the mean queen triggerfish." The queen triggerfish has teeth which they use to eat urchins. They inhabit the coral reefs in the western Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico.

To become a volunteer diver at the aquarium, the volunteer must be a certified diver, complete a written exam and pass a water skills test.

Her advice to anyone thinking about volunteering as a diver at the aquarium is, "If you're a certified diver and you meet the minimum requirements, then go online and sign up."
Potential volunteers may find volunteer diver information for the Tennessee Aquarium at http://www.tennesseeaquarium.org/GetInvolved/VolunteerOpportunities/VolunteerDiver.aspx.
Fedde, a certified diver since 1999, described her experience with acquiring certification.

"I went to the local dive shop and signed up for class," she said. "My Basic Open Water certification took only two weekends to complete. The course consisted of classroom work, learning and practicing skills in a pool and then four open water training dives. I have completed many other certifications since then such as Advanced Open Water, Rescue Diver, Tec Deep Diver and Assistant Instructor."

Fedde's diving knowledge has taken her to dive in the Gulf of Mexico and Bonaire, a Caribbean island.

She said, "I will be taking a Caribbean cruise and plan to dive in Belize. There are many more places around the world that I want to dive someday such as the Great Barrier Reef and islands in the Pacific."