Before her J.D., working on HABs

Tessa Davis didn’t have to leave her home in Kodiak to take part in an Alaska Sea Grant Community-Engaged Fellowship. But for the aspiring human-rights lawyer, spending the summer helping with harmful algal bloom (HAB) research was still an opportunity to expand her horizons.

“While it seems like the most probable career for me, law is only one of my many interests,” noted the 17-year-old, who recently received her diploma from Kodiak High School as well as her Associate of Arts from Kodiak College. “There are so many different fields of academia and careers, so I wanted to test if I was sure about a career in law.”

Davis spent much of her high school and college career focused on student government and on Kodiak Teen Court, but she became interested in HABs when she took a Kodiak College course on the subject last year. The accomplished student caught the eye of Alaska Sea Grant Marine Advisory agent Julie Matweyou, who encouraged her to apply for a community-engaged fellowship.

Matweyou served as Davis’ mentor during her 10-week fellowship at the Kodiak Seafood and Marine Science Center. Davis’ principal responsibility was tackling a backlog of blue mussel samples: she prepared the samples, extracted toxins and tested them using the SeaTox Research Inc. PSP ELISA (paralytic shellfish poisoning enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay) method, in addition to entering and proofing data. Davis also had the opportunity to collect blue mussel and clam samples in the field and to accompany NOAA researchers on small boat surveys for phytoplankton. 

“My favorite part of this experience has definitely been field sampling,” Davis stated. “A close second is the lab work I performed. Running toxin extraction protocols and the ELISA tests made me feel like a true scientist!”  

Davis’ work was part of a five-year project to study and predict changing harmful algal bloom patterns. Funded by the NOAA Monitoring and Event Response for Harmful Algal Blooms (MERHAB) research program, the effort partners NOAA and Alaska Sea Grant with the Kodiak Area Native Association (KANA) and SeaTox Research Inc. to better understand HABs in the Kodiak archipelago. Matweyou said Davis contributed to the lab in other ways as well, including helping to review and critique three college-level courses Matweyou was assembling, and helping to develop a fourth. Matweyou described Davis as “impressive all the way around.”

“She has a beautiful blend of talent, intelligence, and passion wrapped up with hard work and dedication,” Matweyou noted. “She demonstrated keen analytical thinking and sound judgment so I was confident in handing over large data sets for data entry tasks, and tasking her to work independently once she was trained in the lab…Tessa is not the youngest student I have worked one-on-one with, but she is the youngest student to whom I have handed great responsibility.”  

Davis will attend the University of New Mexico in the fall, where she’ll soon see a familiar face: she and Matweyou collaborated on a travel request to AKUNiTE, a National Science Foundation-funded mentoring program, to attend the 19th Annual Mentoring Conference of the New Mexico Mentoring Institute. Matweyou will travel to Albuquerque in October for the event.

Davis said she still plans to pursue a legal career, but that her fellowship experience has impacted her focus. “My experience conducting some of my own marine science taught me much about HABs, ocean monitoring, and what it takes to maintain a healthy ocean in general,” she said. “I have decided to take on a minor in environmental science so I can continue learning about the environments around me. Certainly, if I choose to attend law school, I will be exploring environmental law.”