Most teenagers in Bellevue spend their weekends doing normal things, like wandering through the mall, choosing lip gloss shades at Sephora, or meeting friends for boba. My weekends usually begin with stepping on a crab.
Not on purpose. The crab knows this. I know this.
But the crab still gives me that look, the look that says I am a complete menace, before it scurries away as if it is filing a complaint with the intertidal union.
This is the glamorous life of a teen scientist in training.
While other teens are comparing crop tops, I am comparing algae samples. While they are debating which boba flavor is superior, I am debating whether the thing that just brushed my ankle was kelp or something with teeth. And while they are posting cute photos on Instagram, I am posting tide pool pictures that only three people understand, and one of those people is my biology teacher.
(Image: Isabella Akalin)
Cold water diving in Mukilteo was my rite of passage into marine biology in the Pacific Northwest. It was also my initiation into human‐popsicle status. The water is so cold that it feels like the ocean is demonstrating its own version of thermodynamics. But once you descend, everything slows down. The green water glows. The fish stare at you as if you are the strange one. And suddenly, you are part of a world that does not care how clumsy you are on land.
At Friday Harbor Labs, I joined a Marine Botany class for a single day as a guest student. I thought I would blend in. I did not. The graduate students were taking notes with incredible speed, and I was simply trying not to slip on seaweed and become a cautionary tale. But even in that one day, I learned how scientists read the shoreline like a book, a very wet and very slippery book.
(Image: Isabella Akalin)
Back at the Seattle Aquarium, things are slightly less slippery but just as lively. As a Youth Ocean Advocate, I have learned how to talk to visitors about everything from sea otter behavior to the reason giant Pacific octopuses are the escape artists of the animal kingdom. I have also learned that children ask the best questions. One afternoon, a little girl asked me why sea otters hold hands. I explained the science, including rafting behavior, thermoregulation, and predator avoidance. She listened carefully and then said, “No, I think they simply like each other.”
And honestly? She wasn’t wrong.
Being a teen scientist is messy, unpredictable, and occasionally embarrassing. I trip on rocks. I double‐check things. I smell like saltwater more often than is socially acceptable. My long, wavy hair shows up looking freshly wind‐styled. And yes, sometimes I step on a crab.
(Image: Isabella Akalin)
But here is the truth. Every time I am out there, with the wind in my face and the tide pulling back and the shoreline waking up, I feel like I am exactly where I am supposed to be. Even if the crabs disagree.
Being a teen scientist means embracing the cold, the slippery rocks, the strange looks from fish, and the fact that your friends will never stop making fun of you for smelling like low tide.
And if that means one more crustacean misunderstanding on my way to matcha boba, I’ll accept my fate as the world’s clumsiest future marine biologist.
