Teacher goes to summer school - of sharks

DANVERS - Christopher Borgatti bobbed alongside a leopard shark in the Pacific Ocean - just one of many thrilling moments for the science teacher on a recent research expedition.

Borgatti, who teaches at St. John's Prep, received a fellowship to assist scientists off the Monterey, Calif., coast last month.

For nearly two weeks, he donned a wet suit, swam in cold waters and mucked through sometimes waist-deep mud while studying the sharks and rays of the Elkhorn Slough marine estuary.

"I love this part of science," said Borgatti, 29. "I'm not afraid of getting down and dirty."

Borgatti said sharks in the Elkhorn fell victim to overfishing and pollution in the 20th century. In response, scientists founded the Pelagic Shark Research Foundation in 1990 to track the different species of sharks and rays that live there.

"The scientists realized that sharks have an important ecological niche in these ecosystems," Borgatti said, "and the waters themselves have cleaned up quite a bit."

Borgatti received the fellowship through the Earthwatch Institute, an international organization.

"The idea (of Earthwatch) is to engage people in scientific research," Borgatti said, "so they learn more about the environment and different research projects that are going on in different places."

Earthwatch gave Borgatti six expeditions from which to choose, including research of manatees in Belize, group dynamics of monkeys in Africa and whales in Canada.

"I've always been interested in sharks," said Borgatti, who was familiar with the Pelagic Foundation's work through reports he read in science journals and saw on the Discovery Channel, "so it really stood out."

During Borgatti's expedition in Monterey, he and the other scientists trolled out in small, inflatable boats and cast gill nets, waiting for the buoys to signal that a shark or a ray swam in. Then, the crew would place the creature in a holding pen to record the sex, length, width and species; take a skin sample to do genetics work at the lab; and then tag it.

"After a few hours of pulling yourself out of mud holes and wrestling these sharks and rays, it certainly can become a little tiring at times," he said. "The banks are extremely muddy, so you would sink sometimes up to your hips in mud, so moving around was definitely challenging."