CSULB Mobile Science Lab
by Lorine Parks
Where do sharks go at night? If you’re a grey-tipped reef shark or a lemon shark in Tahiti, after feeding in the ocean by day, you return at night to the warm shallows of your tropical home lagoon.
So said marine biologist Jim McKibben, who has swum with sharks in Tahiti. And thanks to the generosity of our Dr. Mary’s Staffer Foundation, Downey school children get to hear Jim when he brings his CSULB mobile science lab into their classrooms. Jim is the Director of the Science Learning Center at Cal State University at Long Beach’s College of Natural Sciences and Mathematics.
Jim got hooked on marine biology through his interest in scuba diving. The “great fish” fascinated him, and he has made a special study of their habits. In the early days, to attract the fish to the dive site, a hunk of bait would be hung on a rope and the divers would wait with cameras.
Soon, for example, Jim found himself swimming with a seventeen foot great hammerhead and an eleven foot tiger shark. If one came too near and bothered him, he would smack it on the nose to make it go away. Those sharks don’t usually attach humans unless provoked, but as Thomas Jefferson said, eternal vigilance is the price of liberty - and of staying alive.
“Mega-mouth” is the way Jim described the Mako shark. This species is easily identified by its strange and mean-looking teeth, which are visible even when its mouth is closed. The fastest of the shark family, it propels itself at an incredible 60 mph when hunting prey.
The Mako tends to look like a smaller version of the Great White. In response to a question Jim said that the movie Jaws had not only made the public aware of this dangerous man-eater, but was responsible for research being directed at its dwindling population. It now is illegal to kill a great white for sport.
Taking science to the schools is the program Jim now enjoys most. Cal State Long Beach has a unique outreach program with its Mobile Science Museum. This is a converted 27-foot mobile home to bring science to the schools. .Letting kids push buttons and interact with sea creatures in the exhibits is the best way for them to learn, and make their own persona discoveries in science. “Let them feel the fish’s resistance, and get that feedback,” he says.