Student, Teacher Embark on Expedition to Alaska to Study Marine Garbage

On June 7, Harker student Dolan Dworak, grade 7, and upper school science teacher Kate Schafer will head to the Alaskan coastline to take part in an expedition kickstarted by the Anchorage Museum and the Alaska SeaLife Center, which will be the subject of a Web series planned by National Geographic. Dworak and Schafer will be part of an international team of scientists and artists that will observe the effects of garbage islands on marine life. The work performed during this expedition will later be turned into an exhibition at the Anchorage Museum called GYRE, which will appear at museums throughout the United States.

Dworak, who has spent three years working with the San Francisco-based Sea Scavenger Conservancy to help clean up the earth’s oceans, will act as the expedition’s social media coordinator at the Alaska SeaLife Center, located in Seward. Schafer, who has a background in marine biology and a passion for observing the effects of human activity on ocean ecosystems, will help develop the educational portions of the GYRE exhibition with the Anchorage Museum in preparation for the exhibition’s launch in February 2014.