Shohreh Darooyan, 15, is at that difficult age when she is trying to decide on a career ? she either wants to do plastic surgery on children or groupers.

?I am hoping to be a plastic surgeon and work on children with cleft palates and that kind of thing, or maybe a veterinarian that works on fish,? Shohreh said. ?In Florida they really have veterinarians who operate on fish to cure their diseases. I really like fish and animals.?

In Bermuda kids are sometimes given the impression that the only opportunities on the Island are in the financial services arena.

A new programme at the Bermuda Biological Station for Research (BBSR) is helping to change that impression and show kids that there are advantages to living on an island surrounded by ocean.

In the BBSR Marine Internship Waterstart summer programme students, ages 14 to 18 take diving classes and help scientists on real projects such as a sea grass bed survey, a fish count or a night snorkel.

?I joined the Waterstart programme because I love scuba diving and I love the water,? said Shohreh. ?I thought it would be a good experience for me. I thought it would be fun.? lifestyle reporter Jessie Moniz recently went with a group of 12 Waterstart students on a special expedition onboard the BBSR?s new 168-foot research vessel, ?RV Bank of Bermuda Atlantic Explorer?.

The trip went 11 miles off the southeast of Bermuda to a hydrostation where various tests were conducted to look at ocean conditions and climate change.

?I think this is a good experience because we are the first group of students to go on this boat,? said Elijah Simmons, 15. ?I am having a good time. So far we have graphed temperature relating to the depth of the ocean and found out that in deeper water it is colder.?

The students were also proud to be participating in a long tradition of deep ocean research in Bermuda.

The hydrostation study is one of the longest running in the world. The hyrdostation itself is just a co-ordinate that scientists always go to to take measurements.

?It has been surveyed biweekly since 1954,? said Jonathan Whitefield an oceanographic researcher at the BBSR. ?This is our 1,061 cruise for this survey which makes it the longest running survey oceanographic time series.?

This long history has allowed researchers to look at changes in ocean conditions over a much longer period of time.

One of the things that has allowed the BBSR to conduct their research for so long, is owning their own research vessel. Other research stations are often hampered by leasing, renting or sharing a vessel, so they can not guarantee the use of a boat when they need it.

This is not so for the BBSR. The BBSR has had a series of boats. The last one was the 116 foot . The was purchased from the Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institution last year and was refitted. One of the primary sponsors of the purchase was the Bank of Bermuda foundation. The HSBC logo is now emblazoned in red across the side of the boat.

On this trip researchers did three plankton tows to a depth of 800 metres and another more shallow plankton tow to a depth of 150 metres. The net which looks like a large laundry bag is not really towed, but simply dropped to a depth into the ocean and then pulled back up.

The extra space in the new ship means that some of the labs can be rented out to other researchers, and BBSR staff can also help researchers in other countries who can?t afford to come to Bermuda.

One of the deeper plankton tows on this day was to collect samples for a scientist at the Smithsonian Institute in Washington D.C. The shallower plankton tow was conducted purely for the students to give them something to look at in the lab.

Plankton are tiny organisms that float freely in the ocean. There are two main types phytoplankton (essentially plants) and zooplankton which are a variety of things including single celled organisms, copepods orlarval or very immature stages of larger animals, such as mollusks, crustaceans and squid among other things.

?A plankton tow involves a really thin net that catches little plankton ? little creatures,? said Elijah. ?Then we look at them under a microscope. We only did ours to about where the light ends at about 150 metres. You actually find more plankton in the dark.?

In the lab the students saw tiny eels, jellyfish and baby fish.

Researchers on the ship also conducted a three hour Conductivity, Temperature and Depth (CTD) cast. This machine is very large and consists of a ring of tall canisters kept in its own garage on the ship. It is lowered into the ocean and takes measurements of things like temperature, salinity and chlorophyll, among other things.

Watching the huge machine be raised into the air and lowered into the water was possibly one of the highlights of the trip for the Waterstart students.

?It is hard to say if any of the kids are going to be oceanographers,? said J.P. Skinner programme director and BBSR education officer. ?I think everyone is here because they are interested in the ocean. They are all water people, they like scuba diving and swimming.

?They are also here because they are interested in the environment. Since I have been at the BBSR, I have learned that there are many career paths here relating to the marine world.?

Some of the students in the programme have expressed an interest in driving the ship, while others were interested in the marine biology side of things.?

Oceanography is a growing science and Bermuda is on the cutting edge of it.

?Bermuda is one of the best places in the world to do oceanography,? said research scientist Vivienne Locchead. ?We are just in the ideal location. You can be out in very deep water very quickly.?

She said there is often some confusion in the general population about what oceanography really is.

?A lot of kids have said today, ?wow this is a lot more technical?,? she said. ?They are realising how important data collecting is.?

She said that when she tells people she is an oceanographer, they often get really excited.

?They say, ?oh you work with fish or coral reefs?,? she said. ?They get disappointed when I tell them that my job mostly entails lowering machines into the water and bringing them back up again.?

But those machines help scientists to learn exciting things about ocean currents, climate and global warming. They are trying to answer such questions as is global warming part of a natural cycle of temperature change, or is it being driven more by manmade forces? On one trip on the research vessel scientists manage to map a new eddy swirling around Bermuda.

?The best thing about this programme is that you are in the water and you are testing things and doing things,? said Elijah. ?We have learned a lot about oceanography.?

Students in the Waterstart programme either signed up themselves or were recommended by a teacher. Not all of the students were Bermudian. Several students came from abroad to take part. There is also a younger group that looks more at the naturalist side of marine sciences.

During the voyage they were interviewed and videotaped to be used in a BBSR homegrown Jason Project.

Because Jason International is taking a year off for research and development, many Jason project pin sites like the BBSR have decided to conduct their own Jason projects closer to home.

?We have been lucky on a lot of occasions to send one Bermudian student on expeditions,? said Mr. Skinner.

?We thought this year we would do our own expedition. We have a lot of local students this summer and some dynamic host researchers. We are hoping that our students will be our ambassadors and will share their interest in sciences with the rest of the student body.?