Ocean enthusiast Anuschka Miller on bringing research and communication together
This article is part of the blog series ‘Meet the members’ in which you’ll get to know the EMSEA members, what drives them and what inspires them. They’ll share their experience, their good practices, their challenges. They’ll talk about what ocean literacy means to them and how they hope to reach it. Today we meet Anuschka Miller, head of Communications at the Scottish Association for Marine Science (SAMS) and director of the Ocean Explorer Centre at Oban, UK.
In Dutch we have a word ‘spraakwaterval’, which translated to English would be ‘a waterfall of spoken words’. Talking to Anuschka Miller reminds me of that word. With every question I ask her and every topic I mention, she fires a thousand words in a very short amount of time. It’s a pure pleasure listening to her, because in everything she says you hear her absolute devotion and deep-seated love for the ocean. ‘I don’t get these people who say ‘Thank god it’s Friday!’, Anuschka says. ‘I’ve done my job for such a long time now, and I still love it every day’. A quote that comes to no surprise at all.
SAMS
At 140 years, SAMS is the oldest oceanographic organisation. Based in Oban (according to Anuschka ‘the prettiest town on the west coast of Scotland’) SAMS sits right on the beach next to some beautiful lochs and mini-fjords, a perfect place for practising marine science. The research done at SAMS encompasses both natural and social sciences. ‘There has been a clear shift from working in separate departments to researching themes that are cutting across disciplines’, Anuschka says. Current research involves the consequences of deep-sea mining in the Clarion-Clipperton-Zone, ocean currents and changes in the Arctic system, marine heat waves, aquaculture and sea weed farming. For the latter, SAMS runs its own experimental seaweed farm with a nursery where seaweed farmers can buy seeded twine for ongrowing.
Aerial SAMS site from Dunbeg.
The SAMS communication team
The challenge is how to communicate that research to the big audience and policy-makers. That’s where Anuschka’s communication team comes in. ‘There are a lot of scientists here, and a lot of research to cover. It’s quite a challenge to merely keep up with everything being done here.’ Luckily for Anuschka, she’s not on her own. Her communication team counts eight people now, and she paid attention to drawing in people from different backgrounds. ‘When I started, 20 years ago, there was quite a lot of arrogance in academia. I was the same when I employed my first science communications colleague. I didn’t want to hire anybody that didn't at least have an MSc in marine science. Now I think of how absurd that was. We had an institute full of scientists and nobody who really knew about how to communicate about it.’ She quickly realised she needed people with other skills and is now surrounded by a journalist, a digital marketeer, a filmmaker, a graphic designer, a web developer and two STEM officers.
‘As scientists, we see our planet very differently to how the average person sees it’, Anuschka says. ‘Geologists understand the world in millennia. Astrophysicists see it as part of the universe. As marine scientists, we see it as a blue planet. It’s interesting to ask ourselves how other people see it. Working with artists, musicians, poets, journalists and graphic designers helps us to think about how society sees the world and how to communicate our science in different ways that are meaningful to those we communicate with.’ It’s not just marine research that is becoming more and more interdisciplinary, it’s the communication around it too.
Embedding science communication in education
Therefore, contemporary education of future scientists is no longer just about the science, it’s about communication as well. SAMS used to offer a dedicated module about science communication to its undergraduate marine science students, but since only the naturally good communicators tended to take that class, they have now embedded it throughout the course. Assignments vary. For some classes, students learn to make a poster or film about their research instead of a lab report. For other classes, they’re learning how to write briefings for policymakers or how to give presentations about proposals. An important aspect in communication education is learning to truly understand the different stakeholders and audiences, not just to better communicate scientific findings after research has been done, but to take on board different opinions and needs from the start as well, in order to adjust the research to what is needed by the different stakeholders. ‘I think our students now are a lot more adept at communicating than I was when I graduated,’ Anuschka finds.
However, it’s not just the students she supports. She also helps her colleagues with how to make an infographic, use Canva, make better use of LinkedIn, how to write a profile for social media or how to give interviews. Her filmmaker gives advice on how to take good footage during research expeditions on board of a ship, so they don’t end up with just pretty images of sunsets. Doing so, overall presentation skills are enhanced throughout the whole research centre.
Dressed up for storytelling as Miss Octavia Murray, a costume made based on a deep-sea octopus discovered during the Challenger Expedition, with her daughter and friends.
A little history: Festival of the Sea & school involvement
The research done at SAMS also finds a way to the public through the Ocean Explorer visitor and outreach centre that Anuschka set up 10 years ago. However, before the visitors centre was erected, SAMS used to organise a Festival of the Sea, in which they brought the community together around marine subjects. ‘We’d bring in the whole community; from artists to salmon farmers and ferry operators,’ Anuschka reminisces. ‘It was a massive event that took us several months to organise. One year, we convinced the local schools to take on the ocean as a topic for the whole term. All seven years of primary school were involved, and each class had their own project that was presented to their parents, grandparents and pupils from other schools during the Festival of the Sea that year. There was an art project with sewn fish to decorate the railings at the sea front. Some had been doing poetry and made a little poetry booklet. Others organised a marine costume parade,’ Anuschka tells. Her daughters’ class organised a play they had written, about extinct species. The children were acting on stage, wondering how these species became extinct. ‘And then they called for Doctor Anuschka Miller on stage, but I didn’t know anything about that. And my daughter came on stage, dressed up like me, starting to explain these animals had died because of marine pollution… As a mum, you’re always torn between work and children. That was one of those moments where my work life and my family life came together in a really, really happy way,’ Anuschka smiles, with sparkling eyes.
Festival of the sea - the entire seafront is decorated by hand-sewn fish.
The Oban Ocean Explorer Centre
At the time, the Festival of the Sea was much needed to bring SAMS closer to the community. However, with the opening of the Ocean Explorer Centre, the Festival lost its primary function and is now no longer regularly organised. Instead, locals, tourists and schools are welcome to visit the Explorer Centre at SAMS. Though small, it houses a lot of different experiences, with displays about the history of marine science, MPA’s, biodiversity and protected species such as the flapper skate. There’s a microscope through which visitors can explore plankton samples and algae, a listening station about the work SAMS does in the Arctic, a cinema room and an area to look at underwater footage. The children can crawl through a tunnel with a torch, looking at drawings of marine animals, or take part in a molecule hunt, which Anuschka describes as the scientific equivalent of an Easter egg hunt. Even the toilet room walls share fun facts about marine science.
‘When people visit, we don’t just want to show them things, we really want to engage them, let them imagine what the ocean environment feels like to live in. For example, with regards to whale acoustics, we invite people to think about what the whales are saying to each other. When we’re at the beach, we invite people to think about how it’s like to live in a rock pool. That way, we try to spark true empathy with this unknown environment.’
Another goal Anuschka likes to reach with her audience, is letting them take a pledge by inviting them to think about their everyday actions and what they could do better. ‘I love it when people leave this place with the commitment of only buying sustainably caught fish or washing their clothes less often, so fewer microplastics enter the ocean. It’s only in the last couple of years I started to really think about impact. What's important is getting through to people and support them in changing their behaviour’.
Ocean Explorer Centre algae to water world.
Anuschka at the opening of the Ocean Explorer Centre with Scotland's then Education Minister Michael Russell MSP.
The value of an informal cup of coffee
That goal cannot be reached if science is stuck in an ivory tower. It’s one of the reasons the visitor centre now has a café where you can go for a breakfast roll, some coffee or bacon and eggs. It has become quite popular with the locals in recent years and it made SAMS more accessible. ‘SAMS is no longer a place people can’t get in,’ Anuschka explains. ‘The café creates a connection with the local community and it’s a good place to meet science in an informal way.’
What brings the future?
Due to the size of the Ocean Explorer Centre, at the moment they can only host a limited number of people. Anuschka dreams of expanding and is very much in the process of looking for funds to do so. ‘At the moment, there is no dedicated discussion, workshop or meeting place. There's no easy place where children can eat or leave their wet weather clothes,’ Anuschka explains. ‘I’ve been trying for years to get marine science in the school curriculum, but it’s such a complicated political process. As long as the official curriculum doesn’t succeed in educating children in proper marine science, it’s our task to do so instead.’ Expanding the current centre with a communal place and a workshop and laboratory space would offer more opportunities in this respect.
That Anuschka is quite passionate in what she does, is maybe best illustrated by the quirkiness of her most recent idea. ‘Tom McLean was the first man to row across the Atlantic from Newfoundland to Scotland. He later built a huge boat in the shape of a whale. That boat has been standing on a shore since the 1990s. We would love to make this boat part of the visitor centre as our new STEM hub. We don’t know if that would work, but we’re definitely exploring the idea.’
Moby the whale boat with Anuschka, SAMS Director Nick Owens and Tom McClean.
Top tips for Ocean Literacy organisations by Anuschka Miller
- ‘Cooperate, work together. We don't need to spend time on creating new resources. We need to find a way of sharing resources. Ocean literacy is about creating something that is part of a much bigger network where we share and don't compete.’
- ‘When working with school children, also target their parents and teachers. In our visitor centre, we only have these short, individual interactions, but teachers and parents talk to them every single day. It’s about creating a marine friendly environment, not just a marine friendly child.’
Text by Anke de Sagher for EMSEA
More on SAMS
Website · Facebook · Instagram · YouTube · LinkedIn · X · TikTok
More on Oban Ocean Explorer Centre
More on Anuschka Miller
Want to join the community? Find out how to become an EMSEA member!