How to Become a Marine Biologist | Exploring God’s Creation w/ Sherri Seligson

Welcome to a fascinating episode of the Collide Kids Podcast! Host Christen Clark is thrilled to welcome Sherri Seligson, marine biologist, kids science educator, and author.

Sherri shares riveting tales from her adventures studying sea creatures like squid, sharks, and more. Sherri loves blending scientific wonder with lessons about life. Discover how her work, which spans from managing predators at Walt Disney World’s Living Seas to exploring the Great Barrier Reef, underscores the harmony between science and faith.

Listeners will be inspired by Sherri’s passion for making science engaging and relatable, whether it’s through her captivating storytelling or her hands-on educational methods. Learn about her latest book, "Wonders of the Ocean Realm," set to release on January 7, 2025, which serves as a fantastic resource for parents and kids to explore the unity of faith and science.

Don’t miss the "Kids Only Segment," featuring a funny joke from young listener Riley! Tune in for an episode packed with educational insights, faith-filled discussions, and oceanic adventures!

LINKS: sherriseligson.com

Special thanks to our editor, Jay Lee from provisionpods.com

Clip Finder:

Viral Topic - The Hidden Lives of Aquarium Predators: "I published scientific research on shark behavior, studying how they behaved in the aquarium environment as new animals came in, what they did when divers were in the water and learning a little bit more about how they behave, because we can do that in an aquarium, and we can't do that out in the ocean as easily."
— Sherri Seligson [00:09:34 → 00:09:49]

Unique Aquarium Design: "One unique thing about the living seas, that if you ever go there at Epcot, you'll see it's a circular shaped aquarium, and one fourth of the aquarium has these large bars separating the other three fourths of the aquarium, like a pie, a wedge of a piece. And the dolphins get to swim in that area, and the sharks are in the big area."
— Sherri Seligson [00:10:49 → 00:11:07]

"Science and Faith": "Science, by definition, never proves anything. We can't prove anything in science. We can only come up with certain evidences of things, and then we make suggestions based on our faith."
— Sherri Seligson [00:12:59 → 00:13:09]

**How Simple Bacteria Communicate**: "How can bacteria, which are the simplest living things in the world, how can something that simple know what's going on? They can't communicate that we know of."
— Sherri Seligson [00:17:42 → 00:17:51]

"Teaching Through Experience: So when we talk about and teach about migration of animals migrating from one place to another, we go to the Serengeti, and we stand in the middle of the wildebeest migration, where there's hundreds of thousands of wildebeest, and it smells like hundreds of thousands of cows, you can imagine."
— Sherri Seligson [00:26:04 → 00:26:22]

Learning Through Adventure: "So we get to go lots of places to be able to show examples of some of the principles that we're learning about in science, to give you a visual to make yo

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Transcript

Christen Clark [00:00:30]:

Hey, y'all, welcome to the Collide Kids Podcast. I'm your host, Christen Clark. The Collide Kids Podcast is a show for kids and families where we learn together how life and faith collide. It is so great to have you listening today. Thank you so much for being here and spending this time with me. If this is your first time listening, I just want to remind you that at the end of every episode, we have the kids only segment where kids just like you get to be on the podcast. If you're interested in being on the podcast, all you have to do is head over to my website, collidekidspodcast.com, and click the tab that says kids only. And you can record yourself telling a joke or a bible verse or singing a song or just a fun question you want to ask.

Christen Clark [00:01:09]:

Anything you want to do, just send that over to me and you might be in the next episode. Before I introduce my guests today, I would just like to thank the wonderful sponsors of today's episode, the Baby Believer series from Catechesis Books. Baby Believer primers help parents teach their children the central tenets of the christian faith that they may never know a day apart from the Lord. Well, okay. What is it that you want to be when you grow up? That's really what this podcast has kind of centered around. I get to interview lots of interesting people about their job and learn about all different kinds of jobs. And we have so many great episodes for you to learn more about being a doctor or a firefighter, a veterinarian. But I just want you to think about this.

Christen Clark [00:01:53]:

What is it that you want to be when you grow up? Is it an astronaut, a teacher, a doctor? A robot engineer? A video game designer? The president of the United States? Well, listen, a very popular answer. When I was younger was a marine biologist. I don't know why there really was a phenomenon. Like, there was a lot of people that wanted to be a marine biologist. I think it might have been like the movie free Willy, or there was just lots of movies and documentaries about oceans and dolphins and things like that. And my kids and I even love finding Nemo and finding Dory. Those are great Pixar movies. So fish are always a cool thing to learn about.

Christen Clark [00:02:31]:

I love the part in finding Nemo, and he's like, fish are friends, not food. So that's my best impression of the shark from finding Nemo. Anyway. I am so excited today to learn from an actual marine biologist. Her name is Sherri Seligson. She is a marine biologist and a science authorization. She's written several science textbooks, some homeschool curriculum, and a science apologetics devotional. Sherri travels throughout the world to film science in action, sharing the wonders of God's creation.

Christen Clark [00:03:05]:

As an international speaker, Sherri encourages families on topics such as marriage, family relationships, and the apologetics of studying God's creation. She lives in Florida with her husband, David, who travels with her as an adventure videographer. When they're at home, Sherri enjoys spending time with her four adult children and their families, plus doing anything that science geeks enjoy. I just loved this conversation with Sheri, and I know you are going to love it, too. Here is my conversation with marine biologist Sherri Seligson. Well, Sherri, I am so excited to have you on the Collide Kids Podcast today.

Sherri Seligson [00:03:51]:

Thanks for having me. I'm super excited to be here.

Christen Clark [00:03:54]:

Yeah, this is so fun. I'm really excited to talk to you about what your job is, and you have an amazing book that we're going to get into. Would you just introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do?

Sherri Seligson [00:04:04]:

Yes. So I am a marine biologist. I worked for several years at Walt Disney World's living seas, which is an Epcot center. My job officially was an aquarist, which means we collect, care, and educate about aquarium animals. They have a 6 million gallon aquarium, and I was responsible for the predators. I did research on shark behavior while I was there.

Christen Clark [00:04:27]:

Cool.

Sherri Seligson [00:04:27]:

Dove every day, caring for the animals, feeding them, looking out for them. Actually dove with Mickey Mouse a couple of times, which was not a good thing. Mickey Mouse is not very hydrodynamic, so he had a hard time swimming.

Christen Clark [00:04:40]:

Poor Mickey.

Sherri Seligson [00:04:41]:

I know poor Mickey. So I did that for several years. And then when we had our first child, I came home. I considered it a promotion to motherhood and had my children. I have four kids. We home educated our kids through high school. And during that time, I began teaching other homeschoolers and then teaching in private schools about science. And through that process, wrote a couple of courses, some textbooks with apology educational ministries.

Sherri Seligson [00:05:07]:

And then now I write in both academia and curriculum and in fiction. And then I also write and produce educational videos that accompany middle school and high school science courses. And we go all over the world and we film science in action and how we can see God's unique design in all of creation. So it's lots of fun to do. I love talking about science and seeing God's fingerprints and what we do.

Christen Clark [00:05:34]:

That is amazing. You have such a cool job and all these different things that have just come together. That's amazing. I love that. Okay, well, before we get into your job and what you are doing, this is a show for kids, and so I always ask my guests to tell me a joke. So do you have a joke for us today?

Sherri Seligson [00:05:50]:

Yeah, I've got a couple of them. And I thought, you know, we're gonna talk about the ocean a lot, so let's have some ocean jokes. Okay, so my first one is, how do you cut the sea in half?

Christen Clark [00:05:58]:

I don't know.

Sherri Seligson [00:05:59]:

With the seesaw.

Christen Clark [00:06:02]:

That's good. I like that.

Sherri Seligson [00:06:03]:

And then why do seagulls fly over the sea?

Christen Clark [00:06:06]:

I don't know.

Sherri Seligson [00:06:07]:

If they flew over the bay, they would be bagels.

Christen Clark [00:06:10]:

Oh, they would be bagels, which are delicious, but not.

Sherri Seligson [00:06:15]:

That's right. Not a bird.

Christen Clark [00:06:17]:

Not the same thing. I love that. Okay, so let's first start off with how you became a marine biologist. Because I feel like when I was growing up, that was, like, the cool job that everybody said they wanted. What do you want to be when you grow up? Marine biologists. And I think it's because we had a lot of movies in the nineties about the ocean, like free willy and all those things. So tell me how you became a marine biologist.

Sherri Seligson [00:06:42]:

Well, like you, I loved the ocean. I live in Florida, and so we would go to the beach a lot, and I just loved studying about the animals in the ocean because they're so different than animals on land. I loved dolphins, of course. And one of the, one of the misconceptions, a lot of people, people think that all we do as a marine biologist is we ride on the back of a dolphin into a sunset or ride on a boat, and dolphins jump over our heads.

Christen Clark [00:07:08]:

That doesn't happen.

Sherri Seligson [00:07:09]:

Doesn't happen. It's a little bit grosser. There's, like, fish guts in your hair and, you know, you've got to vacuum stuff off the bottom of the aquarium and things like that. But I just thought they were fascinating. The animals were fascinating and how they were unique. To be able to handle the cold of the water and the pressure of the water and the. The beautiful colors of coral reef animals, it just fascinated me. So I started studying science a lot in school.

Sherri Seligson [00:07:35]:

When I went to college, I studied marine science and spent a semester in Barbados, which is down in the Caribbean. And we studied all the different ecosystems, the animals that live down there. And then after I graduated, God was gracious to give me this job at Walt Disney World. So because I was there, we got all the newest, coolest diving equipment, and we have, they have a place where we would go every summer and collect animals and bring them back to the aquarium. So that is how God, again, may open the door at the right time, at the right place for me to do that. Now, I did shadow like veterinarians and other things so I could get experience. I learned how to dive so I could be in the water longer. And so I did lots of things on the way to that, but that's how I made the road to marine biologist.

Christen Clark [00:08:20]:

That's really cool. And you said when you were at Disneyland, your main focus was predators. So tell me, was that, like, your choice? Like, you loved predators, so you jumped at that, or they're like, you get the sharks.

Sherri Seligson [00:08:31]:

It was kind of a mix of the two. I thought. I love predators. I think sharks are fascinating animals, and they've been given a really bad rap. You know, you see shark week on tv and you hear these scary movies, and whenever you see a scary shark video, you hear scary music, and that doesn't happen under the ocean. There's no scary music playing it. Just to watch Shark Week on mute, where you can't hear anything, doesn't sound so scary. And they're fascinated animals in the way that they're made.

Sherri Seligson [00:08:57]:

And so I love studying them. And so not just the sharks, but all the predators, like the large moray eels and the larger fish that we had that were known to be hunters, they have a special dietary needs, so I was in charge of making sure they got the food that they needed. Our large sharks that we had, we would feed them frozen fish that we would thaw. And when you freeze and thaw fish, they lose some of their nutrition. And so we would take vitamins and stick them inside the fish before we fed those fish to the different sharks and certain places where we would feed them at certain times of day. So they didn't associate divers with food. I was fascinated with their behavior. So while I was there, I published scientific research on shark behavior, studying how they behaved in the aquarium environment as new animals came in, what they did when divers were in the water and learning a little bit more about how they behave, because we can do that in an aquarium, and we can't do that out in the ocean as easily.

Christen Clark [00:09:49]:

Right?

Sherri Seligson [00:09:50]:

Yeah. So I just kind of fell in love with that and just kind of slid into that, and they're like, well, you like that? So you can be in charge of the predators, right?

Christen Clark [00:09:58]:

Yeah, that's cool. And I think it's really neat the way that they have these large aquarium set up so you can see all the different fish swimming together, so they don't keep all the sharks in one tank and all the other predators, you know, like, it's all mixed in. So how do they do that? How do you manage all the ecosystems and all of the different fish families in there?

Sherri Seligson [00:10:18]:

Yeah, and that's. It's very unique, because even different oceans have different temperatures and pressures. And so the aquarium that we had was to designed to mimic what a caribbean ocean coral reef would be. So we had animals just from those environments, so that we had the same temperature of water, the same water pressure, the same depth. But we did have predators and we had fish that were prey, and so we didn't want them to be eaten. And so we would make sure that the sharks were fed regularly, so they were never hungry to go hunting. One unique thing about the living seas, that if you ever go there at Epcot, you'll see it's a circular shaped aquarium, and one fourth of the aquarium has these large bars separating the other three fourths of the aquarium, like a pie, a wedge of a piece. And the dolphins get to swim in that area, and the sharks are in the big area.

Sherri Seligson [00:11:07]:

And people used to say, oh, you're doing that? So that the dolphins will be safe from the sharks. And it used to be, back when I was working there, there was no barrier. Dolphins and sharks could swim interchangeably. Well, sharks are more scavengers, and then they are predator like, and the dolphins love to play. And so the dolphins would see the sharks and they would say, ooh, giant toys. And they would corral the sharks down to the ground and they would let go, and the sharks would float slowly up to the top, because sharks can't control their buoyancy very well. And then those dolphins would corral them back to the bottom and watch them float and have some fun. And the sharks weren't liking that very much.

Sherri Seligson [00:11:44]:

And so we'd put the dolphins in dolphin timeout. But eventually we had to separate the dolphins from the sharks. To protect the sharks, the dolphins have extra aquariums that they can swim into back. Beyond that, people can't see, so they get lots and lots of attention and lots of playtime. But we keep them from the big animals because they like those big toys.

Christen Clark [00:12:05]:

That's funny.

Sherri Seligson [00:12:06]:

There's definitely consideration to that. We have to make sure all the different kinds of fish get fed the right food that they need so they don't feed on one another. And if you have a home aquarium, you might know that as well. You can only keep certain kinds of animals together because we don't want them eating each other when we have them together.

Christen Clark [00:12:22]:

So that would not be a magical day at Disney if you had to see some animals. So tell me a little bit about, as you're studying marine biology and as you're studying all these amazing fish and the way that they've been created, what is something that you learned about God through that experience?

Sherri Seligson [00:12:41]:

You know, it's been such a great journey to be able to learn about these animals, because in the science community, a lot of people don't believe in God, that God exists. And they look at science and they say, well, science has proven that God exists. And I love, as a science teacher, to tell people, you know, science, by definition, never proves anything. We can't prove anything in science. We can only come up with certain evidences of things, and then we make suggestions based on our faith. So I'll use this example. If you take something and you let go of it, it falls to the ground, and then you take something else and let go of it, it falls to the ground after maybe 50 things you're dropping, you say, oh, maybe all things fall to the ground when I let go of them. And you can go to different countries and drop things.

Sherri Seligson [00:13:24]:

And you can call your friends. They can drop things. Yeah, everything's falling to the ground. So then you can say, well, you can't say this. Science has proven that when I let go of something, it all falls to the ground because it only takes one example. Say a helium balloon that you let go and it floats up.

Christen Clark [00:13:40]:

Up. That's right.

Sherri Seligson [00:13:41]:

And so we don't know everything about everything. We can't study all of it. So we study what we can, and then we make conclusions based on what we believe. Even people who say there is no God have to have faith to say that, because the only way to know that for sure, you've got to go all over the place and you've got to. You have to go to the universe and you have to go everywhere. It is the spiritual realm, which we can't even do. And so it all takes faith. Everyone has faith.

Sherri Seligson [00:14:06]:

Everyone has a worldview of faith in something. And I can tell you, the more we study about our world, the more we see God's fingerprints, God's creation, God's ability to see things. He is. He is a God of order, and we see order and design in our world. He is a God of beauty, and we see beauty. Think about that when, when there's a sunset. We love watching sunsets, don't we?

Christen Clark [00:14:29]:

Oh, yeah.

Sherri Seligson [00:14:30]:

It's just so beautiful. People will go at the beach if there's a sunset. Everybody comes to the beach and they're watching the sunset. You know what? The dolphins don't pop their heads out to look at the sunset. The squirrels don't stop what they're doing to look at the sunset. We have been designing God's image. And so, like God, we appreciate beauty, and so we see beauty. And so God's a God of beauty.

Sherri Seligson [00:14:49]:

God's a God of purpose. Things are made for a purpose, just like you were made for a purpose. I'm made for a purpose. Every one of us is made for a purpose. All the things that God has made serve a purpose. And so as we study things in the world, things outside our universe, we say, what is the purpose of this? Do you know that Jupiter has a purpose for us if Jupiter disappeared? Jupiter is the biggest planet in our solar system, right? It has a huge gravitational pull. If we remove Jupiter, which we can't do, thankfully, but if it just, like, disappeared, our planet Earth would lose its gravitational balance and we would either start to spiral closer to the sun or spiral further out into space and be too cold. So we need Jupiter.

Sherri Seligson [00:15:35]:

It's got a purpose for us that God gave us. So it's beautiful to see those kinds of examples in science. And I loved especially seeing them in the ocean. So when we study the oceans, we see the same ideas. And that's part of the things I love to talk about, how faith and science are not opposed with each other. We all have faith, and faith in God is actually affirmed by many of the things that we see in science.

Christen Clark [00:16:03]:

Yeah, that's so true. And I think about that too, when people say, you know, this is how the world came to be or this is how it happened, and you're right, you need faith. Whatever you believe about how things started, about whether it's the big bang or evolution or creation, you have to have faith because we weren't there, you know.

Sherri Seligson [00:16:22]:

No one was there to observe it. And science is a method of observation, so we can only look at clues. You're right. And then the step of faith happens. You are right.

Christen Clark [00:16:31]:

Yeah.

Sherri Seligson [00:16:32]:

So, um, we can only see that and we can make a suggestion based on what we see.

Christen Clark [00:16:36]:

That's true. So what are some things in the ocean that are just amazing to you or things that you discovered as you were a marine biologist and you're just.

Sherri Seligson [00:16:46]:

Amazed at, I think, one of the coolest ocean situations that I discovered in reading and looking at animals and studying more. There's this tiny little squid that lives off the coast of Hawaii called the bobtail squid. And he has two little pockets in his body that he actually allows bacteria that glow in the dark to live there. So, like a firefly, these bacteria will glow. And so this guy is active at night. He's nocturnal, so he goes out to hunt at night. But the bacteria scientists discovered this because they wanted to know about these bacteria. Because when you take some of these bacteria and put them in a little container with some food, they won't glow.

Sherri Seligson [00:17:27]:

But you keep feeding them, and they keep populating and growing really fast because bacteria can grow fast. More and more bacteria, when they get to a certain number, boom, they all turn on their light at the same time. Really, really cool. So it's cool that they can glow, but it's cool that when they glow and they were like, well, how can bacteria, which are the simplest living things in the world, how can something that simple know what's going on? They can't communicate that we know of. They don't have eyes or ears or any way that we can identify like we do, to be able to talk to each other. How can they talk? How can they know when there's a certain number? Well, they live in this little squid. When the squid goes hunting at night, he shines a light from his little pouches, and he creates his light. And he also has little shutters that cover the pouches.

Sherri Seligson [00:18:10]:

And when a cloud comes over him to maybe darken the moon that night, he adjusts the shutters to match the amount of light he produces. So he makes no shadow when he hunts. He's like. He's like the stealth bomber of the ocean. And then he doesn't let those little pockets get full of bacteria because if too many bacteria grow there, they'll pop. And so he releases about 95%, most of his bacteria out into the water. Well, now, there's not very many of them there, and so they don't glow. But that's okay because he's going to bed for the daytime, he buries himself in the sand.

Sherri Seligson [00:18:40]:

He sleeps all day. And while he's sleeping, the bacteria growing again more and more and more, repopulating more and more until there's enough of them nighttime. Now it's time for him to go hunt. And they turn on their glow. It is the most amazing situation. Right? And this is called symbiosis, when two organisms live together to be able to survive better and they cannot survive without each other very well. The squid needs the light to be able to hunt without being seen. The bacteria actually need the protection of the squid to be protected from the environment around them.

Sherri Seligson [00:19:12]:

And so it's called obligate symbiosis. They're required to live together. How did these two creatures come together to be able to find each other if it happened by chance?

Christen Clark [00:19:22]:

Right.

Sherri Seligson [00:19:22]:

And not only that, we actually now know that the bacteria are talking to each other with a chemical language. They have special chemicals. They send out that. They're like, I'm here chemicals. And when there's enough of those little I'm here chemicals, they have a special receptor on their body that the chemical lands in. It's exactly the same size, like a puzzle piece. And that's how they know there's enough of them around, and they turn on their glow. So the simplest organisms in creation are not simple.

Sherri Seligson [00:19:48]:

Every creature is complex. And so to believe that it popped up without something to design it, someone, actually doesn't make sense. We know that all creatures are made by God because there's complexity. If you see a car on the side of the road, you know someone made the car. Right, exactly. Complex. It couldn't have happened by things blowing around and bumping into each other. And so a bacteria, the simplest organism in creation, is extremely complex and could not have popped up by itself.

Sherri Seligson [00:20:19]:

So that, to me, has been one of the most compelling discoveries and things that I've learned about, not just the fact that the squid and the little bacteria work together. This is really cool.

Christen Clark [00:20:29]:

That is really cool. I love that. I had Andrew Peterson, who wrote the Wing Feathers saga, and he was talking about how he was inspired by watching, I think it was like some earth documentary, and he saw the vampire squid of the deep. So I love that we keep talking about squid on this podcast, but just that that exists in our world, and it's this amazing creature that looks like something from a fairy tale. And just to know, he was saying, just to know that there's so many different things out there that we haven't even discovered yet. Like, we have all this science and all these amazing things, and there's things that exist in our earth that we don't even know about yet and things that we can't even understand, like the bacteria that can communicate to each other. Like, it's just incredible the way God's created so many things.

Sherri Seligson [00:21:14]:

Yes, it is. We know more about the surface of our moon than we know about what's in our oceans, because the oceans are just so big and so deep. And when we can get down there with robot submersibles, what may have been there a minute ago is now swam away and is dark, so you can't see them. And so it is we're discovering new creatures all the time. And that's. I tell kids, if you ever want to write a fantasy series and you need some inspiration for a really unique character, look in the ocean, because you're going to find some really unique animals that are down there.

Christen Clark [00:21:43]:

That's awesome. I love that. So tell me a little bit. You have a book that you have put together with a friend of yours, and it's called the Wonders of the Ocean Realm. Will you talk about this book a little bit and tell us what it's about?

Sherri Seligson [00:21:55]:

Yes. Trisha Goyer and I, she's an amazing author. We teamed up together to talk about. It's actually five stories in this book. It's a middle grade faith and science book. It's realistic stories of sea creatures. So we picked five unique sea creatures that most books aren't written about that were really fun and fascinating. And we tell the story of their life.

Sherri Seligson [00:22:15]:

Like, you get to watch them grow up and go through all the challenges. There's scary parts. There's, like, not too scary, but what they need to actually go through in their lives and seeing God's creativity in creation. We have a deep sea anglerfish from the Cayman Islands that we learn about symbiosis. So there's some science that you learn as well. We also learn some faith from it. So we learn from the deep sea anglerfish that we call Luna, how teamwork makes us stronger and brighter and better. And we have other creatures.

Sherri Seligson [00:22:46]:

The humpback whale. We call him Wendell, and he goes from the Gulf of Mexico when he's born, up to the waters outside of Iceland. We learn about echolocation and how that's an amazing design and how God listens to you when you talk. And a mimic octopus named Dexter, he's from the Great Barrier Reef in Australia. And we learn about camouflage and biomimicry. Many people know that octopuses can change their color, but mimic octopuses can change the shape, and they can take the shape of other animals and colors, so they look like a completely different animal. Whether they're hunting or being hunted, they look like something else. And so you learn that God gave you the ability to watch, to learn, to grow.

Sherri Seligson [00:23:28]:

We have a peacock, mantis, shrimp from the Indian Ocean and studying biomechanics. And God gave us strength for a purpose. And then the sea star from the hawaiian tide pools about metamorphosis and change and how you're a masterpiece of God's creation. So lots of realistic stories about these creatures, but then we have science facts highlighting each creature's habitat, their body design, and then understanding the intentional design for creation that God has made. Having spiritual life applications, too. So it takes. It's just a fun read. Great conversation starters for parents and kids to have together.

Sherri Seligson [00:24:02]:

But there's scientific truths about God's creativity and creation.

Christen Clark [00:24:06]:

I love that you're combining the faith and the science together, because I think there's so many kids that are interested in stem and science studies, even if they don't want to be a marine biologist, I think they would love this book.

Sherri Seligson [00:24:19]:

Well, there's just so many fascinating stories out there in the oceans and in the world, and we love looking at nature. We love seeing things out there. And we don't have to necessarily learn all the technical terminology, although I'll tell you, if you just use technical terminology when you're talking to kids, they can say those words, too. Science terms don't have to be scary. We can make them fun and, you know, say something three times fast. Can you say metamorphosis three times fast? That's a big one. There's just lots of fun things to talk about and the fascination. And I always get sad because most kids, me, too, I never grew out of this.

Sherri Seligson [00:24:56]:

Most kids love science. They love looking at the world around them. We can drive that love away by adding memorization and just making it dry and telling stuff in a factual way without telling stories and losing the wonder. You know, I believe that God wants us to study our world because he made it for it to give himself glory. And the more we study it, it just makes his glory even greater because we're like, wow, God made that. I just love to do that. And hopefully these stories will be a great way to jump in or dive in to the ocean to see some of these amazing creatures that we're just learning more and more about every day.

Christen Clark [00:25:37]:

Okay, so there's something I read in your biography that you are a world traveler. So you've been all over the world. Tell us a little bit about your travels and. And how you are making videos and all these different things to teach people about science.

Sherri Seligson [00:25:51]:

When I teach science, I don't like to just stand in front of a camera and say, okay, so then this did this, and there's this, and this is what that is. I don't want to hear my own voice. That could be boring. Right? We want it to be exciting. And so science happens everywhere. So when we talk about and teach about migration of animals migrating from one place to another, we go to the Serengeti, and we stand in the middle of the wildebeest migration, where there's hundreds of thousands of wildebeest, and it smells like hundreds of thousands of cows, you can imagine. But we get to see the massive quantity of these animals that go together. And then we learned that you can see zebra peppered in and out because the zebra are able to identify certain things that the wildebeest can't.

Sherri Seligson [00:26:34]:

And so they take part in the migration because they help each other. We go to. We went to Iceland and studied where the rifts of the earth is made of plates that the continents will float on. And these plates bump up against each other, and sometimes they come apart, and sometimes they push together. When they push together, you get mountains or earthquakes. When they come apart, you can get volcanoes. And Iceland is one of the few places in the world where you can actually stand between two tectonic plates. And you can stand on the european plates on one side and the american plate on the other side.

Sherri Seligson [00:27:07]:

You can stand right in between Europe and America without being blown up by anything dangerous. And so we go there. We've been diving in the great Barrier Reef. We've been all over the United States, because, believe me, the United States has amazing, amazing things to see. We have geysers. We have the Grand Canyon. We have great history. Dinosaurs.

Sherri Seligson [00:27:27]:

We've gone on dinosaur digs in Montana. We went to the Yucatan in Mexico and swam with whale sharks. When we're talking about gravity, we go to the leaning tower of Pisa. So we get to go lots of places to be able to show examples of some of the principles that we're learning about in science, to give you a visual to make you say, oh, yeah, I remember it was this way, and it makes it much more exciting and interesting than just reading a sentence. So it's been fun. And so when I go, my husband is actually my videographer, and so he's our adventure guy, and he travels around, and he gets video, and I stand in front of it, and I'm like, well, there's some science. Let's talk about it. And so he'll turn on the camera, and we'll take a shot of whatever it is we're looking at.

Sherri Seligson [00:28:07]:

So it's really been fun and to know that science is even in your backyard. We do a lot of stuff just walking in a park and we'll say, look at this. Look at this amazing thing. Look at these mushrooms. Look at this bird. What it's doing. It's just looking and seeing the wonder around us. You don't have to go to different continents because amazing science is everywhere.

Christen Clark [00:28:26]:

Absolutely. That's really cool. That sounds like a really fun job that you have. So tell our listeners where they can find out more about you and your books and your amazing videos.

Sherri Seligson [00:28:36]:

The publisher of my curriculum and the videos is called Apologia Educational Ministries, and you can find them on the webat apologia.com. And then I've got a website, sherriseligson.com, where you can connect with me and read some things I've done. The book, Wonders of the Ocean Realm is going to be found everywhere. You can go to tyndale.com to find that, or you can find it on Amazon or Barnes and Noble. It's going to be everywhere. You'll be able to find that pretty much every year. Once it comes out.

Sherri Seligson [00:29:02]:

It's not coming out till January 7. This coming year, 2025.

Christen Clark [00:29:06]:

That's exciting. I love that. Well, Sherri, this has been so fun. I've loved learning about your job, and I love that you're so fascinated with this marine life, and we can all learn from you and learn from the things that you do. So I think. I think you have a really cool job.

Sherri Seligson [00:29:21]:

Oh, thank you. It's been fun, and I'm grateful. And it's something that you say yes to. The next thing you know, I didn't know I would be. The technology wasn't even available for me to do this that I'm doing today, back when I was starting out. And so you just say yes to the next thing. God said, you're going to be a marine biologist. Okay? And he said, you're going to be a mom.

Sherri Seligson [00:29:40]:

And it was wonderful. You're going to be a homeschooler. Okay. And I just went, the next step, the next step, the next step. And it was really his plan for me, which was really great. So I just encourage you to look at the things that you love to do, have those experiences that you love to have, and you'll learn about them. If there's something you like, learn more about it, because who knows what God's going to do with that in your life?

Christen Clark [00:30:02]:

That's so true. It's so good to be curious and to ask questions and to keep discovering things about yourself. That is so true. Well, Sheri, before I let you go, I always ask my guests to tell me a memory from when they were a kid. So what memory do you want to share with us today?

Sherri Seligson [00:30:17]:

Well, I will share the memory that I have when I was a kid of snorkeling. That's what sparked my interest to become a marine biologist. So we, we live in Florida, and there's islands at the tip end of Florida called the Florida Keys. And my family and I went to Florida Keys on a vacation, and there's an underwater national park in the Florida Keys called John Penicamp National park. It's an actual national park under the ocean. And so we went out on a boat and put our little mask and snorkel on, and where I'm floating at the surface and looking down and it's about 13ft deep, which is not terribly deep, but as a kid, that was about as I would hold my breath as much as I could to try to dive down and see stuff up close, and I couldn't hold it very long, and I would go back to the top and I wanted to get down there and stay down there longer. And so I wanted to know more about how to be a scuba diver, to be able to stay underwater longer. And that in doing that, I got certified when I was old enough, and I wanted to stay down there longer to be able to explore more.

Christen Clark [00:31:19]:

That's awesome. I love that. Whenever I've been scuba diving, I have the problem of I smile or get excited when I see something amazing and then my mouth fills with water and I'm joking and I have to come back up or like, blow it out. Uh, that, that was always the issue was coming up, or if I was swimming with my, my family or my, my siblings, we would start laughing and cutting up and then we, you know.

Sherri Seligson [00:31:39]:

Like water comes in.

Christen Clark [00:31:41]:

Yeah. And then you smile really big and it fills up your mask. So.

Sherri Seligson [00:31:44]:

Yes, well, and, you know, we weren't designed to be underwater like fish were. And so when you think about all the things a scuba diver has to have to be able to be underwater, it's kind of overwhelming. And that's why people are like, well, aren't you afraid of sharks coming at you? And if you think about it, a scuba diver doesn't look anything like a fish. We don't even sound like a fish because when you have, you know, you can't breathe underwater, so you have to bring your air with you on a big tank on your back, and you got this big mouthpiece coming into your mouth, and every time you exhale, bubbles come out and you sound like Darth Vader breathing. And you have these brightly colored masks, and you have to wear this big vest that fills up with air so you can control your buoyancy, how much you float or sink in the water. You've got big fins on your feet. You look nothing like a fish. In fact, the shark sees you and, like, I don't want anything part of that.

Christen Clark [00:32:27]:

Yeah.

Sherri Seligson [00:32:27]:

So most shark attacks are cases of mistaken identity, where you're looking like something that's food, and divers do not look like food, so.

Christen Clark [00:32:34]:

Well, that's good to know.

Sherri Seligson [00:32:36]:

Yes, yes.

Christen Clark [00:32:37]:

But that's so fun. Well, thank you so much for being on the show today. This was so fun, and I'm so excited to have met you.

Sherri Seligson [00:32:43]:

Yeah, me too. I had a great time talking with you. It's been fun.

Christen Clark [00:32:55]:

Wasn't that so fascinating? I know if you're a science geek like I am, and you love science, this was so fun to learn about all the different things about our ocean and sea creatures. It's just really cool. I loved how she was sharing that God opened the door for each new experience in her life. You never know how your life will turn out, and you just have to trust that God will make a way for you and just follow him. She said, just say yes to the next thing and look at the things that you love to do and keep being curious. Sherri reminded us that we are created in God's image to appreciate beauty and knowledge. We are created by God for a purpose. And she said, all things are created by God for a purpose.

Christen Clark [00:33:37]:

I think it was so interesting to learn more about how faith and science are not opposed to one another. It's amazing to learn about how God intentionally and creatively designed our world. And Sherri told us that looking and seeing the wonder around us, you don't have to go all over the world because amazing science is everywhere. There is plenty of wondrous things in your own backyard. So true. If you'd like to learn more about Sherri, you can head over to her website, sherriseligson.com, and be sure to look out for her book, Wonders of the Ocean Realm, which releases January 7, 2025. Well, now it's time for the kids only segment. This is the part of the show where you get to be on the podcast.

Christen Clark [00:34:22]:

So here is my friend Riley. "Hi, my name is Riley. And today I have a joke. Why did the dog like the tree.

Sherri Seligson [00:34:36]:

Because he liked the bark."

Christen Clark [00:34:39]:

He did like the bark. That sounds like my dog. Thank you, Riley. That was a good one. Hey, if you would like to be like Riley and be on the podcast, all you have to do is head over to my website, collidekidspodcast.com and click the tab that says kids only. You can find information right there about how to send me a video or recording of yourself telling a joke or a bible verse or singing a song or whatever you want to do. And I would love to put you on the next episode episode. And while you're on the website, be sure to sign up for the monthly newsletter.

Christen Clark [00:35:10]:

In fact, our monthly one just came out this past week. It's got a lot of good information about things happening and new episodes coming up. And if you're on social media, I would love for you to follow us on Facebook at the Collide Kids Podcast or on Instagram @colidekidspod and share today's episode with someone who might need to hear it. And be sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel. Yes, we finally are on YouTube. Collide Kids Podcast that's pretty easy to remember where you can watch the full length interview for today's episode. You know, a great way to support the podcast is to leave a rating and a review on whatever podcast app you're using. And when you do that, it really does help other people find out about the show.

Christen Clark [00:35:49]:

You can also share the episode with friends and family and tell them why you like to listen. Or you can go by my website and click the link that says support. And anytime you think about it, I always appreciate your prayer support as well. Well, I don't know what the weather's like where you live, but where I live, it's really nice and crisp and cool. It's great weather to go outside and wonder and explore and find something sciency to do. Well, I hope that you guys have a great week. Thank you so much for being here and listening today. And in case no one has told you, I would love to be the first to remind you that God loves you so much.

Christen Clark [00:36:26]:

Thanks for listening.