COSTA MESA : Sophomore Worms Way Into Project

For a science-minded 15-year-old like Catherine Price, the opportunity is a golden one. Travel next month to explore the seas off Baja California, rub shoulders with acclaimed ocean researchers and have the whole experience telecast to eager students watching around the country.

And to what does Price, a Costa Mesa High School sophomore, credit her good fortune?

Worms.

Big, three-foot worms. Worms that root themselves in clumps to the sea floor and have white, tubed bodies capped by blood-red “heads,” and can only be seen in a handful of deep-sea locations, one of them being the Guaymas Basin in the Sea of Cortez.

“I guess they are kind of gross,” said Price, pointing to a textbook photo of a colony of the wavering worms.

A research paper Price authored about the worms and their role in the sea-floor food chain won her a spot on the Baja expedition, which is sponsored by the Jason Project, a nationwide program that encourages youngsters’ interest in science.

“I’m really excited about it,” Price said on a recent tour of the Orange County Marine Institute in Dana Point, one of 28 organizations around the country that is sponsoring live satellite images from the expedition to show local students. “It’ll be a lot of fun and I’ll learn a lot. But I’d like to do something useful too.”

Because the worms produce their own food, but do not use sunlight to do so, they fall into a category of life that was unknown to science less than two decades ago. The discovery of such creatures in 1977 by scientists who included Jason Project founder Bob Ballard overturned the long-held belief that all life stemmed from sunlight.

The relative novelty of that discovery makes the potential for lab work all the more interesting to Price.

“I want to do something that hasn’t been done before, or something that will contribute,” said Price, who is considering a career in biology. “I’m not sure how involved we’ll get, but I’d like to do as much as I can.”

Involving students, and not just at the expedition site, is the Jason Project’s specialty. The Jason team’s discoveries will be beamed live via satellite to 500,000 students around the country, including 10,000 teen-agers in Orange County.

Not only will the young viewing audience be able to see live footage from robotic modules cruising the murky depths, sophisticated hook-ups will allow some of the students to steer the modules themselves and ask direct questions of the on-site researchers.

This year’s Jason voyage will focus on two topics, the migration of gray whales and underwater hydrothermal vents called black smokers, which serve as a habitat for the worms that Price will be studying. The vents are rifts in the Earth’s crust, conduits to the boiling magma that provides life-sustaining heat for underwater creatures, such as the worms, that live in eternal darkness.

The broadcasts in Orange County will be shown March 1 through 13 at the Beckman Center in Irvine, with five showings on the final day open to the public. Admission is $6. For more information or reservations, call (714) 248-0503.