Meet Ocean Explorer Daveenah Guise

OET is proud to welcome Daveenah Guise to the Corps of Exploration as part of the Science & Engineering Internship Program. This internship program supports community college, undergraduate, and graduate students in building professional workforce experience and exploring STEM-related careers that connect to research themes like robotics, ocean science, education, and exploration. Daveenah spends 12 days aboard E/V Nautilus as a seafloor mapping intern characterizing deep-sea features in international waters between Canada and Hawaiʻi, filling gaps in seafloor mapping coverage, and supporting priorities of the Nippon Foundation-GEBCO Seabed 2030 Project, the US National Strategy for Ocean Mapping, Exploration, and Characterization, and the United Nations Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development.

We sat with Daveenah to learn more about her experience at sea and the path that led her to Nautilus. 

Can you tell us a little bit about your background? 

I grew up in Chicago. I was born and raised there, and it’s still home today. As a kid I was always interested in the natural world — biology, ecology, marine biology, oceanography – I’ve always wanted to work in the natural sciences. In high school I took AP Environmental Science, I was the president of my high school’s Eco Club, and I was in the Science Olympiad. When I went to college at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, I majored in Animal Sciences. 

What’s your relationship with the ocean?

This sounds cheesy, but there’s this one line in the Disney movie Moana: “See the line where the sky meets the sea, it calls me!” I can’t sing, but you know what I’m talking about? 

Being from the Midwest, I didn’t grow up with a culture of appreciation for the ocean, but I’ve always been curious about it. Like, I have to get there: I don’t know how, I don’t know when, but I know it’s gonna happen. And through this internship opportunity that goal is happening for me right now! I really can’t explain it, but I’ve always had a fascination with the ocean. 

Why are you interested in seafloor mapping?

I took a geology class during the second semester of my junior year in college. My core memory from that class was learning that over many, many years  — maybe hundreds of thousands of years — the Earth’s magnetic poles switch. And researchers made that discovery by dragging a magnet along the seafloor! That seemed crazy to me – it got me really interested in the Earth’s past and what it can tell us about Earth today.

How did you find out about Nautilus?

I’ve been watching the Nautilus Live YouTube channel since high school. I was always enamored with their videos of the ocean floor — I’ve never been there; we as humans have never been there — to most areas at least. I loved seeing how passionately people would talk about their work on the live stream. Another big thing for me is how accessible everything is to the public. As I got older and started looking into oceanography careers, I went to the NautilusLive website, explored the career pages, and saw the internship for seafloor mapping. I applied — and now I’m so proud to be here!

What’s it like being on the Nautilus after so many years of watching the live stream?

It’s so surreal to be here! As I said, I’ve been watching Nautilus since I was in high school. That was eight years ago. Actually being on the ship is so crazy – it feels like being on a famous movie set. When I saw ROV Hercules, I was starstruck. It’s so much bigger in real life! It’s really an amazing experience. 

It’s humbling. To truly understand something, I think you need to experience it firsthand.  I’ve always wanted to go to sea to study it up close —  and it’s so exciting to finally be doing that. I like looking out and not seeing any land. It’s just blue. The sky is blue, the water is blue. It’s really pretty and really humbling. 

Being at sea puts things into perspective: I’m just one person, but I’m studying something that I believe matters to everyone in the world. There isn’t a single person on the planet who isn’t affected by the ocean and its behavior. So to be studying what I believe unites everyone — human and animal — is truly humbling. 

What have you learned from your time onboard so far? 

I’ve learned so much! Every day I am learning something new but there was a ton to learn on my first days. I learned how to read a multibeam sonar map, how to work new software, how to read backscatter (how intensely the sound return echoes off of the seafloor), how to process multibeam depth data, how to launch an XBT (expendable bathy-thermograph- the tool which helps calibrate the mapping system to the local water conditions), along with so many other miscellaneous things about life on the ship. I’ve also learned a lot just from the stories that we tell each other during meals or during downtime. I’ve already learned so much and I’m excited to keep learning! 

What’s next for you?

I want to go to grad school. I’m not sure exactly where, but I know that I want to study marine science, and I want my career to have some aspect of conservation, specifically with marine animals. I definitely want to do research — I want to do something like this, where we are the first eyes and ears to discover something. I really value contributing to science. And that’s another reason I wanted to work with OET and sail on Nautilus: we’re the people that contribute to the information that’s on Google Earth and on your phone maps, you know? That information is publicly available and easily accessible, which I think is so necessary for science. I want to be the person who helps make that happen. 

What advice would you give to someone who wants to follow a similar path?

Don’t stop making moves in the direction of where you want to be. It can be easy to be complacent where you are, but you have to remember that this isn’t the end goal. Don’t be scared; cast your net wide and see what comes back to you. Reach out and talk to people. Don’t give up after applying to internships or jobs and not hearing back. Be open to learning; be flexible. Just keep going!