Born and raised in Brooklyn, naturalist Helen Cheng leaves the comfort of the city to venture out into the field.
Helen Cheng is once a city-dweller turned solitude-seeking naturalist. Born in Brooklyn, New York, Helen’s journey took her from the big city to the coasts of the New England, studying horseshoe crabs and receiving her M.S. in Zoology from the University of New Hampshire. Interested in how management plays a role in research, she worked at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) as a Sea Grant Knauss Fellow. As an interdisciplinary marine biologist, Helen works on a variety of projects involving research, education and outreach, and science communication. Whenever she gets a free moment, Helen enjoys eating new and delicious foods around the city, hiking in the mountains, swimming in the ocean, and singing and playing acoustic guitar.
This story originally aired on March 3, 2017.
Story Transcript
I was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York, right here. My backyard was Manhattan. Yeah! I learned how to be proficient in speed-walking, jay-walking, and navigating through the complex maze of the MTA subway system.
I didn’t get my driver’s license until I was twenty-one, nor did I ever really need to drive. I was so used to walking on concrete sidewalks and asphalt streets. I didn’t think of New York City as a natural place: that most of the city is on an island or three islands. Yes, Brooklyn and Queens are part of Long Island despite how much we want to deny it.
Sure, there was Central Park, but as a city girl, I didn’t like to get my shoes dirty, I didn’t like to sit on grass, let alone roll in it, and I always carried hand sanitizer. Yet, I enjoyed things with cute animals like whales and dolphins. I mean honestly, what little girl didn’t love a Lisa Frank rainbow dolphin? I guess what drew me to animals in general was that it was something out of the ordinary, something you couldn’t find in New York City, outside the occasional subway rat.
I got my first glimpses of the non-New York City wildlife while volunteering at the aquarium. I saw bright colorful fish, heard the loud roar of a walrus, and smelled the pungent aroma of the colonies of penguins and their poop. But these encounters were always blocked by some sort of barrier; seeing fish through a glass tank, hearing a walrus through a drape netting or smelling the penguins through a chained fence.
I was still walking on paved asphalt, heard the subway in the distance and was being bumped and tossed around by throngs of people trying to catch a glimpse of the animals. I knew I was still in the city. I was still in close comforts of the city when I left for college, being an hour and a half away on the Long Island railroad. But one of the highlights of college was the opportunity to study abroad. And out of all places, I studied abroad in Jamaica; not to be confused with Jamaica Queens, guys.
I was going to study the tropical marine ecology, but most excitingly, I was going to experience it; I was going to live it. So when I registered for the course, I had to sign a waiver saying that I was an experienced swimmer. I’ll be honest with you, I knew how to swim, but I didn’t know how to swim that well at the time. So, I kind of lied on that application saying I was a strong swimmer.
So here I was, sitting down by the docks, close to where the course was being held. As I looked out to the horizon, I saw these turquoise blue waters that were so enticing to swim in, but it also looked deep. My friend Constance, who was taking the course with me at the time, and who knew my dark little secret, sat next to me and said in an encouraging tone, “Don’t worry. You’ll float in salt water.” Salt water, fresh water, pool water, what was the difference? I didn’t know the physics of it all at the time, but she put on her swimming gear, jumped right in and swam a couple of yards away from me, and waited until I got into the water.
So I strapped my new fins to my feet, put my mask on my face, put my snorkel on my mouth, took a deep breath and jumped in. Great! My feet were touching the bottom! The water was so dandy, I was feeling great. No problem. But Constance kept swimming further and I knew I had to follow, and my feet were not going to touch the bottom forever. So I turned my body horizontally, I swam towards Constance, trying to see where she was, and kept my head above the water.
When I placed my face into the water for the first time, I panicked. I saw how far way I was from the sea bottom and I freaked out. It was pretty darn far. I tried to find the nearest buoy or pole, something to hold on to for dear life, “This water is really deep!” Constance heard my frantic yelling. She yelled back and said, “Don’t worry. You’ll float!”
So, I let go. I let my heart rate slow a bit, calming down, regaining sanity. When I finally gained the courage to place my face in the water, I did. This time, I was a wonder. I saw urchins like a field of spines. Crawling amongst them were crabs with brightly colored speckled shells.
When I turned my head the other way I saw shiny blue and yellow fish dart right in front of me and swim into an underwater horizon. I was fascinated to see all this different wildlife unobstructed by a glass wall. I was immersed in a different world. I felt like I knew what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. I wanted to study marine biology and swim in clear, warm waters every day.
So I applied to graduate programs focusing on studying marine animal behavior, specifically with dolphins, fulfilling that childhood aspiration. But none of those programs were available to me at the time. My sense of adventure and my interest in marine biology didn’t stop.
Rather, it took me on a brief detour to a New Hampshire estuary and it wasn’t as glamorous as the tropics. It was much murkier: murky enough to not see what was in front of you while you were swimming. It was muddier; that if you got stuck in the mud you desperately needed someone to pull you out of it. And compared to those tropical Jamaican waters, just really, really cold.
Here I was, in this New Hampshire estuary; I was going to study the behaviors of a peculiar looking animal that was ugly and creepy looking. And that animal was the horseshoe crab. Not a crab at all but more related to spiders and scorpions. Think of a horseshoe-shaped animal, with six pairs of creepy crawly appendages, and a medieval, intimidating spear for a tail.
These things are prehistoric looking and they are. They are considered living fossils having been around since the age of the dinosaurs. I was literally a horseshoe crab stalker in grad school. I tried to find out where they lived in this New Hampshire Estuary, following their schedules of when they would appear and disappear from the beach, and intruding on them when they were having some private meeting alone time.
I remember the first time I went out alone at midnight to do fieldwork. I had just gone out at noon that day in the sweltering heat counting crabs, and I had to go out again at night to make that day-night comparison. As I drove up to the beach, it was a beach that was sort of hidden away and only accessible by dirt road, I remember the place being a little more livelier during the day.
Cars would be parked alongside the road, people would kayak in and out of the boat ramp, and children playing in the sand while their parents watched. But here I was in the dead of night. It was dark and quiet. There was no one to witness me on what I was going to do. I remember watching the six o’clock news earlier that evening; that there was a report of a murder in one of the nearby towns close to where my field site was.
So as I drove up to the beach, I kept repeating to myself, “Count crabs and leave, count crabs and leave, count crabs and leave.” So when I arrived, I got out of my car, hurried to get out all of my equipment, locked the car, and raced down to the beach to start counting. I stopped. I couldn’t see much except what was illuminated by my flashlight but I heard crickets chirping, the rustling of leaves from the trees, waves slightly crushing along the shoreline and maybe what I thought was a coyote’s howl in the distance.
I turned off my flashlight, allowed my eyesight to adjust and looked up. Stars, the Milky Way: it was this big expansive of space and a dark sky. I had never seen the night sky like this before, as it was usually blocked by a street lamp or looked like washed out specks in a purple-grey haze. But on this night, the sky glittered across a pitch black backdrop. I felt small and insignificant. It almost felt like it was an honor to be in that place and in that moment.
I wanted to keep gazing at that night sky to feel that sense of wonder, calmness and peace. I was stirred back to reality when I heard the occasional bumping of horseshoe crabs approaching the shore, as they’d done every year for millions of years, since the age of the dinosaurs and even before. As magical as it was to be one with nature, I commenced with my duties. This was work for me. After telling my suit-and-tie friends from the city knew what I did for a living, they were horrified. “What! You work with that? How do you survive?” I thought the job of a marine biologist was to play with dolphins all day. Hey, horseshoe crabs are really cool.
But I felt a sense of pride for the work I did, that I was able to endure physical and mental struggles, like walking through tall tick-infested grasses to get to the beach, or swimming through muck and muddy waters, or trying to figure out how one thing works one way but not the other way for a very, very long time.
This was about exploration; exploring the unknown, facing hardships along the way, finding new discoveries to unanswered questions, all the while marveling at nature’s beauty and mystery. Thank you.