By Zack Anchors

Staff Writer

    Ever since Mary Cerullo was a little girl growing up
in Andover, Massachusetts she has known that she wanted to study the
ocean. But before she could get started in that pursuit she had some
obstacles to overcome–first she had to get the terminology right.

    “When I was 13 I realized that I wanted to be an
oceanologist,” said Cerullo. “Then, later I realized it was really an
oceanographer I wanted to be.”

    Cerullo, who is the author of twelve children’s
books about marine science and the associate director of Friends of
Casco Bay (FOC, perservered with her passion for the ocean through
her youth, eventually applying to unversities where she could study
marine life.

    “I applied to every university with a research
vessel,” said Cerullo. “Every one except one of them wrote back saying,
‘We don’t accept women.’”

    After getting to work on the one research vessel
that did welcome her, a University of Rhode Island ship that studied
ocean currents off the Bahamas, and receiving a degree in geology and
biology from Tufts University, Cerullo took a job at the New England
Aquarium in Boston. Besides getting well-acquanted with the aquarium’s
seals, octupus and other creatures, Cerullo was tasked with organizing
school programs and teacher-training courses.

    “When I got the job at the New England Aquarium,
that was when I realized that I was a dillettante and not a scientist,”
said Cerullo.

    Since then, Cerullo has fulfilled her lifelong
desire to study the ocean, but instead of doing it as a scientist, she
does so with the aim of teaching others about what she learns. In her
job with Friends of Casco Bay she teaches people how to be responsible
caretakers of Casco Bay and in her work as a writer she teaches
children about the many wonders of the world’s marine ecosystems.

    “In both jobs I try to get across the excitement of
doing science,” said Cerullo. “It can be really hard translating
science for people, but it’s important.”

    Cerullo’s books range in subject from lobsters to
phytoplankton and feature photographs taken by some of the worlds
leading nature photographers. In several of her recent books Cerullo
has collaborated with local photographer Bill Curtsinger, a well known
photographer for National Geographic who has traveled throughout the
world photographing marine environments. In Life Under Ice Curtsinger
provides dazzling undersea images of the marine life that exists
beneath and around the ice that covers Antartica while Cerullo
describes the lives of the creatures and plants there. Cerullo also
explains how the drastic changes in the antarctic environment over
recent years, such as melting ice shelves and increased tourism, have
affected wildlife. Cerullo said one of her main goals when writing her
books is to provide the most up-to-date and accurate information
possible.

    “The science keeps changing–that’s what I try to
tell the kids,” said Cerullo. “One of the things I try to do is
interview experts, because there are always new developments to
incorporate.”

    Cerullo said that while some of her books explore
topics that naturally draw a lot of interest–like great white
sharks–other books probe aspects of the ocean that seem, at least on
the surface, less exciting. Two of Cerullo’s recent books, for example,
are about phytoplankton and zooplankton.

    “My daughter said, ‘Oh gee mom, a book about
phytoplankton–that’s going to be a bestseller,’” remembered Cerullo.
“But phytoplankton is incredible.”

    Sea Soup, the book that features phytoplankton,
teaches children that the microscopic organisms are the base of the
ocean’s food chain and produce half of the world’s oxygen.

    “When I give presentations I tell kids, ‘Take two breaths. One of those is because of phytoplankton.”

    Sea Soup also includes photos by Curtsinger of
microscopic images of plankton that serve well to illustrate their
beauty and complexity.

    Cerullo moved to South Portland 25 years ago when
her husband Arthur got a job in Portland as an attorney. For the last
16 years she has worked with Friends of Casco Bay, an organization with
an office on the Southern Maine Community College campus that promotes
environmental stewardship of the bay through education and advocacy.
The most well-known member of the organization is Joe Payne, the Casco
Baykeeper, who serves as the public voice of FOCB. But a major part of
Cerullo’s job is also public outreach. She is responsible for the
numerous publications the group puts out and works a lot with FOCB’s
“bayscaping” program, which is designed to teach residents of the Casco
Bay watershed how they can prevent harmful contaminant from washing
into the bay. Cerullo said many people, especially those that are
inland, don’t realize that what they put on their lawns will eventually
end up in the bay.

    “The Casco Bay watershed contains half of the
population of Maine,” said Cerullo. “Everything in that area that flows
downhill flows into Casco Bay. Places as far away as Bethel are part of
our watershed.”

    The most serious threat to the bay’s health
currently, said Cerullo, is the increased levels of nitrogen that come
with the runoff of fertilizers, combined sewage overflows, and even car
exhaust and acid rain.

    “If people reduce the use of fertilizer to just what
they need, based on the soil, it helps,” said Cerullo. “Keeping a
well-tuned car helps. Keeping a clean chimney helps.”

    Cerullo said she was impressed with the steps the
City of South Portland has taken to prevent its sewage from ending up
in Casco Bay.

    “South Portland is doing a great job getting rid of
combined sewage overflows,” she said. “And the cost of that is
expensive and it takes a lot of work.”

    Cerullo said she has just begun working on her next
book, which she admits will partially be an excuse to spend some time
in Key West.

    “I’m doing a book on shipwrecks and their second
lives–the fact that they provide a substrate for marine life,” she said.

    In Florida, Cerullo will be exploring the wreck of a
slave ship that sank in 1853. She also plans to include a wreck from
the Gulf of Maine in her book, possibly the wreck of the ship Portland,
which sank off the coast of Massachusetts in 1898 after battling a
severe storm on its route between Boston and Portland.

    Although she has had success in getting her books
published, Cerullo said she has also encountered many rejection notices
since she published her first book in 1993 about sharks.

    “You always need to find a new angle, and you have
to have good photographs, but you have to think of marketability too,”
she said. “Anything with sharks, dolphins or whales–no problem.”

    Children or adults interested in learning more about
the ocean can find Cerullo’s books at the South Portland Public Library
as well as local bookstores.