Nantucket Maria Mitchell Association Welcomes Shawn Sneddon and Jon Fajans as Featured Guests for August Science Speaker Series

August 8, 2024

NANTUCKET, MA — The Nantucket Maria Mitchell Association (MMA) announces that it will host Shawn Sneddon and Jon Fajans of Yellow Springs Instruments (YSI), a Xylem Inc. brand which serves as a leading provider of water measurement solutions, as featured presenters for its Science Speaker Series. Their presentation “Autonomous, Precise, and Real-Time Coastal Water Quality Monitoring” will take place on Monday, August 12 at 6pm EST. It will be presented in person at the Great Harbor Yacht Club, at 56 Union Street. The presentation will also be hosted via Zoom.


Due to its unique geographic, hydrographic, ecologic, and cultural setting, Nantucket Harbor has one of the last remaining healthy eelgrass (Z. marina) beds in New England. The shape of Nantucket Harbor forces incoming sea water to pass over the eelgrass beds, which sequester the water’s carbon dioxide. Seagrasses can consume more carbon dioxide per acre than rainforests, and noticeably lower the acidity of the water around them. The MMA believes the confluence of these factors also makes Nantucket Harbor one of the best locations to investigate the impacts of healthy eelgrass on the commercially valuable Nantucket bay scallop (A. irradians). Ocean and coastal water quality monitoring applications require both precise and rugged instrumentation that will withstand harsh environmental conditions and still output accurate data. Join Shawn Sneddon and Jon Fajans of YSI as they share about the science, logistics, and analytics of the EMM700 Bay Buoy and sensors that will be deployed in a continuous data collection and publication monitoring project, the first of its kind on Nantucket. This project will collect and publish continuous data on seawater acidity (pH), dissolved oxygen, temperature, total algae, dissolved nitrates, and salinity (conductivity). This data will create the "Mitchell Curve," a longterm, permanent record of ocean acidification in Nantucket Harbor.


Shawn Sneddon has over sixteen years of experience in the Oceanographic and Water Quality field, designing, integrating, and deploying a vast array of real-time monitoring systems with a heavy focus on custom system integration. After taking over the autonomous vehicle fleet in 2015, Sneddon is now one of the lead engineers for all things autonomous: performing hydrographic surveys, trainings, customer/sales support, and demos for customer applications. Sneddon started his career as a service and calibration engineer for Aanderaa before moving into a Systems Engineering role for the integrated systems and services division of YSI. He is currently the System Sales Engineer and Vehicle Specialist for YSI.


Jon Fajans earned a Bachelor’s degree in Health Sciences and served eleven years in the U.S Coast Guard as a Flight Surgeon’s Assistant. He earned additional Bachelor’s degrees in Zoology and Wildlife Ecology, and a Master’s degree in Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences studying marine invasive species at the Univesity of Florida. Since then, Fajans has been the manager of the SEAKEYS Monitoring Program in the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary as a scientist for the Florida Institute of Oceanography, Dive Safety Officer for the University of Belize, and President of C‐ARMS Inc., a small marine research consulting company. He served as a scientific support coordinator in the NOAA Subsurface Monitoring Unit for the Deepwater Horizon incident response and has installed ICON buoys throughout the Caribbean on a joint Caribbean Community Climate Change Center‐NOAA AOML project. Fajans came to Xylem in 2015. He now serves as manager for Ocean & Coastal Applications covering the Americas and Caribbean.


Pre-registration is required to join the Zoom for this event. To register, please follow the link below:


https://us06web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_lZA-sjx4TYKt6zCdxI4YWQ#/registration


This series is generously sponsored by our lead sponsor, Bank of America.


The Maria Mitchell Association was founded in 1902 to preserve the legacy of Nantucket native astronomer, naturalist, librarian, and educator, Maria Mitchell. After she discovered a comet in 1847, Mitchell’s international fame led to many achievements and awards, including an appointment as the first female professor of astronomy at Vassar College. Maria Mitchell believed in “learning by doing” and today that philosophy is reflected in the MMA’s mission statement, programs, research projects, and other activities. The Maria Mitchell Association operates two observatories, a natural science museum, an aquarium, a research center, and preserves the historic birthplace of Maria Mitchell. A wide variety of science and history-related programming is offered throughout the year for people of all ages. 



###

For Immediate Release

August 8, 2024

Contact: Jónelle Gurley

programs@mariamitchell.org

Recent Posts

Maria Mitchell In Her Own Words

By Jascin N. Leonardo Finger • July 6, 2026
July 15. {1863} My dear Sally . . . I think Mitchell is all right in his algebra. He can’t stand an examination in Trig but I don’t believe he will have a rigorous one. Father has seen the Prof. and will give him a letter to them.  If you can’t be honest with your sibling, who can you be honest with? Apparently, Sally Mitchell Barney’s son, William Mitchell Barney – known as Mitchell as his cousin William Mitchell Barney was known as Willie (how is that for honoring your father?!) – was visiting his aunt Maria and his grandfather, William Mitchell, at their home in Lynn, MA. Sally still lived on Nantucket and I suspect Mitchell was not only visiting but getting some much needed help with his mathematics by his aunt Maria. As always, she is brutally honest – he won’t pass a test in trigonometry (but, neither would I!). JNLF

Top O’ the Ridge!

By Jascin N. Leonardo Finger • June 29, 2026
In April and early May, at long last, the Mitchell House roof was replaced. (I noted this in an earlier blog.) I had also noted that the roofwalk, given the condition it was in and its location – sitting on the ridge – had to be replaced. They had thought they could jack it up – as they have done with other walks – but the Blizzard of February 2026 that was ALL wind (83 MPH winds – read Category 1 Hurricane) and no real snow, made the walk impossible to treat in such a manner (read: crumble). So, after much discussion, review by our preservation easement holder, and permits, as well as some fundraising, we are replacing the roofwalk. The prior walk was not the original. The original blew off in a gale in the late nineteenth century, replaced at some point in the 1930s, and likely replaced again in the 1960s or 1970s. Then, since that time, it was heavily repaired. Its framing members were notched to accept the ridge boards (read: peak) of the roof and I think that may have been an original way to construct a walk. Makes perfect sense – and gives the walk more support and a lower profile. It was after all about putting out chimney fires and preventing roof fires. People copied what worked – and there have been a few others noted to be built in this manner still. It presents an issue though – because if you need to work on the ridge board or close to it – you cannot get to it easily – I guess you may be able to access it to some extent by lifting the deck boards of the walk. The new Mitchell House roofwalk will sit about six inches above the ridge – which will also allow air to circulate better over the ridge and the shakes in that area. That is the only thing that will really be different. It is protected by a preservation easement – as part of the Mitchell House’s easement – and frankly, even if we did not have an easement, we would not want it to look any different. So keep your eyes to the skies at 1 Vestal as we work to re-build the walk. With a special thank you to Barber and Sons and Lydon and Sons. JNLF

Maria Mitchell In Her Own Words

By Jascin N. Leonardo Finger • June 22, 2026
1875, June 20. A meeting of the Officers of Congress was called at the house of Mrs. Hanaford, 5 Summit Ave., Jersey City. The weather was intensely cold. I went to New York on the 19 th and stopped with my friend Mrs. Clapp, 100 W. 54 St . . . .It was a question who should preside. Mrs. Hanaford thought the Chairman of the Executive Committee should and I had been told that I should, etc. The question was decided by the non-arrival of the Chairman of Ex.Com. I called them to order at an hour after the time appointed. Of course I made many blunders, as I have never presided before, but I continued for 4 hours. We did a few good things . . . The thing most weighing on Maria’s mind at this meeting was the looseness of membership for the Congress. She felt people were not being vetted properly in some areas of the country and thus they may allow in “undesirables.” I would take this to mean women who were not entirely behind the cause of the Congress and the Association for the Advancement of Women. I am not surprised by her suspicions and likely she was correct – one could see naysayers gaining access to this group and trying to destroy it from the inside. The women’s rights movement would have many schisms within it as people disagreed and broke into smaller factions.  Another important thing to point out is that Mrs. Hanaford is Nantucket-born Phebe Coffin Hanaford. Raised a Quaker, like Maria, Coffin Hanaford would become the first woman Universalist minister in New England – among many other firsts. She grew up with Maria, attended and taught at the Coffin School here on Nantucket, and was a founding member of another women’s organization, Sorosis, which Maria was also a founding member of. It’s nice to see two sister Nantucketers continuing to work together as adults – far from home! JNLF
Show More