In the spring of 2022, Laura Guertin spent two months sailing across the South Atlantic, traveling to and from Cape Town, South Africa, aboard an International Ocean Discovery Program ship. The organization advances scientific understanding of Earth through drilling, coring, and monitoring of the subseafloor; Guertin served as the onboard outreach officer—chosen for that role, she says, because of her experience in ocean storytelling.

“I was doing the blog posts and the social media, and ship-to-shore broadcasts,” she says. “I conducted 50 ship-to-shore broadcasts and was able to Zoom with some Penn State classrooms at University Park and Brandywine.”

Guertin, a distinguished professor of earth science at Penn State Brandywine who studies marine geology and geophysics, loves being out at sea, observing coastlines, weather patterns, and all aspects of oceanic life. She also loves telling stories about the sea to help people better understand these bodies of water and the creatures that live in them, and she does that through quilting. Guertin says she was inspired to use quilt making as a medium for science outreach in 2018 when she attended a field program for scientists and science communicators organized by the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium in Cocodrie, La.

“The theme that week was coastal optimism—because Louisiana residents were frustrated with all the doom and gloom in the news media about what was happening there,” she says. “But there are also stories of adaptation and resilience for those that live along the coast. There are people who can’t just pack up and leave. There are Indigenous communities with a spiritual connection to the land.”

The stories she heard, combined with the science being shared, inspired Guertin to create her first collection of quilts, which she called “Stitching Hope for the Louisiana Coast.” Each one, she says, relates to progress and partnerships on the Louisiana coast, the ways in which residents are working together and using science to figure out how to live there as it continues to change.

From her South Atlantic voyage, Guertin created 19 quilts inspired by everything she saw during her 62 days at sea—whales, seabirds, the changing colors and textures of the water and the sky. “There’s an actual scale that meteorologists use to measure how cloudy it is or how blue the sky is, and I matched my fabric colors with those measurements,” she says. “Every quilt features some kind of South African textile as a nod to the port that we went in and out of.”

She’s now working on a new quilt collection inspired by a 2023 trip to the Gulf of Alaska with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Teacher at Sea Program that will express themes pertinent to that area, including the importance of sustainable fishing practices and threats facing walleye pollock, a staple ingredient in frozen fish sticks.