(lively music) - Every week, when I look under the microscope, my mind still gets blown.

I didn't even know there was things this small in the world.

Let's just say I was color blind before.

That's how it feels to me.

I didn't know everything was so connected.

(inspiring music) - [Narrator] Rosa Hunter is the lab manager at the Salish Sea Research Center.

- We don't want it to run dry as we call it, so you wanna leave, like, just a little bit of the liquid on the surface.

- [Narrator] She works at Northwest Indian College, 15 minutes south of the Canadian border on forested Lummi Island.

But her path to science was an unconventional one.

- I dropped out of school in 10th grade.

I went away, I went on vacation for a while.

Let's just put it that way.

- [Narrator] Rosa's vacation wasn't a fun one by any stretch.

She was incarcerated for a period of time.

And her life was almost short circuited before it could even start.

- I happened to get a judge and a prosecutor that wanted to make an example out of me and gave me the max sentence.

- [Narrator] Like many formerly incarcerated people, Rosa's record made it almost impossible to put the pieces of her life back together.

She struggled to find a job or a place to live.

- I was a housekeeper.

I dug ditches for contracting, bartended.

Anything that I would get paid.

One of my regular customers at the bar I worked at overheard me talking to a coworker and he said, hey, I don't wanna know what you did but go to school, earn a degree.

I started college when I was 32.

I did not know what algebra was.

'Cause I made it as far as long division, honestly.

So anything with -ology at the end, biology, ecology scared me 'cause I never experienced them.

So I took introduction to plants.

That sounds simple, there's no ologies in that.

And then I was like, what are these critters living in here?

- [Narrator] Those critters Rosa saw in the microscope were bryophytes, rotifers, and nematodes.

Eventually she discovered a tardigrade, also known as a water bear because of their shape.

Though they're less than a millimeter long, these micro animals are famous for being able to withstand extreme heat, cold, and even the vacuum of space.

- I was the very last one to find a tardigrade.

And when I did, I took my little plate, ran across campus trying to find my instructor.

I was like, I found a tardigrade!

Just thinking about it, it's the biggest smile because I'll never forget that.

And that's when I knew, I'm gonna be a scientist, yeah.

- [Narrator] Rosa's fascination with tardigrades inspired her to study everything she could at Northwest Indian College, especially if it was invisible to the naked eye.

She excelled at classifying these microscopic critters and beings, from mosses to invertebrates.

She became essentially the expert on tardigrades in the Northwest.

But eventually she'd come to specialize in finding invisible dangers to the environment.

Things like toxic algae that can accumulate in shellfish.

- [Rosa] I didn't realize how much information you can get just from a liter of water.

And it tells a story.

Is it happy?

So like emotions, is the water happy?

Is it sad?

Is it angry?

Like right now, we have a algae bloom.

So for me, the water's angry right now and it's turning red.

- [Narrator] Identifying phytoplankton and the harmful algae blooms they cause can prevent toxins from infusing an entire ecosystem.

- Without them, the salmon and everything else and our whole system wouldn't work, we'd die.

Like the clams, for example, you know, they're our filter feeders of the ocean.

They're just doing their thing but it's whoever consumes them is what's gonna get sick.

- [Narrator] Most species of clam in the Northwest live in harsh environments, nestling themselves between rocks or burying themselves deep below the sand.

Anyone who's tried knows they can be tough to catch but Rosa's been doing it since early childhood.

- I used to go out to the tide flats with my grandmother.

She would stand out there and just do environmental scan.

You know, she would just look at the environment around and she would say, either we're digging here or we're not.

She would say, nope, those are sick clams.

We don't touch those, we don't eat those.

From the indigenous perspective versus the scientific perspective.

It all came full circle on how it's connected.

- [Narrator] When she became a scientist herself, Rosa realized that her grandmother's approach to clamming, surveying the environment, identifying sick clams, removing portions where toxins could gather, was in fact a highly scientific process handed down through generations of indigenous scientists.

- I remembered what my family does.

And I was like, holy moly.

My ancestors were scientists.

You know, we had astronomers, we had biologists, we had chemists.

Name it, we had it, ecologists.

We just didn't have those terms for them like we do now.

- [Narrator] By combining her grandmother's insights with measurements like the temperature and pH of seawater, Rosa's blending indigenous knowledge and Western knowledge to help explain how toxicity in shellfish impacts our environment.

- What was always known is now getting newly discovered or they're just figured it out.

I guess I walk that line between indigenous knowledge and then Western knowledge.

That is my grandmother.

I carry her with me 'cause no one, I'm the first person ever to go to college and attend college and she was a school teacher and she just wanted someone in the family to do wonderful things.

So I carry her with me, always.

- [Narrator] Rosa and her research are living proof that anyone can find their purpose in a lab whether they come from the halls of higher learning or from a less traditional path like hers.

- My goal is just working with students honestly and passing what I learned to them and sending 'em out in the world.

I want them to walk in any lab like a boss cause it's just never too late.

(inspiring music)