\u201cIt\u2019s a glimpse of Core Sound that many of us hang in a special place all year long. \u00a0From decoys and black labs to crab pot trees, these ornaments have told the story of Down East,\u201d Amspacher said. \u201cEach year we have tried to select an artist that shares that deep commitment to our heritage and this year Johnna is that connection to tradition as well as an excellent career in the marine sciences. She\u2019s our future.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/cmast.ncsu.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/JohnnasOrnament.jpg\")
Brooks graduated as valedictorian from East Carteret High School in 2016 and earned her bachelor\u2019s at North Carolina State University. She said that she likes to go fishing but not in the way many of her peers do at NC State\u2019s Center for Marine Sciences and Technology, or CMAST.
Her dad\u2019s side of the family has been on Harkers Island for several generations, spending their days commercial fishing and boatbuilding, Brooks said. The Della John is the first boat that her father built from start to finish. The 50-foot wooden trawler was built in 1979, and her family owned and operated the boat until 2019 when they sold it to another local business, Miss Gina\u2019s Fresh Shrimp. Her father retired from commercial fishing in the 1990s and has been in marine construction since.<\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/cmast.ncsu.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/Johnna-Brooks-1024x858.jpg\")
\u201cNow, I\u2019m in this marine lab with people who like to fish. I go out with them sometimes, and I think they\u2019re a little bit surprised with how little I know,\u201d about recreational fishing, she said. But she\u2019s been fishing since she was young.
\u201cMy granddad, he\u2019s 90 now, but I remember when I was, no older than 10 years old. Pa, he would take me and my little cousin out \u2013 he\u2019s younger than me \u2014 and we would pull in a mullet net, and it was just me and my kid cousin on one end of the net, and then my 70-something granddad on the other end,\u201d Brooks said. \u201cI\u2019ve been doing that as long as I can remember.\u201d
She said she\u2019s always been strong in math but has enjoyed art just as much, having taken art classes throughout high school. She realized she missed the creative outlet when she was working on her bachelor\u2019s and ended up with a minor in art.<\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/cmast.ncsu.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/DellaJohn-1.jpg\")
\u201cI\u2019ve always found that math was very concrete, it made sense, it was structured,\u201d Brooks said, and art helped her with her math classes, along the way though she didn\u2019t see it as a viable career option.
When she began her undergraduate, she said she knew she was going to get a degree in math, and that she wanted to stay in Carteret County, \u201cthat was the only thing I was sure about.\u201d But she was concerned her career options were limited.
Growing up in the area, she was familiar with all the marine labs in the county, but didn\u2019t personally know anyone who worked there, aside from her grandmother who had worked at the Division of Marine fisheries for many years.
\u201cI thought they dissected dolphins all day,\u201d she laughed about what she thought when she was younger, adding \u201cI can\u2019t use math to dissect dolphins.\u201d
It was her junior year of college when Hurricane Florence was lumbering toward North Carolina, and one of her professors asked if anyone lived at the coast. She and another person raised their hands. Brooks learned that her professor had been a statistician at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Beaufort Marine Lab, and it dawned on her that if scientists are going out to collect data, someone has to do something with that data.
Once it clicked for her that this is a way to stay in Carteret County and use her math degree, she started looking into getting a master\u2019s but was encouraged to work on her doctorate. She initially didn\u2019t want to get a PhD, because she didn\u2019t want to be in her late-20s, still living in Raleigh. \u201cI wanted to come back, start my life, put down roots where I want to live. This is kind of the best of both worlds.\u201d
She spends most of her days doing research for her doctorate on speckled trout management. In what little down time she has, Brooks paints scenes from her childhood on old charts her dad used while he was a commercial fisherman.
\u201cNobody uses charts anymore,\u201d Brooks said. \u201cI had to get my dad to explain how to use them. This is a whole way of fishing that people did in the past. And just like with the Harkers Island bridge, it\u2019s a thing in the past. It\u2019s not there anymore.\u201d
Her career plans and her art are a way for her to preserve the way of life loved as a child and a way to adapt to how the world around her is changing, which she acknowledges is going to happen, regardless. But she\u2019s trying to preserve the culture and the stories, how things were done, in her own way, she said.<\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/figure>\n\n\n\n