Trailing behind their guides, the students stepped cautiously over uneven ground, through puddles of pooled water and soft gray mud until they came to a giant metal machine and a man named Catfish.

The machine was a rig used to drill holes into rock, in which explosives would be placed to blast a larger hole, thereby extending the tunnel deeper underground. And Catfish, whose real name is Thad Pettit, is an underground miner at the Eagle Mine in Big Bay.

Catfish’s job is something Parker Cain, a Bothwell Middle School student, said he was interested in. Why? “Because I like to blow stuff up,” he said.

The students — whose parents are either directly employed or contracted through Eagle Mine — were on a job shadowing tour last week. The visit, originally set for April 27, national take your child to work day, was rescheduled due to a mechanical issue with the mine’s elevator. Students also toured the mine’s water treatment plant and the Humboldt Mill in Humboldt Township.

Thad Pettit, an underground miner known to most as ‘Catfish’ due to his southern upbringing, shows students how he patterns drilling. Explosives will be placed in the holes to blast away rock and further the underground tunnel.

Lindsay Bean, communities and communications coordinator at Eagle Mine, said it was the second year a job shadowing tour was held for employees’ kids at the nickel and copper mine in northern Marquette County.

“Basically, because there’s such a large variety of different careers and jobs, and rather than have kids just follow maybe one person for the day, … we put this together so they kind of get to see a whole lot of different things,” Bean said, later adding “I never had seen anything like this before I came to work here, and I can only imagine it would have been influential had it happened to me at a younger age.”

Before taking the roughly four-minute elevator ride to a depth of nearly 900 feet, the students participated in a brief safety seminar with health and safety supervisor Andy Vaughn and adviser Heather Sandberg.

Students then asked career-related questions, such as what they like most about their jobs.

“The biggest thing I like is it’s always challenging, there’s always something new, you’re always having to solve issues,” Vaughn said. “Like I say, you never get bored. There’s always stuff coming up that you have to make decisions on.”

Part of the underground tunnels at the Eagle Mine were visited by local eighth-grade students for a job shadowing tour last week.

Sandberg said the field of health and safety is continually changing and improving with new technology.

“Right now, there’s … a chip that they can put on everyone when they’re underground, or even on surface to see where everybody is, so in case of an emergency, you know that everyone is accounted for,” she said. “You think about even a couple years ago that wasn’t there.”

Engineer Nolan Black said he expects the use of automated machines to become more common in the mining industry, “taking a lot of safety risks out of the equation.”

An advantage of working in mining, Black said in response to a question, is the pay can be good. But at the same time it can be a volatile market.

“You’re running off metal prices and things like that … If metal prices go down, you can be out of a job pretty quick, so that’s kind of a gamble,” he said.

Most of the students said they enjoyed taking the tour, but weren’t sure they would enter into a career in mining.

“My favorite part was seeing all the equipment and how it works,” Negaunee Middle School student Ella Lunseth said. “I want to do engineering, but I’m not sure I’ll be in this field. I kind of want to do civil engineering.”

Courtney Enright, another Negaunee student, said she liked seeing all the trucks and equipment, but that she’ll probably get into teaching, while her classmate Katelyn Lammi said she was interested in engineering, but wasn’t sure what type.

“I’m probably not going to go into this field … but looking at everything was awesome,” Lammi said.

Bothwell student Lexi Lacombe said, “My favorite part was probably the underground tour of the mine, and being able to see what kind of job my dad does and all that kind of stuff. I don’t think I’m going to … come to this field. I want to go into the medical field, but … it was really cool. I really liked it.”

Ryan Jarvi can be reached at 906-228-2500, ext. 270. His email address is rjarvi@miningjournal.net.