In the Gateway National Recreation Area of Sandy Hook, the beaches, marshes and trails of the historic barrier spit became the classroom for more than 800 students May 13 and 14.
Clean Ocean Action (COA), an ocean advocacy environmental group, sponsored the 22nd annual Spring Student Summit, offering a seaside symposium of hands-on exhibits and field studies at no cost to public school districts.
“No matter where you live, the ocean is a part of your life,” Cindy Zipf, executive director of COA, told students at the summit. “You need to be inspired by its beauty and then take that back to your hometown and do what you can to improve the quality of your environment. Whether you live near a lake or a stream, it all flows to the ocean, so we try to give an environmental perspective and try to inspire young ocean advocates.”
For the summit, COA recruited student volunteers from Marine Academy of Science and Technology (MAST), which is located on the Hook in Middletown, to serve as “peer teachers” for the two-day event. Activities included six workshop stations and 12 field activities.
Every student — including youths from Matawan, Aberdeen, Middletown, Shrewsbury and Long Branch public schools — visited all six workshops and participated in one field activity.
“The hope is that at least one student from every school gets to participate in one field activity and shares that with their classmates,” said Meg Gardner, public advocacy fellow for COA. “We are trying to teach them about the environment that surrounds them in their local backyard, and also develop an appreciation and sense of stewardship and advocacy to protect that marine environment going forward. They can give that [knowledge] to their classmates, to their families, and spread that advocacy.”
COA invites northern and central New Jersey schools for the Spring Student Summit and South Jersey schools in the fall. Each school must submit an application to participate in the event and acceptance is based on availability.
As public school districts face decreased state aid and funding reductions, Zipf explained the student summit is a free and fun field-trip option for schools. The only thing COA asks is that the districts provide the transportation.
“We try to make it as easy as we can for the schools to participate,” Zipf said.
Over COA’s 22 years partnering with educators, more than 30,000 students have attended the summit, and many fresh faces learned about the marine life that is unique to the Jersey Shore.
Aakansha Kumar, 11, a sixth-grader at Matawan-Aberdeen Middle School (MAMS), enjoyed the seashell-identification station the most.
“Mostly I liked the shells because I’m a shell collector,” Kumar said, holding a stack of ribbed mussels, surf clams and moon snail shells. “We bring a big bucket and collect shells and walk, so the exhibit on the shells was fun.”
Students also learned about nonpoint source pollution, which is caused from rain and snow water runoff, carrying natural and man-made pollutants into the estuary.
By using an “enviroscape” watershed model that resembled a miniature suburban community, students observed the effects of fertilizers, oils and litter on the water quality.
“We need to be careful what we put in the ground that can get washed into our ocean and harm the organisms that live there,” Kumar said. “That was the main theme of the day, being environmentally friendly.”
In the Plum Island section of the Hook, students sported fishing waders and scooped up fiddler crabs, mud snails and hard shell clams, using large seines.
After the students brought back their findings, Cara Muscio, of the Rutgers University Cooperative Extension Program, taught them how to identify the common fish, mollusks and birds found in the Mid-Atlantic region.
“The cool thing about science is going out and finding stuff and learning about it,” Muscio said.
She is also an active member of the Save Barnegat Bay advocacy campaign in Ocean County.
“Then I get to go home from my job today where I taught you guys about the stuff I know, but I found something I didn’t know,” she said, pausing to pick up a razor clam with several tiny white eggs growing on it. “You will always learn.”
Other crowd favorites were the live horseshoe crab exhibit and the invertebrate lab, featuring animals without backbones like sea stars.
After observing the critters, Chloe Le Moing, a sixth-grader at MAMS, said she was inspired to learn more about their natural habitat.
“I liked seeing the creatures and getting to touch them,” she said. “I’m actually thinking about going to MAST to learn more about marine science. The exhibits were pretty cool.”
As a result, students also gained awareness about how human activity affects the local environment. Between spring and fall 2009, COA volunteers removed more than 4,173 bags of trash and 59,270 pounds of debris from coastal habitats.
Zipf also used the opportunity to educate the students about the recent Gulf Oil spill off Louisiana and its national impact.
“There will be a lot of devastating news to marine life from there, but they [students] will also learn about ocean currents,” Zipf said. “The oil spill is going to follow the ocean current and wrap itself around the Florida Keys, pick up the Gulf Stream and end up here. We will likely see remnants of the oil spill coming up our way. It proves that it is one ocean, and that’s another big, important thing. There are no lines or borders … it is all just one ocean.”
The 2010 Spring Student Summit was made possible by donations from private foundations, businesses and private individuals, according to COA. Other naturalists from the American Littoral Society also volunteered for the event.
“It’s very rewarding,” Zipf said. “There are a lot of days where we, as the staff, are pounding our heads against the wall and dealing with bureaucrats and politicians, and sometimes it can be very frustrating. You begin to think, ‘Is there hope?’ Then you have the student summit and you see the spark, the ideas, the energy and the future. It’s wonderful and inspiring. It gives you the energy you need to battle on.”
Clean Ocean Action is headquartered on Officer’s Row at Fort Hancock on Sandy Hook. For more information, visit www.cleanoceanaction.org.