KEYPORT — Members of the Monmouth County Park System and the Bayshore Regional Watershed Council are partnering to provide local school districts an opportunity to learn about marine life in the Bayshore area.
The two organizations are using a $3,500 mini-grant from the NY/NJ Harbor Estuary Program to provide free field trips, teacher workshops and stewardship activities throughout the year.
“There are really very few opportunities for these kids to learn about their own backyard and learn about what’s happening in the estuary, the local body of water that is the Raritan Bay and Sandy Hook Bay,” Joseph Reynolds, senior naturalist with the Monmouth County Park System, said in an interview on Oct. 12.
“These activities will hopefully give them a good understanding about what’s happening from small stuff, like plankton to big fish, like striped bass and blue fish to clams and oysters and other shellfish, in the bay.”
In the fall, fifth-grade students from schools in Middletown, Hazlet, Keyport, Atlantic Highlands, Matawan and Aberdeen, will participate in 10 field trips at Bayshore Waterfront Park in Port Monmouth.
During the trips, students will participate in four different activities, including seining, beach combing, plankton identification and water quality experiments, Reynolds said.
“Many people collect shells, but they don’t know that at some point in time there was something living in that shell. We want to show people that the shellfish spine is an indication of what is living in the bay, such as scallops and oysters,” he said.
“Many people also don’t realize that 70 percent of all the oxygen that we take in comes from the water … including the algae and plankton. The plankton also provides food for other animals, including us. That striped bass that you are eating, they are feeding on that plankton that came from the bay.”
In the winter, teachers will participate in workshops to learn how to implement teaching about the estuary throughout the curriculum, whether it’s science, history or math, he said, to give students a better understanding of the estuary throughout the school year.
Finally, in the spring, students will be able to participate in several hands-on activities, including horseshoe crab monitoring, beach cleanups, seining and more.
“It’s showing that people of all ages, not just school children, live in this area and they are concerned about the bay; want to help restore the bay,” Reynolds said.
“We want to get that across to the children, that it’s not just a school project. In many cases, people are spending their free time trying to help us out and we want to invite these kids to help us out as well.
“Hopefully as they get older, in the back of their minds, they are always thinking that there are people that are concerned about the bay and perhaps they should be concerned about the bay, too.”
The grant, which was awarded in September, is a continuation of a program that began last fall.
According to Reynolds, the Monmouth County Park System was awarded a small grant from the Environmental Protection Agency to fund field trips for the smaller school districts of Keyport, Keansburg and Atlantic Highlands.
This year, the grant will fund field trips for fifth-grade students of the larger school districts of Middletown, Hazlet and Matawan- Aberdeen, as well as the smaller districts.
Reynolds explained that it’s important for the children to understand the Bayshore and the marine life that lives there.
“We live in an area that has approximately 15 million people. Monmouth County is downstream from many of these people and many of the big cities, like New York City, Jersey City and Newark,” Reynolds said, adding that the idea is for everyone to work together to clean up the area.
“No matter where you go in the world, there is an estuary that people are living near and we want to educate people how to clean them up and restore them.”
The Bayshore Regional Watershed Council is an all-volunteer environmental group dedicated to protecting and preserving the local environment and improving the waterways in Middlesex and Monmouth counties, from Raritan Bay to Sandy Hook Bay.