Portland High School students exploring the intertidal last spring (2019)
Part of my work as Education Manager is to engage with students in our local partner schools in project based learning (topics which range from salt marsh restoration, to larval scallop recruitment). This past month I've been in and out of the English Language Learners Biology and Field Ecology classes at Portland High School, diving deeply into the nuances of kelp biology and aquaculture. We spent some time thinking about what makes kelp different from land plants, how kelp reproduces, what role kelp plays in Maine ecosystems, and why we would want to grow kelp as a crop. As our culminating event, I brought in kelp reproductive tissue (sorus tissue) so that students could grow their own seaweed.
Had all gone to plan, the sorus tissue which had previously been dried out, would have released spores immediately after coming back into contact with water. Students would have been able to see the spores wriggling around under a microscope. However, nothing happened…. No spores…. nothing.
As it was my first time attempting to spore kelp in the classroom, I was learning right alongside the students, and was just as disappointed as they were (maybe even more so!). We tried all different sorts of things to try and get the kelp to release its spores, but to no avail. Two days in a row this happened! I couldn't figure out what had gone wrong, and after seeking help from folks who had done this multiple times before, it seemed like I had done everything by the book. I felt horribly that I had promised something to these students that I couldn't deliver. After a short bout of wallowing, I was gently reminded that science doesn't always go to plan. Science is messy! Science is imperfect! Science requires A LOT of trouble shooting! Even when all conditions are perfect, and everything seems to be in control, experiments go awry! Science is fickle that way! AND what's important is the process of continual re-evaluation, improvement, and perseverance.
We left the kelp in the tanks in the classroom over Portland's February break in the hopes that at some point the kelp might decide it was time to reproduce. We'll know in the next few weeks if we have had any sort of success, or if it's back to the drawing board. In any case, we'll make it work and have fun doing it.
