Island Updates

Marine Studies Pathway

Pathways 101 Deer Isle-Stonington High School

We had a great time working with students from Deer Isle-Stonington High School’s Pathways 101 program: an introductory course that is focused on developing core skills so students understand the project-based learning principles that guide the Marine Studies Pathway and the Arts Pathway programs at the high school.

Students started the program with a discussion about how they operate in groups and the constructive and destructive behaviors that individuals can bring to the table to hold group work back or help group work move forward.

Students then took on two small design challenges where they competed to build the tallest tower using just 1 meter of tape, 10 pieces of spaghetti, and a marshmallow. They also worked as a group to design aluminum foil boats to hold the most rocks while still remaining buoyant in a tub of water. Both of these activities were an opportunity for students to learn how to work as a group towards a common goal, and figure out their individual strengths within the group.

Afterwards we shifted gears to talk about the issue of marine debris in our oceans. We discussed the sources of marine debris, how long it takes to degrade in the marine environment, and how marine debris can harm marine organisms through ingestion and entanglement.

The group then split into two teams, and we recorded data on marine debris we collected from along Hurricane’s shoreline. Between the two groups we collected over 400 pieces of trash ranging from pieces of fishing debris (buoys, line, and bait strapping ties) to household waste like plastic bottles and food wrappers. One group even returned with a full tire!

The next challenge was for the groups to design a sculpture using the marine debris they collected to communicate a message about some aspect of why marine debris is a problem. Students got inspired by looking at examples of how other artists have tackled the problem including Chris Jordan and Angela Pozzi.

After planning their art projects to include the materials they would use, the message they were trying to communicate, and the design they were planning to implement, students spent the whole morning on the second day working as a group to develop their marine debris sculptures.

One group chose to make a lobster that was choked up with fishing debris, showing that trash generated by the lobster industry can impact the health of the resource it is trying to harvest. The other group built a series of marine organisms entangled in marine debris including some fish made out of plastic bottles with a comb for a dorsal fin, and a seagull made out of bottles and a Styrofoam cup.

We enjoyed working with students to complete their projects and were impressed by how quickly they learned to work together as a team. This program is part of their formative assessment on group work, and we look forward to seeing the product from their summative assessment! We also appreciate their enthusiasm and dedication to help us keep Hurricane’s coastline clean!​

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Strengthening Coastal Partnerships

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It has been a busy time for collaborative meetings!  In the spirit of being super efficient, Alice and I managed to fit in three major meetings over the course of four epic days off the island last week.  The first two days were spent at the Island Institute in Rockland meeting first with Education Director Yvonne Thomas about our joint efforts to develop aquaculture curriculum and secondly with Yvonne and a host of other movers and shakers with the Eastern Maine Skippers Program.  Hurricane recently received a grant from EPSCoR’s Sustainable Ecological Aquaculture Network (SEANET) program to develop three aquaculture sites on the island: first for sugar kelp and later for oysters and scallops.  More specifically, we have money for students to set up these sites.  The goal of the program is to work with local schools and other local partners, such as the Island Institute and Herring Gut Learning Center, to bring aquaculture education and real life management of aquaculture sites into the hands of middle and high school students.  We are ramping up to develop and pilot our curriculum this upcoming school year with a plan to get students to put their own sugar kelp aquaculture site in the water in the spring.  These will be sites that students can monitor and modify for years to come, enabling students to not only cultivate these areas, but also collect data that can be widely distributed to any students, fishermen, or researchers who have an interest.

Students during the 2014  Eastern Maine Skippers kickoff event spent time in Hurricane's intertidal doing green crab research.

After some great conversations with Yvonne, we launched into a full day meeting at the Institute with a variety of educators and other stakeholders associated with the Eastern Maine Skippers Program (EMSP). This program an amazing effort to bring project based learning into local high schools to help strengthen student engagement, specifically around topics and training critical to Maine’s coastal economy. Penobscot East Resource Center (PERC) based out of Stonington is spearheading the effort and Deer Isle-Stonington High School (DISHS) is one of the high schools pioneering the curriculum with a full in-school program.  Many other high schools up and down the coast of Maine in fishing Zone C (North Haven to Eastport) participate as part of an extended regional program and adapt the curriculum as it fits within their own school structure. Some schools implement the program as an after-school component, some as a full class, and some integrate material into existing classes, but all students associated with EMSP get an opportunity to learn broader skills and knowledge associated with the fishing industry. The program has a three pronged approach, giving students the skills they need to operate on the water, at the table with other stakeholders, and in the office as they manage their own assets. This comprehensive view of what it takes to be a successful fisherman or to understand the complexities of the fishing industry in general is one of the greatest assets of the program and what makes it so appealing to students as well as community partners looking to develop and support coastal youth as true stakeholders in their futures.

Hurricane Island will host the second kickoff event (read about last years event here) for EMSP students and teachers at the beginning of the school year, allowing all participants to meet and get to know each other in addition to laying the foundation for the year long project that they are about to embark on.  Last year the project tackled the invasive green crab problem, this year the project looks at the lobster industry specifically asking the students: Who or what eats/buys lobster? What impact can we/I have?  The first question allows a lot of freedom for students to choose to look at lobsters from an ecological perspective or from a more purely economical perspective. The question about ‘what impact they can have’ is similarly open to student interpretation, allowing a variety of options for students to really dig into the material from a standpoint that is relevant and interesting to them.  It will be great to see what the students come up with this year for their individual projects when they come to the retreat at the beginning of October.  Check back here for updates!

Students share the marine debris art sculptures they created during the 2014 Pathways 101 program on Hurricane

Our final two days of meetings were hosted by Deer Isle-Stonington High School (DISHS) itself and we got a chance to meet with the teachers and other community partners associated with their Pathway program.  Pathways started out as a Marine Studies track for students who wanted to specialize their education in preparation for any post-secondary option dealing with marine related issues.  DISHS has also blended Pathways with EMSP using EMSP as an “honors” track that more specifically gears marine studies for students intending to pursue a commercial fishing license.  This year the Pathways program is expanding to include an Arts Pathway in addition to the Marine Studies and the goal is to add a Healthcare related track in the future.  It was amazing to hear about some of the cool classes associated with each of the tracks!  Most of the Pathways classes are team taught allowing options like Chemistry through Art or Marine Studies Health and Phys Ed., combinations that really demonstrate the relevancy of the topics to students.

I got to spend most of my time with Seth Laplant who is adapting a Biology class to the Marine Studies track and has a lot of programming planned that takes advantage of local resources.  Monitoring bacterial colonies on the shoreline, looking at green crab genetics, blood worm osmosis, and performing marine organism necropsies make this class not only super relevant but also super fun!  It was great seeing all the people who were invested in making these programs work. Island Heritage Trust, Rural Aspirations, Bowdoin College, Opera House Arts of Stonington, Haystack Mountain School of Crafts, and PERC were just some of the people and organizations that were represented over the course of the two days.

Even though it was an exhausting session of meetings, we left with a much better picture of all of the wonderful collaborations going on up and down the coast and we are extremely excited to be part of them.  Over the next couple months we will be solidifying aquaculture curriculum and planning for the EMSP and Pathways kickoffs on Hurricane.  Updates on everything will show up here so keep an eye out to learn more! 

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Pathways 101

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29 students from Deer Isle-Stonington High School's pathways 101 program came out to Hurricane September 29-30, 2014, for an art-science integrated program focusing on collaboration and group work. Students first spent some time learning about the impact of trash in the marine environment--how marine debris can harm animals through entanglement and ingestion, and how long different types of marine debris can persist in the environment. We then went out to clean up Hurricane's coastline, quantifying what we found by using a cleanup form created by the Rozalia Project. We have been doing beach cleanups regularly this season, but students still found 627 pieces of trash in just over an hour!

After collecting and sorting the trash, we split students into three teams to brainstorm how they were going to visually communicate the problem of marine debris. Inspired by artists like Chris Jordan, Kim Preston, and Angela Haseltine Pozzi, students spent time in their groups determining the materials they wanted to use, the location for their art piece, and the premise behind what they were making. We worked with them to think critically about how their art could be designed to intentionally make a statement about marine debris, and their final projects reflected the time they had taken to be creative and have a clear message.

The first team created a lobster made out of lobster buoys and spindles, and set it crawling in the intertidal, which they said made sense because most of the trash we find on Hurricane's shores is related to the lobster industry. Underneath the buoys that made up the lobster's tail, students wrote out facts about the number of traps Stonington fishermen lose every year and the statistics about lobster debris that has been found on Hurricane Island.

A student reads one of the marine debris facts written under the buoy lobster tail

The second team created a piece that featured a green crab made out of an old boogie board found during their beach cleanup. Because students in this program had also participated in our Eastern Maine Skippers kickoff program, green crabs, an invasive species to Maine, were on their mind. These students recognized that marine debris could also be considered an invader to Maine's coastline--despite our best efforts bringing students out to clean up Hurricane's shores this summer, these students found only 10 fewer pieces of trash than our first group, the Logan School, who came out in May--and trash is ubiquitous in Maine's intertidal, like green crabs.

The third group opted for a more abstract sculpture of the marine debris they collected, and they built it near an old navigation tower at the South end of the island. They wanted to show that marine debris, like this man-made tower, will persist in the environment for hundreds of years. The whole team sat, connected to their work as they presented, to symbolize that they all have contributed to the problem.

We appreciate all of the students help in keeping Hurricane's coastlines clean, and for their creative energy around these trash-art installations!

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