Marine Environmental Education Outreach Program

This program was developed by our sister organization, ACAP Humber Arm for the Bay of Islands area, and we will modify their design to reflect conditions in Conception Bay. At present, there is no science curriculum for schools within Newfoundland and Labrador that includes learning materials that focus on our marine environment. NAACAP will also develop other innovative and interactive marine education resources that will be accessible to students, educators and the public, through our website and other outreach initiatives.

Based upon the results of our TBFB pilot project that was conducted in Petley, Random Island in November, and consultations with Humber Arm ACAP, the TBFB program has a positive impact on participants since they are provided with opportunities to meaningfully link their classroom knowledge with practical, real-life situations. During the on-vessel component, students gain hands-on experience in performing water quality analysis, as well as conducting plankton tows. These experiences will be linked to the in-class component where students gain exposure to the physical and biological characteristics of Smith Sound and how humans impact marine habitats. All data collected by students will be analyzed and made available to all schools in the province through our website. Analysis of the data will be focused on the assessment of the impacts of land use on water resources and vulnerability of eco-systems on stressors.

We will be working with Board Member Patrick Wells, a high school science teacher, to design a Trading Books For Boats component to our web site. Mr. Wells has extensive experience in creating interactive environmental web programs. Our staff have been trained in both the Project Wet and Project Wild programs and will be incorporating these techniques into our project.

Our program will address the shortage of marine-based educational opportunities for students in Newfoundland and Labrador. We hope to reach out to other areas of the province, especially rural regions, in order to spark interest in marine education among local educators so that the TBFB program can be accessed by a greater number of students. In addition, we intend to increase our profile as a leader in marine environmental education by raising awareness of coastal resource issues through our public outreach initiatives.

Through our involvement in the Marine Environmental Education Outreach Project, we ultimately aim to increase marine education initiatives so that participating students and all citizens will become more informed about the marine environment and will be able to avail of our bountiful coastal resources in a sustainable manner.

The core of the Trading Books for Boats program is as follows: Classes show up at the marina and are divided into two groups. One group goes into the marina to study in the interactive classroom and the other group boards a registered chartered boat to do actual hands-on studies of aquatic parameters. On board the boat, students learn about the importance of wearing a lifejacket on a marine vessel and what to do in case of an emergency. Navigation and the importance of using a chart, compass and GPS in the field are also covered. Students then work in groups using various equipment to monitor water temperature, dissolved oxygen, salinity, pH, turbidity and aquatic organisms (plankton).

In the classroom, students are given a presentation on water quality and some of the negative impacts of pollution in the ocean environment. Students are then divided into groups to work on various stations throughout the classroom. Most of the stations contain a hands-on component with interactive experiments. Classroom stations include role of the fisheries, oil spill prevention, marine debris, facts on the marine environment, potential impacts from human activity - including the handling of domestic/municipal sewage, and products made from the sea. We will be setting up an online database of all the water quality data we collect through the program to allow students, or any interested citizen, to access the data. This will allow for comparisons between years, locations, and monitoring results. The program will be designed so that students can use the data for statistical analysis in their future project work.

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