Think back to your favorite science project in school, the one where you got to design your very own experiment. Now think about the first time you ever saw the ocean, how much fun it was to play in the waves and hunt for seashells on the beach.
Did you know these experiences can happen at the same time?
As a Marine Sciences Educator at the Bamfield Marine Sciences Centre, my job was to ensure students both learned knowledge about the natural world as well as directly experienced it. A tough gig, but somebody’s gotta lead that hike. Over the past four months I taught 765 students from all over British Columbia and Alberta, mostly grades 7–12, but a few university classes too. Unfortunately, many students know only sidewalks and school buses so just getting them into the woods was like pulling teeth…
What I really love about BMSC is how easily you can move from nature to classroom and vice versa. For example, students can discover hermit crabs in tidepools on a beach walk in the morning, and later that same day design and run an experiment testing whether that species of hermit crab prefers a rocky or sandy habitat. BMSC has a seawater-tank system and long-term collection of marine animals in the teaching labs, meaning students can go from simple curiosity to deeper observations in the lab, even practice applying the scientific method to answer a question they thought of while out on the beach.
In one of the coolest labs ever, students make their own sea urchin babies and observe the embryos growing and developing over several days. If you’ve ever taken an introductory biology course you’ve probably had to memorize the different stages of this textbook example of animal development. Boring. Know what’s not boring? Seeing it happen right before your eyes!
Of course, no visit to Bamfield is complete without a boat trip. For most school groups, that means a cruise around Barkley Sound aboard the Alta. On this trip students observe marine mammals like Stellar sea lions and harbour seals, look for pelagic cormorants, marbled murrlets and other sea birds, and meet subtidal animals brought to the surface by the Alta’s dredge.
Many of the activities students do emphasize connections between the living and non-living parts of the ocean. For example, in the oceanography “lab”, students travel by boat down a local inlet, along the way measuring water temperature, salt content and water clarity at different locations. Students discuss why these characters might be important to the ecosystem and how they might affect what can live there. They also collect a sample of plankton at each site, later using microscopes in the lab to observe and catalogue the different types of plankton they collected. The lab ends with a discussion of how the different water characteristics influence which organisms can live there and why.
One thing that continually surprised me about students visiting Bamfield was how uncomfortable they were in nature, at least at first. They are used to sidewalks and streetlamps and, well, cars that drive them everywhere. However, once you get them into the correct footwear (Just FYI, the correct footwear in Bamfield is gumboots. Always gumboot.), they have a blast—bushwacking, jumping in puddles, scrambling over fallen logs: this kind of walking is fun. Include an activity to count the different plant species or a lesson about traditional First Nations culture and now you’re learning new knowledge as well as the skills to simply walk in the unpaved woods. I love it.
And, finally, after a long day of learning, sometimes the very best thing is to just let students play. What better way to connect with nature?
Till next time!
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