Students Seeking Solutions

            A group comprised of 31 Old Rochester Regional Marine Biology students from the junior and sophomore classes converged on Nantucket Monday morning to get a taste of the fieldwork being done by scientists working to find solutions for ecological problems threatening marine life.

            What the students are already being taught is that the rubber of those problems is meeting the road of their world. Monday’s field trip provided an opportunity to get an up-close and personal look at what a career in Marine Biology looks, sounds and feels like.

            “It’s really cool and interesting how they can clean the water, filter the sand, as well as making algae, and being able to understand which algae is best for their (shellfish),” said Selena Pratt, a 16-year-old ORR sophomore from Marion who had already visited the oyster hatchery on Martha’s Vineyard. “They’re still learning because we don’t know everything about the ocean.”

            The trip, arranged by the Mattapoisett Land Trust and attended by representatives Ellen Flynn, Mary Cabral, Colleen Andrews and Cindy Turse, was accompanied by ORR staff, including ORR Marine Biology teacher Lynn Connor, staff Paul Gilbeault, Lindsay Deignan and Jill Grant and parent chaperones Erin Braman and Tom Friedman.

            “We live by the ocean, so it’s nice to see that we’re exploring our surroundings a little bit more and digging deeper into those problems like the algae blooming,” said Reese Souza, a 17-year-old ORR junior from Rochester. “I think it’s important to educate the public on the problems with the ocean that are occurring right now … while they’re still in that infancy stage before they take out other populations of fish.”

            Shellfish Hatchery, while the other half of the students worked under the supervision of Yvonne Valencourt, director of the UMass Boston Field Station located across town.

            Upon visiting a crowded room full of tanks with adult scallops, Freeman told the group, “Anything in science, you need to be okay with being uncomfortable in nature,” and, “You need to get used to bad smells.” She also advised the group visiting the hatchery to get scuba certified, estimating 60 planned dives this year, including 20 over the next two weeks.

            Students in the field-station group explored trails, arriving at the beach where they collected water samples and then examined them under microscopes.

            “We took water samples from a little pond, a stream and the ocean, and then we measured the ocean for salinity,” said ORR junior Connie Friedman, 17, of Marion. “Everybody got a different sample from the three areas that we went to.”

            The point of the closer look was to identify bugs. “There were bugs that could survive pollution and there were ones that couldn’t… I found some of the ones that couldn’t survive the pollution, which was a good sign,” said Friedman, who is looking to attend the University of New Hampshire and has been interested in Marine Biology since she worked with Terrapin turtles as a child.

            Connor, who accompanied students visiting the Field Station, said those students took a watershed hike through a stream area before reaching a swamp area with a small vernal pool. After water samples were taken at each location, the walk continued to the beach where Valencourt took a plankton sample.

            “It’s good, it’s real good. There are other solutions, but this is definitely a viable one,” said Elijah Batty, a SMEC student from Lakeville who is taking math and Marine Biology at ORR.

            While the three hours spent on Nantucket afforded the students a little downtime to walk the town and find some ice cream or pizza, the trip reinforced Pratt’s appetite for more knowledge of the ocean.

            “Even if you’re out of school, you’re still learning about the world,” she said. “I would enjoy learning about the ocean, trying to figure out a way to stop human – not just human problems, what we’re causing to the ocean such as adding too much carbon dioxide – and if the algae blooms aren’t growing, they can’t do photosynthesis, therefore they can’t take out the carbon dioxide. … So the (potential hydrogen) levels are higher, and I would find it fascinating to be able to fix that.”

Mattapoisett Land Trust

By Mick Colageo

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