Students from Owen J. Roberts High School in Chester County, PA hit the Pocomoke River for a kayaking adventure Tuesday morning. After watching the sun rise on Chincoteague Island beach, students got in the boats and took the scenic route around the river learning about the environment and seeing some aquatic life. “I liked the seclusion in the back and seeing the turtles,” junior student Star said, adding she learned how to identify growing water lilies. Liam and Colin said it was interesting to learn about the tannins, organic matter that turns the water an ice tea color. Conveniently, the tannins also act as a natural mosquito repellent! Many students mentioned this was their first time out on a kayak and they enjoyed spending their day on the water splashing with their friends and learning about the river. “I liked hearing about the cone on the wood duck boxes that prevent any other animals from getting in,” Kaiden, another student, said. Wood ducks were once on the verge of extinction due to market hunting, but wood duck boxes act as safe homes for the creatures and helped stabilize their population.
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Chincoteague Bay Field Station is honored to be surrounded by such supportive and innovative partners. Last week the NASA Wallops Flight Facility's AFGE Union joined us for lunch and presented CBFS with a generous contribution to our Kids to Camp Scholarship as well as our first designated funds for an Undergraduate Research Scholarship. It's more than just being next door neighbors, though, that inspired this gesture. Ben Robbins, Vice President of the local AFGE says, "we understand the value of educational investment at the earliest opportunity, as well as independent research. In addition to representing these [NASA] employees, our mission also includes advocating the interests of the families and communities of these employees. We are actually part of a bigger movement that strives daily to make our communities better for all people. The funding of the CBFS’ worthy causes is one example of that. With our support, the students we are helping now may become researchers and learners for NASA or other Federal agencies one day."
Notifications about our 2017 Kids to Camp Scholarships will be in inboxes very soon! Keep an eye out for an official announcement regarding the new Undergraduate Research Scholarships availability. Spring has officially sprung, and along with the exciting seasonal changes we can see on the refuge and around Chincoteague Island, there is a whole lot happening right here at Chincoteague Bay Field Station. These tides of change have swept in an awesome and energetic class of team leaders and educators. It would be my pleasure to introduce them to the CBFS online community! And with that I would like to present the newest addition to our coordinator team - DRUM ROLL PLEASE - EMILY FOY. Emily is our brand new School Programs and Summer Camp coordinator. She arrived at the Field Station in a time of tumultuous change - the start of SPRING - and is hard at work getting the CBFS ready for the first wave of school groups of 2017! In the spirit of getting to know our newest coordinator a little better, I wanted to ask her a few VERY IMPORTANT questions. Alina Spera: So Emily, I’m going to start off with my most important question: What is your favorite kind of mollusk? Emily Foy: OK that is hard! I love any kind of invertebrates, but my favorite has to be nudibranchs. They’re sea slugs that have figured out a way to eat animals with toxins and then use that to become toxic themselves. And on top of that they are so many different colors and shapes!
EF: I’m from Lawrenceville Georgia, a big suburb of Atlanta. The last place I worked was for the South Carolina Department of Natural Resources (DNR) as an educator for their outreach department. We taught students about coastal resources and what the DNR scientists are doing to aid in the protection of those resources. I was able to work with a lot of different researchers, my favorite was a shark biologist who took me on sampling trips all the time! AS: That sounds awesome, hopefully you can get to know some of the University researchers that come to do projects at the field station this season! So what is your favorite part about CBFS so far? EF: I’ve enjoyed getting to know all the coordinators, educators, and other staff! We are all passionate about education and conservation so it’s easy to get along with everyone! I have also enjoyed seeing the ways CBFS uses their unique resources to teach about environmental science and conservation. AS: Do you have any guilty pleasure TV shows? EF: YES! I love Friends! AS: Which Friends character do you identify with the most? EF: Hm. I would probably say Ross. He’s a big science nerd like me and he’s very sensitive. You know what haha I would definitely be Ross! AS: You’ve taught at several environmental education organizations in the past. Why do you like hands-on, feet-wet education? EF: Hands-on education takes it to another level. When students can interact directly with what they are learning about, actually touching and feeling it, they can develop a deeper connection with the natural world and the phenomenon that control it. When students are more excited, they will be more engaged and learn more. I also love EE because I can see the students falling in love with the environments they are learning about. AS: After a long day of inspiring young scientists, what is your favorite snack? EF: I LOVE SOUR CREAM AND ONION PRINGLES. I don’t always buy them, but when I do it is such a treat! AS: Yeah and the can is just so convenient! Who is your environmental science or nature idol? EF: I love Rachel Carson! She is a modern leader in interpretation and is really good at connecting people to nature.She inspires me to help people make those connections! There is a really good quote by her that I love: AS: *tears welling in eyes* Wow that’s lovely! Do you have any good knock knock jokes? EF: Oh boy I am NOT funny. AS: Oh. Alright. Well here’s an easy one! What are you most excited about for the season? EF: OOH! First I am excited for things to warm up and for everything at the refuge to come back to life! I am also excited to continue to learn about the school and summer camp programs and make changes to them that will help students get even more out of their visits to CBFS. I want to help the current education staff get to be the best educators and role models they can! My last job really focused on local resource management so I want to see how we are working with the local community to get people involved in caring for our local environment. I also CANNOT wait for summer camp!! I hope we can give our campers a community where they can feel comfortable to build a greater love and understanding of environmental science! I also look forward to making a lot of tie-dye camp shirts! We are so excited to have Emily aboard!
There's BIG news for two of Chincoteague Bay Field Station's Member Universities who have been recognized as best value colleges for Bachelor's in Oceanography degrees. This year College Values Online identified Kutztown University and Millersville University as #1 and #2 respectively in the best bang-for-the-buck. The study considered tuition, financial aid, and other program information. Both write ups for KU and MU cited the field-intensive experiences at Chincoteague Bay Field Station that leave students "well-prepared for entry-level careers in oceanography and marine science as well as for graduate study."
Chincoteague Bay Field Station has a new partner that is making an impact right here on the Eastern Shore in a BIG way. Yesterday Sam Sellard and Ken Schultz visited CBFS on behalf of the Eastern Shore of Virginia's Anglers Club to present a check of $3,000 to support our Kids to Camp Scholarships in the summer of 2017. This scholarship fund helps to offset the costs of summer camp for families who otherwise wouldn't be able to send their children for such an experience.
Summer camps at CBFS are more than your traditional camp experience - our students are immersed in formative field experiences where they get their feet wet, hands muddy, and minds engaged in marine science. They're educational, inspirational, and empowering experiences that often times encourage students to pursue higher education and careers in the sciences. Going forward, the Anglers Club will use proceeds from its annual Onancock Bay Challenge fishing tournament, held in September, to fund these scholarships, and CBFS will administer the program and select recipients from Accomack and Northampton Counties. Check out these links for more information about summer camps and our Kids to Camp Scholarship. Learn more about the great work that the Anglers Club does by visiting their website and following them on Facebook. From mosquitos to midges, many biting insects love to feast on the blood of vertebrates from all over the world. The Eastern Shore is no exception. The area’s marshes and sandy shores provide the perfect habitat where the bugs can lay their eggs, resulting in the large increase in numbers residents see every summer. But the question remains: why do the little pests take our blood in the first place? The answer? Anautogeny. It’s a big word for a relatively simple concept, but like many biological words, it makes more sense when you break it up into parts:
A = “no” or “not” Auto = “self” Geny = “generation” When you put it together, it becomes “not able to self-generate.” But this is still sort of vague. Generate what? And if they can’t do it by themselves, what do they need? In mosquitoes, the greenhead fly, and no-see-ums, only the females are equipped to draw blood. The males get all of their nourishment from other sources, usually flower nectar or other juices. The females can support themselves that way, but not their eggs. They don’t produce enough of certain nutrients – generally protein – to have enough energy to develop eggs on their own. The female mosquitos, greenheads, etc. take blood from vertebrates so their bodies can form eggs. This extra caloric intake goes straight to the yolks, which the insect’s embryos then use as a food source as they develop. This process of requiring a particular meal (such as blood) in order to lay eggs is called anautogeny. Next time you are mauled by mosquitoes, gobbed by a greenhead, or gnawed by a no-see-um, know that your blood is going on to nourish the next generation of anautogenic monstrosities. If you've been to the Field Station before or even perused through our website you probably know that we're a science-education driven organization. Our programs primarily focus on the marine and coastal sciences and we interpret information for groups of all ages and interests. Sometimes that means observing bird behaviors from behind a camera during the Delmarva Nature & Wildlife Photography Summit taught by esteemed faculty like Jim Clark and Nikhil Bahl, or it might mean seining in the intertidal zone at Tom's Cove with Educator's Derrick and Sam with twenty Sea Squirt summer campers. Many of our college courses are research driven, with faculty like Aaron Haines who leads his Conservation Biology class of undergraduate students in conducting Rapid Biological Assessments for U.S. Fish & Wildlife at Wallops Island National Wildlife Refuge each summer. These hands-on and practical experiences are second-to-none when it comes to inspiring the next generation of stewards of the environment but we also gain a wealth of data from each of these programs that is recorded, shared, and examined for long-term patterns.
Science has been a hot topic in the news and on social media this week – something of course that makes us biology nerds pretty excited. PBS has released a timely piece on Rachel Carson's essential contributions to science and public health, articles like A Pioneering Woman of Science Re-Emerges After 300 Years is popping up on Facebook newsfeeds, and hashtags like #climatefacts are trending on Twitter. Science is the driver for innovation and we realize that our viewers are hungry for more of this content. In 2017 you're going to see our online presence shift to incorporate more of the essential science going on here at the Field Station and in the world in general. Whether you're a homeschool parent, an undeclared college student, or a life-long learner, we're committed to communicating some of the most interesting science through our channels. This is our resolution for 2017. Stay tuned. With this, we hope that you might consider making a resolution too: commit to giving yourself and the people in your life more experiences in the outdoors, get hands-on with science, dive deep into research, push the field forward. Doing this is easy and requires as little or much time as you can give. Support your local environmental education center through volunteering, join a Creekwatchers program, send your kids to science-focused summer camps, or encourage your local school board to prioritize field-based experiences. Now more than ever the world needs people who are invested in science and the environment. After all, plankton make the world go 'round. In collaboration with North American Association for Environmental Education (NAAEE), program champions excellence and innovation in youth programming that uses the environment as pathway to STEM learning NORTHBROOK, IL and WASHINGTON, D.C. [August 17, 2016] – Chincoteague Bay Field Station’s SPARK program (Shore People Advancing Readiness for Knowledge) in Wallops Island, Virginia (www.cbfieldstation.org/SPARK), which fosters environmental science interactions outside the classroom between parents and children through an intergenerational and scaffolding approach (progressively incremental) to E-STEM learning, has been named one of the five winners in the second annual UL (Underwriters Laboratories, Inc.) Innovative Education Award program. The organization will receive a grant of $25,000. By using science-based solutions to tackle environmental issues that affect the eastern shore region of Accomack County in Virginia, SPARK serves a diverse community in which participants range in age from five to 65 and often involve multiple generations of families learning simultaneously. A large majority of the population served by SPARK identifies either as Black, Hispanic, or Latino. Developed in collaboration with the North American Association for Environmental Education (NAAEE), the UL Innovative Education Award (ulinnovationeducation.naaee.net) was open to nonprofit organizations in the U.S. and Canada that serve to motivate K-12 students about science and research through E-STEM programming and education about the environment. The intent is to support innovative organizations that are inspiring future researchers, scientists, and problem solvers. Four other grants were awarded, including a top prize of $100,000. An additional $25,000 grant was awarded along with two others of $50,000 each. All five winning teams from the UL Innovative Education Award (ULIEA) program will meet in North Carolina’s Research Triangle Park, Aug. 17-19 on the UL campus for the second ULIEA kickoff meeting and leadership summit.
“We were impressed by how SPARK encourages youth to present the source of the problem and implications of the problem to various audiences and how they enabled youth to advocate for feasible solutions,” Cara Gizzi, Director of Public Safety Education and Outreach says. “The judges noted that this year’s winning programs demonstrated the lasting returns on investing in sustained contact with the learners over months as well as years. SPARK and the other winners are the ideal ‘deep learning’ programs that offer effective, meaningful, and measurable engagement in STEM learning that can be readily tracked over time.” The UL Innovative Education Award proposals demonstrate the values of service learning and a bottom-up approach that includes as many diverse voices, among the core features of the goals for the NAAEE’s ongoing National Project for Excellence in Environmental Education, according to Christiane Maertens, NAAEE’s Deputy Director. “Building on the strengths of service learning, these projects show the impact of the ways people are experimenting with experiential learning,” Maertens says. “Youth are participating in projects that offer tangible benefits to their communities and that learning is directly associated with creating that benefit. These projects also represent many voices including urban, religious, indigenous, people of color, elderly, and women-led populations. For youth, this means achieving a more complex understanding of environmental issues, critical thinking, process and problem solving and seeing how STEM can meet the needs of the community.” Meet Doris and Paul, owners and farmers at Turtle Pace Farm in Melfa. Turtle Pace will be providing potatoes for the Serving up the Shore dinner on August 19.
Doris and Paul grow potatoes using organic practices and a lot of craftsmanship. They take great pride in maintaining their vintage farm equipment. “We enjoy using these old tractors because they’re well suited to our operation,” said Paul. “They were designed at a time when there were a great number of small family farms, so they work very well for us.” For more information about Turtle Pace Farm, you can watch the video above or visit the Turtle Pace Facebook page. Be sure to visit our Serving up the Shore webpage, and stay updated with the Facebook event page
Thanks for an awesome summer! Can't wait to see The Field Station grow even more than it already has!
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