How to get to sunwell
An educational Bahamian winter break trip
Heather Brown’s students played video games, frolicked in snow, hung out with their siblings on their winter break trip and got to see their teacher from a videoconference in the Bahamas.
Brown’s trip wasn’t to have fun in the sun — well, it was fun — but it was to survey the reefs of the remote San Salvador Island. Brown was one of seven teachers, including one from Hyde Park, participating as Earthwatch Institute’s Educator Fellowships.
“It was important to me because we are studying the affects of climate change and looking at the use and misuse of resources,” said the seventh-grade humanities teacher for the Young Achievers K-8 School in Jamaica Plain. Brown lives in Roslindale. “We use environmental studies in our curriculum. The kids are looking at what impacts the environment.”
Brown was in the Bahamas from Feb. 23 to the first of March, and she barely got a tan.
“Most of the time when we were on the beach we were snorkeling, so our faces were in the water, and we had wetsuits on because the water temperatures weren’t ideal for being in for a long time.”
Brown was a participant in scientist John Rollino’s study to examine coral bleaching and the extent of coral bleaching. Coral bleaching is when corals lose color due to stress caused by sedimentation, global warming and changes in water chemistry, salinity or algae. While Rollino continues examining why coral bleaching takes place, his assessment has moved into remedying a solution. The group performed water chemical analyses.
Brown said that scientists are creating artificial coral to put with the real coral to re-establish reefs.
The teacher learned that rising sea temperatures are also hurting hard coral, and bleaching is also connected to greenhouse gases in our environment.
“Hard coral is important to the biodiversity of reefs. They create a 3-D habitat for different fish and without protection from predators, they have to go other places and it disrupts everything,” said Brown.
Brown saw a plethora of beautiful tropical ocean life, including blue tang fish, angelfish, sea cucumbers and stingrays. “It was beautiful down there, so many different colors. It wasn’t what I expected. I grew up in Western Massachusetts. I’m more of a river person,” she said.
“We swam out to reefs, it took maybe 10 minutes. We saw stingrays swim by or over the reef,” said Brown. On bad weather days, the group visited sites around the island, including some original human habitats on the isle, plantation ruins and an underground cave that they swam through.
Brown also saw a lot of lionfish, which are not native to the Bahamas; they had been released by local aquariums and, having no natural predators, the lionfish have been eating a lot of native species. Naturalists are trying to remove the lionfish from the waters.
“a piles of my work was done underwater,” said brown.
Brown also communicated with her students as they checked out her daily blog at www.earthwatch2.org/lff/brown, which you can still view. She also had a videoconference with her students during which they asked questions.
“The kids are really excited. They read my blog and asked pertinent questions. They really got a kick out of the videoconferencing and wanted to do it again,” said Brown. “It’s good because they’re now concerned about environmental issues that they weren’t aware of. They are trying to come up with a project now so that they can help.”
Brown brought back a couple of conch shells that she found and lots of pictures for her and her students. She was also very happy that she got to do some hands-on work because she often speaks with her students about how important it is to get into work and not just write or read about it.
She also learned about the North American Gyre, a giant current collection two times the size of Texas that has been growing from all the trash that enters the ocean through drains and streets.
Another interesting environmental problem that Brown learned about is how deforestation affects the Bahamas. Soil being released during deforestation, particularly in Africa, is coming over in water and affecting coral. Brown said the gyre and deforestation is all tied into what she teaches.
Boston Public Schools Superintendent Carole Johnson is happy that teachers like Brown get to go on hands-on trips: R
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