Seal tracks and eagle chases

     Sometimes it takes seeing a place through someone else's eyes to reconnect you with it. Just recently, some good friends came to the Eastern Shore for a visit, during which we poked into many off-the-beaten-track places as well as more familiar locations such as Chincoteague National Wildlife Refuge. Our goals were simple, see as much interesting nature, particularly birds, as we could and get a sense of what makes the Shore so special.

     Our travels took us to Chesapeake Bay-side hide-aways such as Saxis Island and Guard Shore where we saw black needle rush marshes stretching as far as the eye could see. These marshes are punctuated by small tumps (tiny islands of high ground) crowned with loblolly pines, giving these wetlands the look of an African savannah. The small fishing village of Saxis was quiet during a windy downpour, but the surf scoters and buffleheads (both diving ducks) seemed to revel in the stormy bay as they road the white caps next to traditional Chesapeake deadrise fishing boats moored in the harbor.

     We traveled from bay-side to sea-side where we walked the beach on Wallops Island. There we saw an amazing diversity of shells and evidence of other life, such as the well-defined tracks a seal made when it hauled-out on the beach.  NASA's Wallops Island continues to fascinate me with it's juxtaposition of high tech rocket launch facilities and naval defense with pristine marshes, maritime forest and beach.  Certainly, MSC is lucky in it's close partnership with NASA and ability to access the natural areas for educational purposes.

      Long, glorious hours on Chincoteague National Wildlife Refuge gave us looks at a variety of waterfowl, shorebirds, raptors, and songbirds. The calls of tundra swans, ducks, and geese intertwined with the chip of yellow-rumped warblers and cry of gulls, making an unusual musical backdrop to our travels. We were energized by the sight of one of the refuge's resident bald eagles streaking after an American wigeon which only barely outflew the eagle.

      After a long, cold, gray winter it is easy to forget how lucky you are to live where you do, but these two days spent exploring my backyard with a couple of kindred spirits certainly snapped me out of it. I am reminded again of the wonder a stormy sky can produce, not to mention the shear joy we feel at seeing wildlife abounding.  As any long-time educator might feel, I want everyone to have this same experience of seeing, wondering at, and connecting with our special corner of the world. That is why I am doubly thankful that tomorrow is the beginning of spring training for MSC's education staff. Tomorrow a group of bright, enthusiastic educators will gather for the first day of intense training in preparation for helping thousands people learn to appreciate our marine and coastal ecosystems.  Over the rest of this year they will, time and time again do what this weekend did for me. To quote Sam Ham, author of Environmental Interpretation, they will "make the ordinary, extraordinary."

MSC Staff Attend Project Learning Tree Workshop

Last Monday, Marine Science Consortium education staff members attended the Early Childhood Project Learning Tree workshop at the Croydon Creek Nature Center in Rockville, MD. We found ourselves tracing group-members' bodies to create imaginative trees, dancing around a room with tree branches, exploring a nature trail using shapes and colors as our guides, singing songs and reading stories about trees. Armed with the award-winning PLT pre-K curriculum guide, we left the workshop better able to conceive of programs for the wee-ones not targeted typically by MSC programs. Of equal importance, the workshop gave us the opportunity to think and laugh together and to bond over a new shared experience.

Sand and Shells: A Winter Coastal Ecology Workshop for Teachers

"This was one of the best workshops I have ever attended. Thank you for all your hard work and planning!"

-2010 Teacher Workshop Participant

Last weekend, 6 teachers attended a winter coastal ecology workshop here at the MSC. After a morning of instruction, teachers donned their layers and headed to Wallops Island to make shell collections for their classroom. Wallops sparkled in the December sun. The bounty of shells on the beach was almost overwhelming: knobbed and channeled whelks piled above the wrack line, ponderous arks, channeled ducks, oysters, Atlantic surf clams, and Atlantic moon snails scattered around in quantities the teachers had never seen before. We found two moon jellies, and although their bodies were mostly desiccated, they had left beautiful radiating impressions of their internal structure in the sand. Sanderlings skittered about, dodging waves in unison and probing the sand for small invertebrate delicacies.

After loading their shell-collecting boxes (and arms!) with shells, teachers returned to the Consortium for lunch and an afternoon exploring the biology and natural history of the invertebrates that used to inhabit the shells they had collected. We finished the afternoon off with a round-table and brainstorming session about how the Marine Science Consortium can better serve teachers.

We've already started brainstorming on how to implement teachers' suggestions! Coastal Ecology Treasure boxes we can lend to schools, high school internships, teacher internships, and week-long summer workshops.

Thanks to the teachers who attended, and thanks to all the MSC staff who helped out!

Chilly Trawls and Windswept Beaches

Wrapping up fall and moving to winter at MSC

The fall program season is wrapping up at the Marine Science Consortium, but exciting programs and projects remain active across campus.

Most of our seasonal marine science educators have departed for the year. They were a wonderfully fun, hard-working and intelligent staff, and we miss them already. As a final project they worked tirelessly between teaching groups to perfect our lobby display tank, which is now up and running.

University field trips concluded last weekend with a student led field excursion for the Kutztown Marine Science Club, which included a morning of trawls in Cockle Creek and an afternoon beach clean-up on Wallops Island. The weekend was rounded out by dawn to dusk fieldwork for a group of Garrett College dendrology students.

The new college residence hall construction is well under way, scheduled for completion mid-winter. The building will be ready to offer *heat* for our early spring classes and *AC* for late spring and summer students!!

Our last busy week of programs kicks-off this weekend, with a Digital Nature and Photography Workshop, followed by a 2-day Coastal Ecology Program for homeschoolers, and project work for student volunteers from Fryeburg Academy.

We look forward to our first winter in new buildings, where things will still slow down as they did in the past, but neither our ability to host programs nor our fingers typing at our computers will freeze entirely!

New programs at MSC

MSC will be hosting a free day-long coastal ecology workshop and focus group for teachers on Saturday, Dec. 4th from 8:00AM-4:30PM. Spend the morning learning about barrier islands ecology first-hand as you explore Wallops Island. Create nature journals, learn how to identify common shells and invertebrates of the area and, in the process, make your own classroom shell collection. During the afternoon, create hands-on sand and shells activities that you can bring back to your classrooms. The day will end with a short round-table discussion about how MSC can better serve schools. Morning refreshments and lunch will be provided. Registration is first-come, first-serve and is limited to 25. To register, please call Anne Schlesinger at (757) 824-5636 or e-mail her at progmanager@msconsortium.org.

We are also excited to begin offering a Shore to You outreach program for elementary, middle and high-school teachers and students beginning Dec. 1^st, 2010. MSC educators will travel to schools across the Delmarva Peninsula to explore coastal ecology with students using hands-on activities and interactive lessons. Teachers can choose from eight focus areas within Coastal Ecology: Waves and Tides, Plants and Sand Dunes, Sand and Shells, Maritime Forest, Watersheds, Fish, Invertebrates, and Human Impacts.

Autumn on Assateague

Migration has started! What an exciting time to be living near Chincoteague National Wildlife Refuge. We've been seeing green and blue-winged teals on the Wildlife Loop for around a month now, and last week, we started seeing snow geese!

Back to the fall…

After our successful our open house, it was right back to business at the MSC. The first school group of the fall arrived on Sunday for a fun-filled week of coastal ecology. They were the first students to use our brand new labs and I’m sure they would agree that they were great! We had some fantastic trawls aboard our research vessels, terrific seines in the intertidal zone on Assateague, excellent finds on the dunes at the beach at Wallops Island and many unforgettable moments in the marsh mud. After such a great week, we are eagerly awaiting the arrival of the next group!