Students take a hands-on approach to restoring oysters

Friday, Sept. 28, 2007

Click here to enlarge this photo Staff Photo by Darwin Weigel Our Lady Star of the Sea School sixth grader Richard Backscheider and third grader Vanessa Verbaten hold some of the oyster spat the students put into oyster floats in The Narrows at the Lore Oyster House on Solomons Island Sept. 25 as part of an experiment the students are doing in cooperation with the Calvert Marine Museum, which owns the oyster house, and Southern Maryland Oyster Cultivation Society. Another set of floats will be put at the museum’s dock on Back Creek so the students can compare the growth rates between the two environments. E-Mail This Article | Print This Story

As an ongoing project, third and-sixth graders, SMOCS and teachers will study four floats of oysters located in two locations. Students will compare oyster growth from these two locations and also test things like water quality.

Students placed two floats off the docks of the Lore Oyster House on Solomons Island and two outside of the Calvert Marine Museum at Tuesday’s project start.

The Calvert Marine Museum provided grant money for the project, which went toward the floats students used for the oysters.

‘‘This pilot educational program reflects all three of SMOCS primary goals — promoting educational, scientific and environmental activities that will clean local waters through cultivating native oysters on the Patuxent River Basin,” said SMOCS president Len Zuza in a press release.

SMOCS is working closely with sixth grade teacher Susan McEvoy on the project.

On Tuesday, more than 20 students met Zuza, other members of SMOCS and representatives of the museum to place the native oysters into the floats and into the water.

‘‘I’m excited about seeing how well [the oysters] will grow ... Around here people eat oysters a lot and it’s nice to see how they grow,” said Ryan Schiele, 11.

Zuza said students were ‘‘spot on” when answering questions about oysters and spat — a phase in the development of young oysters in which they transition from mobile larva to ‘‘fixed” organisms attached to hard surfaces where they will grow into mature oysters, according to SMOCS literature.

Zuza said that by working with students and having students do a lot of the hands on work with the oysters, the students can put together in their minds what they have learned in theory.

While placing oyster spat into the floats, one student, Christopher Price, 11, reminded third grade teacher Trish Barrett about how male oysters release sperm into the water and then turn into female oysters. It’s a fact Price said he learned from a video the class watched in school.

Price said he is really going to enjoy working with the oysters and learning about them.

Zuza said when students go back and share what they learned with family and friends, much like what Price shared with Barrett, ‘‘That’s when we know they really understand.”

E-mail Gretchen Phillips at gphillips@somdnews.com.