Through a classroom connection with commercial fishermen set up by the Adopt-a-Boat program, K-12 students across New England have been learning about lobster traps and lobsters,
lobster and ground fishing techniques, numerous marine animals, mudflat critters and oxygen levels, ocean temperature fluctuations, the impact of groundfishing rules and regulations and a multitude of other topics related to marine resource utilization, marine ecology and the life of a fisherman.
Also, a few wide-eyed students from Canaan Elementary School in Vermont were treated to a little inside information about fish house traditions during a visit at Mattie Thomson’s fish house on Monhegan Island to watch him paint buoys. As one wrote in a post-field trip essay, the paint smell in the fish house wasn’t bothersome, but “the calendar was pretty bad.”
“So remember to take down the calendars,” his teacher, Jeannine Brady, suggested when Cliff Goudey, MIT Sea Grant’s Outreach Coordinator and Brandy Moran, K-12 Education Coordinator, asked during a September meeting of participating Maine teachers and fishermen for suggestions on how to improve the Adopt-a-Boat program.
Now in its third year, Adopt-a-Boat has expanded from an initial 11 teachers and eight fishermen in 2001 (WWF Nov. 01) to about 75 teachers and 39 fishermen in all of the New England States. It is funded by a grant from the Northeast Consortium and given additional support by MIT Sea Grant College Program, The Island Institute, Maine Fishermen’s Forum, Commercial Fisheries News, and Bacon Printing Co.
Because fishermen have asked to be reimbursed for less money than anticipated, the original two-year grant, intended by Northeast Consortium to get the program afloat, is being stretched into this third year. Now, Goudey and Alexander are searching for new ways to obtain funds to sustain the program in the future, and are looking for a place in Maine to serve as a central resource center for teachers and fishermen to meet and exchange ideas. They also are looking at possibilities to expand beyond New England.
These partnerships between fishermen and classrooms have spawned fierce loyalties among students for “their” fisherman and his boat. Canaan third-grade students, who had built a life-sized cardboard replica of Thomson’s lobster boat, STRIKER, and had gone out on it with him to pull traps, were upset to hear that he sold the boat and bought a new one set up for gillnetting. “How could he do that to us?” they wailed to their teacher, Jeannine Brady.
Adopt-a-Boat encourages teachers and their fishermen partners to do as little or as much as they desire in their collaboration. Some limit their time to a few classroom visits; others have maintained close contact and generated numerous activities. Teachers are able to learn about each others’ projects from the extensive Adopt-a-Boat website maintained by Moran. Still, they said at the September meeting, they appreciate having the freedom to dream up their own activities, an opportunity which has inspired innovative ways to have students benefit from the collaboration.
Mary Graham, fourth grade teacher at Zippel Elementary School in Presque Isle,
e-mailed partner Bruce Morton, a lobsterman from South Bristol, every day with questions from students: “Does the weather stop you from fishing?” “Have you ever fallen overboard when pulling a trap?”
Graham centered the partnership on questions that related to her classroom study of how the ocean is important to the economy in Maine. She incorporated math, music, language arts, art and social studies in the various classroom projects, which included publication of two books, with artwork contributed by the students and the school custodian. Her extensive program, which she called “Ocean Adventure,” won a Time Warner Cable 2002-3 National Teacher Award. The year culminated with a trip to South Bristol to go out on Morton’s boat and later, a seafood tasting at Graham’s home of seafood provided and cooked by Morton. The trip was funded by Adopt-a-Boat, a Wal-Mart Foundation grant and school PTO fundraising.
Graham named her curriculum after Phil Averill’s business, Ocean Adventure, which brings programs about the Maine Coast, the Gulf of Maine and Maine fishermen to classrooms, complete with a touch tank of sea creatures. He had visited Graham’s classroom before they came to Maine, as he has many other Adopt-a-Boat classrooms.
Brady’s Canaan students take part in a two-day Ocean Fair at their school, an event that attracts visitors from other schools and has spawned elaborate reports and projects. These have included a papier-mfch’ octopus, a life-sized cardboard Mattie Thomson waving to the kids, and last year, an 18-foot lobster. (Making it created “the worst mess you ever saw in your life,” Brady admits).
While on Monhegan visiting with Thomson, the students were thrilled to have the opportunity to run the MIT Sea Grant’s ROV (an underwater remotely operated vehicle with cameras) from Thomson’s boat and view what was underwater on the bottom at various locations. Brady hopes this year to incorporate some kind of student exchange program into her partnership with Thomson, perhaps to have the four Monhegan students visit Canaan to learn about its economy, which is based on lumbering, logging, furniture making and dairy farming. She also wants to make a video with students about Thomson’s gillnetting venture.
Proctor Wells, a fisherman from Phippsburg who is paired with Lee Ann Kinens’ third grade class in Houlton, fashioned a miniature fishing net to use in explaining groundfishing techniques to the class. He even cut a hole in the net so he could demonstrate how to repair it. The students visited with Wells in Sebasco last June, and learned lobstering skills like how to fill bait bags and pull traps, ran the ROV and got to see Well’s son, Burt, demonstrate floating in a survival suit in the 43-degree water.
Fisherman Tim Alley of South Bristol brought in lobster boat models for Doris Russell’s first and second grade students to assemble and paint, which produced some strange but wonderful color schemes, he said. Russell made up a concentration card game to help students learn the parts of a lobster boat, and Alley also took in rope and taught students how to tie knots. At the beginning of the season, Alley specified one particular trap as belonging to the students – they carved their initials on the brick – and he kept a record all summer of what was caught in their trap so he could report back this fall.
Further evidence of imaginative planning abounds on the Adopt-a-Boat website, which gives details and photos about activities and projects and shows why students were enthusiastic about the program. Seventh grade students in Mark Lienau’s class in Island Pond, Vermont, traveled to Southport, Maine, to do science experiments on the clam flats, explore tidal pools and go out with lobsterman Jennifer Elderkin-Wickline. They camped overnight on the island. Another fisherman uses his cell phone to create a “weather minute” with a class in Portsmouth, NH, so students can compare the weather they are experiencing with what he has at sea; other students have compared the boat price of lobsters with the grocery store price over a period of time.
Capt. Craig Pendleton from Portland taught Sweetser School students in Scarborough how to build scallop spat bags for a NAMA scallop project, and a fisherman from Massachusetts built a wooden lobster trap with a class from Cohasset, MA. Others have helped students track the weekly costs of fuel, bait and the prices offered for lobster. Students have measured ocean salinity, temperature and wind velocity; learned about by-catch and dissected various sea creatures; created fish prints and written detailed reports on sea creatures; created videos and PowerPoint presentations which include “The Top 10 Fish Caught in Maine,” and “A History of Fishing.”
Participants in the program who attended the meeting felt that their partnerships were providing a way to fill a huge gap in students’ knowledge of marine life and the realities of fishing. They agreed with Tim Alley when he noted that even coastal kids have lost their connection to the sea. “When I was a kid and attended South Bristol school, 75 percent of the kids’ fathers or grandfathers fished,” he said. “Now, two or three out of 16 have any exposure to fishing, and this is a coastal community school. That’s why I got involved. They need to know what’s going on down over the hill.”
For further information, visit www.adoptaboat.org.