Education

MIT Sea Grant's water quality monitoring program is a teacher training and environmental monitoring effort that aims to familiarize teachers with the tools and techniques of monitoring water quality. The program also includes satellite lending library sites on Massachusetts' north and south shores--at these sites, trained teachers can borrow water quality test equipment.

The Sea Perch is a remotely operated underwater vehicle, or ROV, made from PVC pipe and other inexpensive, easily available materials. MIT Sea Grant has been training educators from across the United States and around the world in Sea Perch construction and use since 2003. Use of Sea Perch provides hands-on learning experiences in marine sciences and encourages students to pursue further study and careers in robotics, engineering, and marine sciences. MIT Sea Grant has also developed a Sea Perch Sensor Suite project manual for high school students. Once constructed, thesensor records temperature, light, and depth data. Students and teachers are encouraged to contact MIT Sea Grant to share their data with a global community through our environmental measurements database.

The Sea Perch Institute is a multi-year Sea Perch-based program open to Massachusetts schools on a competitive basis. The Sea Perch Institute encourages and supports advanced and multidisciplinary curriculum. Teachers and students are given technical support and are asked to come up with a solution to a complex, real world problem from the field of ocean engineering. At the end of the school year, participants come to the MIT Campus and test out their solutions.

MIT Sea Grant's annual summer Ocean Science Internship is designed to help high school students gain an understanding of marine science and marine ecology and build the skills that will help them pursue successful careers in ocean sciences. During the course of the internship, students interact with scientists, conducting ecological assessments and collect information about the water quality of the local ecosystem in the Boston Harbor Islands National Park.

The Blue Lobster Bowl, Massachusetts' regional marine science quiz bowl, is held every spring as part of the National Ocean Sciences Bowl (NOSB). During the full-day competition, teams of high school students are quizzed on their knowledge of ocean science subjects including chemistry, biology, engineering, history, ecology, climate change, and weather. The Blue Lobster Bowl includes over 120 students from as many as 24 Massachusetts high schools. The competition was founded by Woods Hole Sea Grant, and is currently in its 15^th year. Blue Lobster Bowl participants are given preferential consideration when applying for MIT Sea Grant's six-week ocean science internship.

The Ocean Engineering Experience (OEX) is a one-week, hands-on, residential ocean engineering program at MIT for high school students entering their junior or senior year. OEX participants tackle a new ocean engineering challenge each year. The students analyze the problem and then work in teams to design, build, and test a marine vehicle and structure that can solve the problem. The experience culminates in a public demonstration and presentation by the students.

MIT Sea grant linked local fishermen and Massachusetts classrooms through Adopt-a-Boat. The program allows fishermen to educate students about their profession, marine ecology, and the complexities of marine resource utilization. Adopt-a-Boat presented a balanced picture of commercial fishing, and emphasized the importance of coastal communities. Teachers and fishermen from Maine, New Hampshire, Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Massachusetts participated in the program.

From 2004 to 2009, MIT Sea Grant Educators worked with students from Massachusetts public schools to restore, conserve, and manage the eelgrass population in our fragile coastal ecosystem. For more information on this program, see the MIT Eelgrass Restoration project website For educators interested in pursuing the eelgrass curriculum developed, a 215-page manual can be downloaded from this site.

From 2003 to 2010, the Aquaculture Demonstration Project consisted of two independent culture systems, six 100-gallon hatching/larval-rearing tanks and two 500-gallon grow-out tanks, and a live feed culture room. The project was housed at the Gloucester Maritime Heritage Center.