Most science educators will tell you, if you want to get kids excited about science, you have to actually do science. Last summer WHOI Sea Grant had the opportunity to participate in the annual “Preserving Our Homelands” Camp, an interactive summer scienc ecamp for Mashpee Wampanoag Tribal middle schoolers. The program aims to facilitate in the students a deep understanding of Wampanoag cultural and scientific ties to this land and instill a commitment to protect the environment.

In July, WHOI Sea Grant Education Specialist Grace Simpkins and WHOI Tribal Liaison Leslie Jonas organized two days of hands-on, marine science learning for 30 summer campers, integrating involvement from scientists, engineers and others across WHOI. The 6th, 7th, and 8th grade native students’s first day was filled with adventures in Woods Hole village, going out on the Zephyr, a boat used to educate students about the ocean and how research is conducted from a boat or ship. They used an underwater camera to see the sea floor and eelgrass beds, deployed a trap and used an acoustic release to recover it, trawled for invertebrates, and examined the catch from a plankton tow.  Woods Hole day included a scavenger hunt among the exhibits and displays at the WHOI Discovery Center and tours of the NOAA Fisheries Woods Hole Science Aquarium and the WHOI dock. They also had a look at the Alvin personnel sphere, an historic piece of equipment used for decades to carry oceanographers to the depths of the ocean.

Their second day at WHOI was spent at the AVAST – a center of innovation and engineering in WHOI’s newest building. Following a tour of the facility, the students took part in a hands-on engineering activity where each camper built a floating lantern. The toured the labs and equipment associated with the Ocean Observatories Initiative (OOI) – a global set of buoys, sensors and vehicles collecting oceanographic data 24/7. Later, at the Environmental Systems Lab, they learned about – and tasted – kelp, looked at it under the microscope, and then tested their knowledge of common products containing kelp.