Science Saturday Ӏ It’s a Shore Thing: Marine Life on the Water’s Edge
One of the most beautiful places to spend a morning on St. Thomas is UVI’s Marine and Science Center, where fun and educational adventures intersect. During a recent Science Saturday, DPNR’s Division of Territorial Parks and Protected Areas’ Director Kitty Edwards, met with Howard Forbes Jr., Territorial Coordinator of the Virgin Islands Marine Advisory Service (VIMAS); Jarvon Stout, Informal Learning Coordinator for the VI Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (VI-EPSCoR); and Eurnett Christopher, Navigating Home Workforce Fellow and VIMAS Education and Outreach Assistant. Together, they discussed the planning and preparation involved in designing the upcoming Junior Youth Ocean Explorers (JYOE) summer program.
While in and around the ocean teaching JYOE students how to swim, Howard, Jarvon, and Eurnett will also teach them how to identify what they observe while swimming, such as sea urchins, crabs, echinoderms, and more. For example, Howard explained how students use microscopes with macro lenses to examine these creatures on land, then take guided walks to explore the area and identify those same organisms along the rocky shore.
Three recently installed sea tables at the Marine Science Center provide accessible, land-based learning opportunities for students and visitors who may not be able to reach the shoreline to observe these incredible creatures in their natural ecosystem. Brine shrimp are being cultivated to feed the animals food consistent with their natural ocean diet. Jarvon noted that some individuals may use wheelchairs, not know how to swim, or face other barriers that prevent them from exploring the beach. These tables help bring educational access to them.
The first table features a replica of a mangrove and seagrass bed and includes checkered pufferfish, snappers, mantis shrimp, turtle grass, green algae, and a popular red mangrove named Gertrude, a regular on Science Saturday. The intertidal zone tank represents what visitors typically see while walking along the shore including sea urchins, finger coral, rock-boring urchins, diadema, French grunts, Padina algae, and sargassum. The third table, the shallow reef display, contains some of the same animals found in the intertidal zone, along with damselfish, silversides, sea hares, and a variety of sponges.
Would you like to see what else Kitty, Howard, Jarvon, and Eurnett discovered while turning over rocks during their shoreline excursion? Click the link below to watch the full video of their adventure.
Science Saturday, a monthly Facebook LIVE event, airs on the second Saturday of each month at 10 a.m. Watch the full interview on the Department of Planning and Natural Resources Facebook page or the Science Saturday YouTube playlist
