Yearly Archives: 2012

Events

Women Working for Oceans Event

Women Working for Oceans (W2O) is an organization started by a group of women near the Boston area, including Island School alumni parents Linda Cabot (parent of SP’11) and Kirsten Dawson (parent of F’04, F’06, and F’08), who are concerned about the health of the planet’s oceans and want to do something about it. The mission of W2O is to inform individuals about the challenges facing oceans and inspire action to ensure a healthy, sustainable blue planet for tomorrow. W20 works in partnership with the New England Aquarium, a global leader in marine education and conservation.

Join them for their upcoming event at the New England Aquarium on October 23!

For more information about W20, please visit their website: www.womenworkingforoceans.org, or visit them on Facebook. Please come join them, get involved, and help build a wave of action for change to help protect our oceans!

Student Update

Student Update October 1, 2012

This past Saturday was one of my favorite memories since I’ve been here. After a pretty strenuous hour and a half long run for me, our first long morning exercise with our tracks, we had our final Settlement Day. Usually we head to our assigned houses/areas in the afternoon, but because this was our last one, we got to leave at 9:15 and stay the whole day! While some students grew weary of  7 hours exploring settlements, Lexi, Cate, Brian, Tom and I spent the day a woman named Toya Carey, one of the most, if not the most hospitable, kind, and generous person I have ever met. Our day included meaningful conversations about her family and her community, baking lemon pound cake and strawberry cheesecake from her mother’s top secret recipe, and ordering grouper fingers and fried conch from her favorite local restaurant. Despite the difference of age and background, we all got along so well and had such a wonderful time. When John came to pick us up at 4 for the cook out, there was an unspoken but obvious sadness about saying goodbye – so we didn’t. We decided that there was no way we could take the pound cake to the cook out, and the cheesecake wasn’t completely ready, so we planned to swing by to say bye and pick up the cakes afterwards.

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Cape Eleuthera Institute, research

Conche Diem!

Our research group is determining the population density of Queen Conch (pronounced “conk”) in South Eleuthera. Specifically, we are seeing if there is enough conch in the area for reproduction, since they are density-dependant. Conch is very economically, ecologically and culturally important in the Bahamas. Conch populations are declining because of overfishing and high demands for the meat in the United States. We are excited to take part in the research and we hope to help in the creation of a Marine Protected Area. Today we went out into the field and completed multiple 1,000 meter transects by towing two snorkelers at a time behind a boat while counting adult, subadult and juvenile conch. Alongside the conch we saw cushion sea stars, lobster, moon jellyfish and a large assortment of colorful fish! Honk if you love conch!
- Connor, Brian, Christina, Eunna, Nora & Maren
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Cape Eleuthera Institute, CEI

Culturing Penshells at the Cape Eleuthera Institute

Two weeks ago the Cape Eleuthera Institute (CEI) harvested over one hundred black penshells from a beautiful beach at Ten Bay, located near Palmetto Point. Penshells are a kind of scallop, and we aim to culture them here at CEI for a of couple reasons. As filter feeders, penshells thrive in water with higher nutrients, using the nutrients to grow and as a result clean the surrounding water. Currently, we have our collected penshells in two separate groups: one group in the wet lab in a flow through tank, and another group in a small cage about 100m off the beach where our main pump intake is. In the lab, we feed the penshells concentrated microalgae, whereas the group out in the ocean does not get fed. We are monitoring both groups daily, by recording temperature, dissolved oxygen and salinity.

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Once both groups are acclimated and showing good growth rates, we are going to attempt to breed them and raise penshells into maturity. We plan on putting the resulting stock in the mangrove Continue reading →

Student Update

Student Update September 28, 2012

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Good morning family and friends of the Island School! Due to a special and unique experience that occurred Wednesday morning, chores haven’t been done since Tuesday. Thus, no blog. I left off Tuesday, a day full of classes, meals, and the first research day of the week. Although Tuesdays may be one of the most “average” days of the week here at The Island School, they always seem to be full of excitement because that’s when we’re introduced to the exciting things that we’ll be doing in the latter part of the week. For example, in Human Ecology, we got an introduction to Thursday’s class; cooking a meal made from local foods from a local farmer, that we would prepare and serve for the whole island school community. Tuesdays are also Community Meeting days, where we talk about subject regarding the community. This week we explored and discussed our different leadership styles.

On Wednesday morning, the students and staff got an opportunity that few, especially for most of us, will ever get to experience. Continue reading →

Cape Eleuthera Institute

Dr. Sylvia Earle at BLUE Ocean Film Festival

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CEI Research Assistants, Brendan Talwar and Ian Rossiter created a stop motion film during their time as interns last spring. The video was so impressive and got such great review from everyone on Cape Eleuthera that they decided to enter it in the 2012 BLUE Ocean Film Festival and made it to the finals of the animated category! Last night they had the honor of showing a sneak peek of their video to world-renowned oceanography and friend of The Island School, Dr. Sylvia Earle.

Good luck the rest of the weekend, Brendan and Ian–we’re rooting for you!

Events

Successful Admissions Reception in Needham!

We had close to 60 guests attend the Admissions Reception at the Piersiak’s Home in Needham, Massachusetts last night, including many interested families, prospective students, and of course plenty of alums! Thank you to all who attended–and a very big thank you to the Piersiaks for opening up their beautiful home and hosting such a successful event.

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The next Admissions Reception events are in Texas! We hope to see you there! Continue reading →

Uncategorized

1,000th Blog Post!

Hello friends, family, alumni, scientists and everyone else who has been clicking, reading, commenting and following on this blog. This is our 1,000th blog post! Without you all out there, we’d never have made it this far! THANKS & KEEP ON READING!

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