Here are a few photos from the past couple days of Summer Term as the students learned more about food and had a lesson about ooids at the sandbar. Enjoy!
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Cacique Update July 13, 2012
Hello parental units of the wonderful children here at the Island School summer term. My name is Weston Albury and I am writing to tell you all about being cacique yesterday. I was picked by Lizzy Redd on our three day down island trip from Cape Eleuthera to Harbor Island (Briland) and Spanish wells. We drove all the way to Briland on our first day while stopping at the Glass Window Bridge. We were there during Bahamian Independence and got to walk around through all the food vendors and celebration. After that we drove to Preachers Cave and set up our camp site. We explored the caves and Continue reading
Eleutheran Explorers Become CEI Researchers!
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It’s been a busy week down here on the Cape, with our Eleutheran Explorer campers diving head first into many of the research programs currently running at CEI. Monday found them dissecting lionfish in the wet lab and feeding cobia out at the cage, while Tuesday took them to the intertidal creeks of Half Sound. There, campers explored the natural ecosystems of mangrove beds, seine netted for juvenile fish, and – most excitedly – raced our very own Bonita through the water in search of turtles! It was a successful day out in the field and was rewarded with a sleep-in on Wednesday morning.
Speaking of morning (exercise), Tuesday also found kids running and swimming, running and swimming, running and swimming through the trails and waters of the Cape Continue reading
Summer Term “This I Believe…”
As part of the Tourism and Development final assessment, students were asked to create a visual representation of their reflection on the past week. Students in this theme group traveled the entire length of the island, stopping in various settlements along the way to interview locals while exploring new places. Check out the stellar video made by Claire Miles, based on the NPR talkshow “This I Believe…”
Summer Term Journal Highlights
Greetings! Summer Term is rolling along and our students have now shifted into a new theme group for the week (Ecology, Food, or Tourism and Development). As the culminating reflection for the first week of academics, our students were asked to produce a written or visual piece encompassing their experiences within their theme, while connecting back to the question of “How do we live well in a place?” Kaelyn Burbey was immersed in studying the ecology of her surroundings and is featured here for her insightful, thought-provoking and candid written response. Enjoy!
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“…Working under the effulgent Bahamian sun, swimming alongside a four-eyed butterfly fish, mucking through mangroves, and eating conch with a local Bahamian fisherman leaves residual emotions connected with a place that can never be attained from the pages in a textbook. To obtain an ecological understanding of South Eleuthera, I had to slow down and sense the cadence of the land and ocean. SCUBA diving forced me into a world in which Continue reading
Cacique Update July 8, 2012
While we have been down here at the Island School, the summer 2012 Olympic trials have been going on, we are all bummed that we are missing this special event. This past Saturday for a little break the mentors arranged a South Eleuthera Olympics. The three events that we all participated in were water polo, fish identification, and a relay run swim event. All five teams enjoyed the team bonding experience. The teams were named after little towns here in South Eleuthera, called settlements. They included Deep Creek, Rock Sound, Tarpum Bay, Governor’s Harbor and Gregory Town. All of us really enjoyed this break from our academic week one. We all had fun and are all winners. On Tuesday we start academic week two.
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From your local Caciques Tristan and Bethlehem
A Day on the Farm
Hello from Eleuthera! Our summer students have been hard at work this week, immersed in classes focusing on either Food, Ecology, or Tourism and Development. As part of the unit on food, we spent an entire day on the farm with Edrin, a local farmer in Rock Sound. Students talked with Edrin about the challenges he faces as a farmer in The Bahamas, including the summer heat and the scarcity of nutrient rich soil. We then learned about how he addresses many of these issues, and even received a private lesson on the process of grafting and budding as a means of increasing the variety of citrus fruits he is able to grow on his land. Tristan, Weston, Aiko, Molly, Megan, Isaac, Ben, Madison, Bethlehem and Lizzie were enthralled as Edrin talked and were incredibly helpful and enthusiastic when asked to pitch in and transplant some grass to small pots for his fields. Overall, it was a fun, informative and productive day that provided a unique glimpse into what food production is like in some parts of The Bahamas. For a more personal account of the day’s events, check out Bethlehem’s journal entry following this post. More updates will be coming soon to fill you in on the Ecology and Tourism and Development progress this week. Happy eating!
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“Today the first Foodies team, visited Edrin’s farm in Rock Sound. After Alicia’s introduction of Edrin, I was really excited to see the person behind the vast “One man farm”. When we got there Edrin was in his work cloth waiting for our arrival. He first took us to see his greenhouse garden where we got to see how he develops his plants. I had later on asked Edrin where he got the soil that he uses in his garden, and he explained that he got it from Continue reading
More Summer Term Journal Reflections
Hello blog-readers! Check out a couple more stellar blogs from our Summer Term students. These responses are again referencing the recent two-day kayak trips and SCUBA certification courses the students have been completing during their orientation this past week. Today also marks the beginning of our summer academic rotations, in which students will spend a week in each of the three themes of the summer: Food, Ecology, and Tourism/Development. Keep an eye out for more journal entries as students delve into these themes while contemplating the central question of “How do we live well in a place?”
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Aiko Chamby
Starting yesterday, as part of our orientation week, we began SCUBA diving in the Eleuthera Saddle, and today in the Tunnel Rock. At Tunnel Rock, we saw all kinds of neat critters including a school of horse-eyed jacks and a peacock flounder. It was almost overwhelming and unexpected Continue reading
Cobia Moved to the Aquaculture Cage!
The aquaculture program here is running essentially a model system for the commercial aquaculture industry; we aim to display that (delicious) carnivorous fish, cobia in our case, can be farmed in the Bahamas in an ecologically and economically sustainable fashion. Just last week we moved all of the juvenile cobia (around 1,000 fish) from the wet lab into the cage, which was quite an impressive feat. I don’t know why little fish would fight going into a huge shark resistant cage in the ocean to be fed every day, but fight they did. Though, with the help of pretty much the entire staff here at CEI the process went very smoothly. While one team transferred the cobia to two 1,400 L (~400 gal) totes to be anesthetized with clove oil, another team prepared another two totes onboard the aptly named research vessel, the Cobia, and waited at the marina down the road. The initial two totes were driven over, and the fish were transferred with nets to the totes on the Cobia. Some of the fish didn’t feel like consuming the clove oil and being calm apparently, so this part was very slippery and prickly (cobia have spines) for us humans. All the fish were moved safely though, and we drove the boat out to the cage.
In order to put the fish in the submerged SeaStation cage, we crafted a “toilet” of sorts: a bucket with Continue reading
Summer Term Journals
There’s a new assignment in town this Summer Term, and it’s called a journal entry! Students are being asked to regularly reflect on activities and experiences they have had throughout the day or week. These assignments allow our students to connect information across multiple disciplines, from where our food comes from on an island, to the effects of tourism and development on the surrounding ecosystems and communities. To give you a taste of what these reflections consist of we have included excerpts from two recent journals from Claire Miles and Tommy Robertshaw. Claire just returned from a South Eleuthera Road Trip, where she and 12 other students toured the Rock Sound caves and ocean hole, watched the creation of conch salad from shell to plate, and talked with local Bahamians in Deep Creek settlement. Tommy’s reflection delves into the interconnectedness of local ecosystems and tourism and development after spending the night at Palm Island beach on his two-day kayak trip. Both of these journal entries are excellent examples of the depth of reflection we hope to see in these assignments. Enjoy!
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Claire Miles
“…Along with the general negative economic trend in the world, Eleuthera is facing a problem with a declining tourism industry, an industry that much of the Bahamas depends on. This makes me wonder, what are people Continue reading