World Oceans Day at The New England Aquarium with the "Green Team"

This past Saturday I spent the afternoon at the New England Aquarium with the Warren Prescott School 5th grade "Green Team" participating in a World Oceans Day event. I was joined by my collaborator Alisyn Johnson, and the students science teacher, Tina Champagne. Our group had been invited by the Aquarium education staff to participate in the Oceans Day family event. We were one of about 30 groups that set up tables to inform visitors to the aquarium about projects and things they could do to help the world's oceans. Tina and Alisyn organized the Green Team students to come to the event and talk to the folks there about the CO2 offset project that they had worked on this year, giving up red meat to offset CO2 produced by air travel related to marine research and ecotourism. This project started in September of 2009 and has continued throughout the year. It is a combined effort of the Warren Prescott School, Oceanic Society (a non-profit marine conservation organization) and Quen.ch (a non-profit formed by a group of Harvard Extension School graduate students). During the course of the year over 400 students and their family members from this Boston Public School have pledged to stop eating red meat for varying lengths of time. From this project over 15,000-lbs of CO2 has potentially been offset by their efforts. The tie in to the marine environment for the students has been facilitated by connecting this offset to the Oceanic Society's marine conservation projects and through lectures provided by Harvard professors and graduate students. Assisted by Alisyn and Tina's efforts the students have connected with me in the field via SKYPE from both, Belize and Midway Atoll National Wildlife Refuge. During these audio/video calls students learned about sea turtle, seabird, and coral reef conservation efforts directly from the field location. The Midway call was especially exciting due to the background vocalizations of thousands of Laysan Albatross.
During the Aquarium event the students were able to take on the role of educators, talking to parents and other children about the environmental concepts they had become familiar with over the course of the year. Here they told all about the huge amount of CO2 generated by the factory farming of beef, what virtual water is and how red meat production consumes huge amounts of water relative to the production of other meats and vegetables. One of the many fun facts shared with the Aquarium visitors was that if a family substituted 2-lbs of chicken for 2-lbs of beef once a week for a year, over 200,000 gallons of water would be saved, enough to fill the aquarium's "Giant Ocean Tank."

It was a great day, many families participated, at our table many even made their own pledges to give up red meat for a week or more. 17 students from the Green Team assisted, and they also were able to visit with the other groups present, learning about different ways for them to continue to help conserve and teach others about the worlds Oceans.

Students Forego Red Meat to offset CO2 from air travel for Marine Conservation Ecotourists to Palau

80 students from two 5th grade science classes and a 7th grade social studies class at the Warren Prescott School, a Boston Public School, gave up eating red meat for two weeks to help offset the CO2 generated by a marine conservation non-profit's (Oceanic Society) ecotourists. The ecotourist group of 10 persons left from Honolulu, Hawaii for an 8-day naturalist led educational snorkeling trip in the Rock Islands of Palau. The students along with an additional 120 persons that they recruited from family, friends, and neighbors will offset approximately 4 tons of CO2 simply by giving up eating red meat for a two week time period.

Prior to the group leaving for Palau the class was given a series of lectures from their teacher, Tina Champagne, the Oceanic Society biologist (and blogger), Wayne Sentman, and Educational Technologies, Harvard University Extension School Master's Candidate, Alisyn Johnson. The students came up with ideas to help facilitate their two weeks without red meat and get more individuals to participate, one student even had her family cat join in with the pilot program! The school was extremely supportive where the kitchen lunch staff helped the students by offering special lunch options for the participating students during the two week period.

The ecotour group who is currently in Palau learning about topics like shark conservation, coral reef ecology, sea turtle conservation, and marine protected areas was thrilled to learn of the students efforts. Many have opted to give up red meat while in Palau to show their support of the students efforts on their behalf.

This pilot program was set up as a cooperative experiment between the school, Oceanic Society, and Quen.ch (a new non-profit established to facilitate web-based ecology learning for students). After feedback is collected from the students and teachers that participated in this study, Oceanic Society is hoping to utilize this project on a larger scale to link this CO2 offset program with marine conservation educational opportunities for middle and high school students.