“Woah, are there lobsters in there?” asked one student. “Are you coming to my class?” asked another.
These were the wide-eyed excited comments of students at Harriet Beecher Stowe (HBS) Elementary as I carried a lobster trap, a bucket full of bait bags and lobster tools, and a cooler with the live animals down the hall with a student volunteer from Bowdoin College. As with many projects during the pandemic, this one has faced some delays as volunteers could not be in classrooms last year. But, the Bowdoin College student group leading this effort and the teachers at HBS have been incredibly patient at making these classes a reality.
Lobsters are an iconic animal in Maine and, for that reason, it might seem that they are familiar to many people – and they are on some level. Every student immediately knew what animal we were going to be talking about, and there was a lot of great existing knowledge in the groups. But, for a coastal community, it is always surprising to me how unfamiliar fisheries and an understanding of marine ecosystems can be to people of all ages. The beauty of educating younger generations is that it transfers up the food chain both to other generations and as they grow and develop their interests and continue their education.
The eagerness of students to learn about marine life makes presenting something like a trap and a couple of lobsters so fulfilling. In the case of lobsters, it is easy to connect a mysterious species to our own lives by talking about how we harvest them and also enjoy eating them. While the students were eager to learn about the lobsters themselves, they were equally as excited to learn about how to fish for them. They followed remarkably complex details about the rules that apply to the fishery, and there was a great respect for why they exist.
The connection with Bowdoin College students was a natural one given the amazing resources and interest the school has on marine science. And, having a college student come into your classroom is much more exciting than your mom. The students involved in the project are a part of the Naturalists Club, a campus club that seeks to encourage an understanding of local ecology and the natural history that surrounds us in the greater Brunswick and coastal Maine community. It has gathered a large following of students interested in getting outside and learning more about the natural world.
Students from the club who were interested attended a short training on campus to go over the parts of a trap, the parts of a lobster, and how to connect the lesson to the fifth grade science curriculum. Fifth graders typically have a field trip to Thomas Point Beach in the spring to see horseshoe crabs congregating close to shore, so lobsters were a logical animal to choose to further their background on crustaceans ahead of this field trip. The hope is that some of the Bowdoin students might be able to attend this field trip to help further the connections between the two creatures. There is also interest in teaching about other species in the future, particularly those that students can connect to human impacts, something they are studying this year.
The other lesson coming out of this experience, aside from how much of an opportunity there is to educate people of all ages about fisheries and the marine environment, is that there is always something new to learn as well. For example, I had to look up whether lobsters used spiracles to breathe in the same way that insects breathe through these tiny holes in their shells. Now I know that they do not, but I learned a lot about spiracles. If all goes well, the remainder of the fifth grade classes will be learning about lobsters this week, and perhaps sharing that knowledge with others in the community.
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