SEA Annual Summer Education Program

Our SEA Creatures summer education program was a huge success this year! The program consisted of 30 visits to camps, two public snorkel clinics, and the development of educational materials and activities that can continue to be used beyond this year’s summer programs. Programming ran for six weeks from June 22 to July 29 and during that time, we reached about 455 campers or snorkel clinic attendees. We also had the assistance of 50 adult staff or volunteers.The programs ranged from snorkeling to hiking and bird identification, with the predominate focus being on local conservation efforts and native plants and animals. The most popular program topic was Southgate Coastal Reserve Hike, the next being Native Plants and Animals, and the third most popular being Cultural Arts. The offerings and activities were designed to accommodate the changing COVID-19 health recommendations.

Project leader and SEA Environmental Educator shared these highlights:

• Students at the Dept. of Sports, Park, and Recreation snorkel camp took the initiative to ask if they could do a clean-up on their final snorkel day after talking about conservation and seeing evidence of human impact and pollution in the area. Video of students who led the clean-up charge talking about what they think could make people change their behaviors.
• Upon seeing the bird-viewing hut at the Southgate Coastal Reserve, a student turn to me and said “This is amazing, I thought they only had cool places like this in the States” that student would later ask if anyone could come out to see the salt pond because they wanted to bring their family.
• Many students expressed excitement to continue using SEEK app and iNaturalist at home, and when I arrived at camps for follow up visits, I was always greeted by students telling me what they had ID-ed near they houses since the previous visit!

We are continuing our education programming this year with in-school and afterschool offerings so we can continue to build environmental awareness and our future environmental leaders.