Great Salt Bay Community School’s third grade class enjoyed an all-aquaculture field trip Oct. 26.
The students, teachers and parent volunteers traveled first to Riverside Boat Company in Newcastle. From the banks of the Damariscotta River, the students, binoculars in hand, observed a working oyster farm.
Dana Morse of the Maine Sea Grant program taught the students about how oyster farms work and answered their questions about aquaculture gear and the life cycle of the American oyster.
Late October is a busy time for oyster farmers, Morse explained, as they hustle to refrigerate their crop or transfer it to the riverbed before the surface freezes.
Following Morse’s lesson, the students boarded the school bus for the ride to the Darling Marine Center in Walpole.
The field trip was part of the school’s junior oyster gardening program. Every year, the third grade grows oysters in the Damariscotta River.
At the Darling Marine Center, the students saw oysters from last year’s class and measured, diagramed and tagged their own small oysters.
The students, courtesy of tour guide Mick Devin, got a close-up look at the center’s experimental shellfish hatchery, handling American and European oysters, soft and hard-shell clams and whelks.
The students learned that European oysters, typically and unsurprisingly found in European waters, grow naturally in the Sheepscot River.
Devin also showed the class the varieties of algae he grows for the oysters to eat. An adult oyster can eat 10-20 billion algal cells every day, he said. “Without algae, there’s no aquaculture.”
“We’re an experimental hatchery,” Devin said. “We work with species that came from all over the place.”
The center carefully avoids introducing diseases or invasive species into the river, Devin explained.
Devin grows juvenile lobsters from Rhode Island in a quarantine room. Rhode Island lobsters carry a disease non-existent among Maine lobsters, Devin said.
The center is growing the juvenile lobsters in water approximating Rhode Island and Maine conditions to study the effect of water temperature on growth.
Devin and the center’s other scientists painstakingly disinfect and neutralize the water that leaves the quarantine room. “The water that’s pumped out of here will have nothing living in it,” he said.
The junior oyster gardening program began with a conversation between Morse and GSB Enrichment Specialist Alison Macmillan.
Macmillan recalls kayaking the Damariscotta after school and running into Morse, who was teaching a program for adults. The chance meeting started a conversation about the possibility of a similar program for children.
GSB teacher Jennifer Wright and her class participated in a successful pilot program in the 2009-2010 academic year. The following year, GSB extended the program to the entire third grade.
The school incorporates the program into science instruction, Macmillan said.
The students will return to the Darling Marine Center in the spring to record the growth of their oysters. They’ll visit with local oyster farmers in the classroom, eat oyster pizza courtesy of Mediterranean Kitchen and grow algae in the school’s saltwater tank.
The program is made possible in part by support from the Edward A. Myers Marine Conservation Fund.