Making connections seaside
Teacher Maureen Collins watches as her 3rd-graders track the route their tagged "sharks" took.
Students show off the data sheets they compiled by marking down the times and locations where their sharks traveled.
An aquarium handler guides a sea lion through a series of tricks, delighting the audience.
Shark Week came early for 3rd-graders at PS 264 in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn — or at least their version of it — courtesy of a field trip to the New York Aquarium.
Unlike fans of the annual mid-summer programming on the Discovery Channel, the students of 3rd-grade teachers Maureen Collins and Jessica Smalley learned all about sharks and more during a May visit to the nation’s largest continually operating aquarium.
It was a day of revelations for the students: Scientists at the Coney Island institution track sharks in the wild by implanting acoustic tags in their abdomens. New York winters can get too cold for the aquarium’s African penguins, so they are kept in an indoor habitat on frigid days. And the horseshoe crab students met belongs to a species that, like sharks, predates dinosaurs by about 200 million years.
Because of their longevity, horseshoe crabs are called “living fossils,” aquarium educator Bella Ramirez told the students.
The visit marked the third year in a row that Collins had brought students to visit the aquarium, and she said she learns something new every time. “I did not know horseshoe crabs were older than dinosaurs,” Collins told the students. “That’s crazy.”
The visit began with the 3rd-graders learning how the aquarium’s New York Seascape program team uses acoustic and satellite technology to tag sharks living in the Atlantic Ocean off Brooklyn’s coastline. They use the technology to track the animals’ movements and, in turn, advocate for the conservation of the marine ecosystem.
“With this data, we are able to protect sharks a lot better,” Ramirez said.
The 3rd-graders worked in small groups, each armed with a stuffed shark tagged with a number, to check data at various “buoys” set up around the classroom and track their “shark’s” movements.
Teacher Jessica Smalley watches as one of her students prepares to pet a horseshoe crab using two fingers.
Collins selected the Shark Researcher class for the students because it complements their curriculum. Her students had just finished the HMH Into Reading curriculum on animal behaviors and adaptations. “This ties in with our nonfiction unit, so it works out well,” she said.
Smalley agreed. Her students researched different animals for a writing assignment for the unit. “A lot of friends picked aquatic animals — stingrays, jellyfish, sharks,” she said of her students. “So, the trip gave them the opportunity to experience what they were researching.”
The program is well organized and students “have a really great time looking at all the animals and learning about different things,” she said.
The students met the horseshoe crab after the shark exercise. Ramirez explained that the crabs are a vulnerable species because of the impact of climate change. Like sea turtles, they lay their eggs on beaches. Rising sea level is causing beach space to dwindle, she said.
“So, they are more vulnerable to their population declining and more vulnerable to predators when they go out and lay their eggs,” she said.
Third-graders are enthralled as they walk with Collins through a 40-foot tunnel filled with sharks and rays swimming in nearly a million gallons of water.
After touching the crab’s shell with two fingers, a few students debated what it felt like.
“It’s like a rock, but when a snail goes over it, like it’s gooey,” one said.
“It’s not that gooey,” her classmate said.
They also had a chance to explore different exhibits, including “Ocean Wonders: Sharks!” where 18 kinds of sharks and sting rays are among over 115 marine species on display. In the “Spineless” exhibit, they saw a giant Pacific octopus, a Japanese spider crab and other invertebrates.
One student said she had learned at school that octopuses don’t have spines. “Then we went in there and could see and experience animals that don’t have spines,” she said.
Students also enjoyed seeing playful sea lions do tricks during a show at the aquarium’s Aquatheater, where they learned about efforts by the aquarium’s operator, the Wildlife Conservation Society, to protect the Hudson Canyon — the massive submarine canyon located about 100 miles southeast of the aquarium — by having the federal government designate it a national marine sanctuary.
Collins’ class wasn’t able to see the sea lion show last year, so this year’s was a treat, she said. “They live for field trips.”
The New York Aquarium offers class trips for students in pre-K through high school. Programs include a hands-on class at Coney Island beach, an exploration of marine science careers and the aquarium’s conservation work, and topics like how local fish species have adapted to New York and how climate change affects habitats. Programs cost between $175 and $350, with discounts for Title I schools. For more information, email or visit the website at .