Blog

What do you get when you cross a highly-functioning and willing staff of 14 with 36 gung-ho, motivated students? You get lots of good work done. In the few weeks that our students have been here, they have transformed themselves into:

• scientists, of course! (learning creatures’ habits, classifications, & markings),
• teachers (giving hour-long interactive lectures on coral reef ecology to high schoolers, & basic physic lessons to elementary students),
• librarians (reviving the high school library from its death to a hurricane in 2009 & reading one-on-one with children enchanted by such attention),
•  innovative mechanics (assembling a saltwater-powered toy car),
• artists (creating a life-sized green sea turtle, Chelonia mydas, mosaic with local kids)
• pirates (showing local kids how to have loads of fun with recycled supplies & big imaginations),
• chefs (mastering kitchen tools & supplies to feed scones, curries, & cookies to a squadron – that’s the terminology for a group of Spotted Eagle Rays – of 50 people)
• coaches (leading over 100 twenty-minute long one-on-one swimming lessons)
• patrons (frequenting a local woman’s homey restaurant)

The Center staff has been busy too. Rob, our site manager, spent many hours planning for the arrival of about 1000 composting worms. We are thrilled to have vermicomposting on site now, thanks to Rob’s efforts. My own work in, and Heidi’s constant support of, the garden continues to show as tomatoes continue to ripen on the vines.Thanks to students’ planting last weekend, our Student of the Day has the additional job, I mean JOY, of watering new seeds.

Our waterfront team’s flexibility and creativity has kept our students safely occupied in or near the water despite high winds, and faculty have been skillful in rearranging lectures and being prepared for any and every thing. I hope you’ll enjoy the pictures in the slideshow below which illustrate this newest story of our lives down here on Big South.