Outreach! Outreach! Outreach!

Phase one of our OSCAR PEREC summer team project is complete - learn to interact with the general public. You could say we got our feet wet in the outreach game, after interacting with 147 sixth grade students from Fort Belvoir Elementary School for the Fairfax County Water Quality Field Day at the Fairfax Water Griffith Plant.

The event featured 13 booths meant to teach students about water quality and the environment. Our booth focused on "Denizens of the Deep" meaning we discussed the various benthic (bottom-dwelling) macroinvertebrates found in local waterbodies. We explored the meaning of an invasive species, using the Japanese mystery snail (Cipangopaludina japonica), Chinese mystery snail (Bellamya chinensis), and Asiatic clam (Corbicula lumina) as local examples. While we did have each of these invasive species on hand to show students, there was some tough competition for the students' attention, as the booth across the hall's invasive species of choice was a real, live Northern Snakehead fish (Channa argus) that students could touch.

While our booth didn't have giant, flashy critters (most of ours were small and brown to blend in with their environment - the bottom of the Potomac River) we did have a very critical critter - the native, Freshwater mussel. This organism is a mollusk of the family Unionidae, and is an indicator of ecosystem health as they are pollutant intolerant. Pollutant intolerant means that they do not survive well in areas with high levels of pollutants, and therefore indicate that the water they are found in have low levels of pollutants – a beneficial trait to other resident organisms such as fish, reptiles, and birds (who feed on the fish and reptiles). Many students were shocked to discover the importance of these rock-like shells in filtering out pollutants in the Potomac River, let alone to learn that they are in fact living animals.

In addition to species-specific curriculum, we covered the history of the long-term ecosystem monitoring study in Gunston Cove, VA and explained the importance of the research in identifying the drivers of harmful algal blooms that dominated the system in the 1980’s. The highlight of my day was seeing the surprise on the students' faces when we showed them where our samples were collected, right off Fort Belvoir where there school is! The students could hardly believe these animals could be found right by their homes.

Any day that I can share my excitement for the environment with people, particularly students who do not yet know what they want to do when they grow up, is a good day in my book – and today was one of those days.