On Oct. 13, students from Spring Ridge Middle School and Lexington Park Elementary School in St. Mary’s County participated in an environmental field day at Chapel Point State Park in Charles County. This event was part of the environmental education element of the Science, Technology, Engineering and Math program sponsored by the Naval Surface Warfare Center at Indian Head in several Southern Maryland schools.

Field day activities included seining, trash surveying, soils study, water testing, and nature hikes. During a four day period, 350 students from Charles and St. Mary’s Counties participated in the field day program.

The seining experience was conducted by volunteers from the Port Tobacco River Conservancy with assistance from NSWC personnel. Students obtained first hand, wet and muddy, experience with the variety of marine organisms pulled up with the seine. In spite of the cold water, yellow perch, white perch, silversides, bay anchovies, and blue crabs were observed and identified using field guides provided for the activity.

The relatively rare pipefish was a welcome surprise and several were found. The pipefish is a close relative to the seahorse and shares the same twist in producing babies. The female deposits the eggs in a pouch on the male’s abdomen where they are incubated and then released later as part of the spawning process.

The show was nearly stolen by the abundance of comb “jellies” – tiny jelly fish without tentacles that clogged the seine and made it difficult to pull through the water. Separating the other fish from the jellies was difficult due to the concentration of the little critters that looked more like a continuous mass of thick hand cleaner. While individual jellies weren’t obvious when just looking at the river, the seine trapped them in impressive concentrations and it was kind of neat to hold “gobs” of them and feel them slip between the fingers without worrying about getting stung.

From the excitement generated by this modest collection of species, it appeared that many of the students had never held a fish before. It is hoped that this type of experience will help stimulate an interest in the problems faced by the local environment and while developing a new generation of stewards.