A group of science students from Huntingtown High School (HHS), along with teachers, volunteers and staff from the National Aquarium gathered at Dominion Cove Point Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) Plant in Lusby Wednesday, May 14 for the culmination of a year-long classroom project.
The students grew beach grasses in their classroom. Finally, the grasses were ready to be planted on a sandy stretch of land separating the Chesapeake Bay from the Cove Point Marsh. A few years ago Dominion built a living shoreline to protect the freshwater marsh from being breeched by the salty Chesapeake.
Melissa Day from the Chesapeake Biological Laboratory in Solomons said the living shoreline has been a success, with the once-endangered plants growing in the marshland coming back, along with many migratory birds, muskrats, bald eagles, osprey, swans and geese. Day lamented the return of the geese, noting that the long-necked fowl feast off of the very grasses that the students were planting.
Laura Bankey, the National Aquarium’s director of Conservation, said the grasses stabilize the sand and keep it in place. She gave the students planting the grasses some advice. “They [grasses] have to be deep, deep, deep,” she explained. “It’s not a petunia you’re planting in your front yard.”
Each student was handed a pair of work gloves and a dibble bar—an implement used in tree plantings.
“Be safe, have fun, learn something,” Dominion Cove Point Manager of LNG Operations Michael E. Gardner told the students.
Laura Cattell-Noll of the National Aquarium’s Chesapeake Bay Initiative said the grass planting effort is privately funded through grants and Dominion has helped support the Baltimore-based aquarium’s program in the schools. The aquarium works with about 17 schools on its wetlands program. That initiative also includes a “terrapins in the classroom and HHS is one of the participating schools.
“You did an awesome job of taking care of your plants this year,” Cattell-Noll told the students.
In addition to the grunt work involved with the planting of grasses, the students also had some high-tech fun on a stretch of wetlands to the north of the marsh. The aquarium’s Charmaine Dahlenbur gave the students small global positioning system (GPS) devices and sent them on a scavenger hunt to find “two hidden treasures. Using the GPS to guide them, the students quickly located an empty terrapin shell and two skulls—a fox and a beaver.
It helps all scientists in the field,” said Dahlenbur of the GPS devices.
She later explained the artifacts were planted in the area—the terrapin shell was originally found years ago and the skulls are artificial—and the hunt using GPS was “kind of a nice break from planting for them.”
The students weren’t the only ones hard at work with the grass plantings. Calvert County Public Schools’ (CCPS) Green School Specialist Sheila R. Stevens was also part of the work crew. Stevens said she jumped on the opportunity to promote “green school” activities throughout the system. “I wasn’t going to watch them, I wanted to get dirty,” said Stevens. She added that the most common green activity in the schools continues to be recycling. Additionally, CCPS has set an example by building several new schools with geothermal components. The plan for renovating Northern High School is to construct the building so that it q
