'seaweed school:' how b.c. kids are being trained on hornby island to understand the ocean's forests
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seaweed school alumna ava zielinski on hornby island.
amanda zielinski
when kids on hornby island reach grade 8, they have to be bused to courtenay on vancouver island, which is an hour-long trip each way, including two ferry rides.
some parents decide to home school to keep them on island, while others move away as there have been limited options for hands-on instruction. until now.
grade 7, 8 and 9 students now have an opportunity to take a program called seaweed school, a collaboration among the hornby island community school, ubc and the hornby island natural history museum. funding also comes from the marine environmental observation, prediction and response network.
it’s a unique learning initiative woven through the regular school year that combines science, art, nutrition and indigenous knowledge, and teaches kids why ocean conservation is so important for the planet and human health.
for ava zielinski, a hornby island resident and seaweed school alumni, it was the perfect motivator to stay on the island to do another year of her schooling.
“i have always loved nature living on hornby island but this school showed me what it would be like to work with ubc students and i thought i’d like to go to university and then maybe teach as well.”
while also doing many of her regular high school courses online, zielinski, now 15, spent time in the classroom and on the beach with educators learning about why the local seaweed is important but also how to harvest, cook and press seaweed.
“the seaweed school was for my grade 8 year on hornby. it was kind of like a different style of school. we tried to get outside as much as we could and not stay in the classroom so much,” she said.
“we even learned how to make food with seaweed like smoothies … it was fun.”
zielinski said working with a ubc professor and students has inspired her to go to ubc to study marine biology and conservation after she graduates from high school.
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seaweeds are the forests of our oceans, says bridgette clarkston, school co-creator and an associate professor of teaching in ubc’s department of botany.
“they’re providing oxygen. they’re providing habitat for lots of things like juvenile salmon and rockfish, and they are food for all kinds of creatures.”
the course begins with an exploration of seaweeds, including a zoom lesson clarkston gives from vancouver.
the kids were then given different species to focus on and asked to do some online research. after that they went to the beach together, where they were tasked with taking seaweed photographs for identification. their photographs are now on display at the beaty biodiversity museum at ubc along with their names.
they also crafted all of their knowledge into a set of cards, a field guide to hornby island seaweeds, that’s sold in the hornby island natural history centre’s gift shop.
“we think it’s really important to get children, who are our future leaders, our future environmental stewards, to appreciate seaweeds early so that they can help us protect these key species,” said clarkston.
she added that b.c. used to have much more extensive kelp forests in the inner salish sea, but most of the big canopy-forming kelps have perished because of climate change.
“it’s been well documented now that these warming waters are one of the key drivers of decline in our kelp species, in particular the bull kelp, which is one of our big iconic species — it’s like the redwood or the western red cedar of the seaweed world.”
now scientists are trying to understand how climate change is affecting different types of kelp off the b.c. coast, and how they can protect them and restore what has been lost. for example, scientists are looking at whether new heat-tolerant strains could be introduced.
students head out to the beach on hornby island for seaweed school.
ocea hill
bridgette clarkston, seaweed school co-creator and associate professor of teaching in ubc’s department of botany, presents to students on hornby island.
ocea hill
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for one of the projects, students tested the power of seaweed compost, by burying cotton underwear in soil treated with either seaweed tea, which is a fermented mix of seaweeds, or seaweed mulch from the sea.
“they were measuring soil ph and soil temperature, and how often they applied their treatments, seaweed fertilizer, and then everybody voted on which plot would have the most rotted undies,” said clarkston.
(spoiler: it was the seaweed tea.)
the goal, said clarkston, is to eventually expand the initiative to other coastal communities in b.c.
just like the seaweed itself, clarkston said she “would love to see this kind of thing grow.”
students of seaweed school on hornby island make art using seaweed.
ocea hill
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