World Oceans Day

World Oceans Day at the New England Aquarium is quite the fiesta.  Located conveniently next to the Sustainable Seafood tent, fellow intern Lauren Gunther and I passed out pamphlets and educated passersby about water pollution on behalf of the Charles River Watershed Association.

We used this fun, hands-on “watershed-in-a-box” to show kids how our rivers become polluted:

                                                   

                                 

The watershed-in-a-box is a mini-plastic version of a watershed.  There are green spaces representative of farms or gardens, blue channels that lead into a river, a construction site, a factory, roads, etc... - all equipped with toy animals, houses, cars, and trees.

The demonstration went a little something like this:

Pretend these red sprinkles are fertilizer.  Sprinkle them onto the farm.  The blue sprinkles are like road salt – you can sprinkle some on the roads so that they are less slippery in the winter.  See these tiny slivers of paper?  These are chip bags and napkins, blowing in the wind from a picnic.   This cocoa powder is dog poop that you forgot to pick up.  And on and on.

As you can imagine, the box soon became covered by these "pollutants."  Then, pouring cups of water onto the box model, we imitated a rainstorm.  The kids watched as an unseemly cocktail of sprinkles, cocoa powder, and food dye accumulated from all quarters of the land and drained into the river.  Yuck! 

During the tabling, Lauren and I both came to the same conclusion.  The box model watershed is a wonderful educational tool.  For one, it helps kids better visualize concepts such as point-source vs. non-point source pollution.  While many youngsters can conjure up the iconic image of the Evil Factory, spewing out toxins (point-source pollution), it is a little less intuitive for them to visualize how all of the tiny, seemingly harmless byproducts of daily life can accumulate together during a rainstorm and "nastify" our water (non-point source pollution). 

The model helped to reinforce the necessity for smart, stormwater management practices - and on an individual scale, the importance of picking up your trash.  Between delicious seafood, smiling faces, and watershed chit-chat, I give World Ocean’s Day at the New England Aquarium a solid thumb’s up.

Til next time,

Pam

(World Oceans Day is just one of many fun and educational activities hosted by the New England Aquarium.  Check out their website for additional opportunities!: http://www.neaq.org/index.php)