Marine Biology

In short, the image sets below highlight Missouri high school students studying Marine Biology firsthand in the Bahamas. In addition to the image sets here, below you will also find other documentation and description of the Marine Biology course and program...

All images were taken from our Andros Island/Exuma Cays sailing field study, during the first week of April 2008-2012 in The Bahamas. This event was an important element of the Marine Biology program in the Saint Joseph School District from 1999 to 2013. Eighteen students from all three local public schools met for class on 20 Monday nights throughout the school year. The time between these Monday nights was blended together using online modes of communication and sharing. This mix of face to face and online learning ultimately taught me a great deal about blended/hybrid modes of learning.

The field studies themselves were conducted from ~45' sailing yachts along the Andros Island bank/barrier reef... and often included extensions to remote outer island chains such as the Exuma Cays or Berry Islands. The Andros reef itself, often said to the the world's third longest continuous reef, retains relatively healthy patches even today. This is due to the fact that the Andros reef hugs the east coast of a one hundred mile long island that is very lightly populated. Last count indicates a total population of around 7,000 all living in small villages along the eastern coast. This adds a very remote nature to the trip. Our various cooperating captains also enlisted students to help crew the boats. This allowed an authentic, hands-on experience, as well as allowing us to put the boat in more remote and interesting places.

Though the images focus upon the field study portion of the program, this is but a slice of what is a rigorous progression of study over the course of a year. Many core units of study were designed to end with social action of some type. A highlight of this impact can be seen in the formal petition from 2004 to list three Caribbean-region corals for protection under the Endangered Species Act. This was successful, and marked the first time invertebrate species had been given such protection by the U.S. government. Our documentation of reef health is prominently acknowledged in this 111-page document.

Please feel free to spend some time here experiencing some of the beautiful diversity of the coral reef and the many students who got to study it firsthand during the 14 years of this program...

~Sean

Image sets from the on-site field study portion of Marine Biology...

(click to view thousands upon thousands of images)

Online remnants of the course...

Much of our conversation and reflection between the years of 2008 and 2012 was openly published on a network entitled "Saint Joe H2O." This network also served to connect our students to experts in the field willing to provide feedback and inspiration to our students. This network found its way into several textbooks during that time as a best case scenario for the wise use of open, social tools in education...

(Our original scratch website that served the program from 1999 to 2007 is no longer up. I look forward to re-hosting it at some future date to complete the historical record.)