Lānaʻi High School Students "Sail" to Tern Island

Tern Island is probably about 600 miles away from Lānaʻi High School, which is close to the southeastern end of the Hawaiian Islands archipelago.  On Tuesday, October 18th the two locations seemed a little closer to each other.

On that day 21 high school juniors & seniors and their teacher made a "virtual field trip" to Tern Island, with Barb Mayer (USFWS volunteer) and Wes Byers (NOAA's Outreach Specialist for the Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument).

The virtual field trip to far-away Tern was made possible through a Powerpoint presentation, utilizing photos and this real-life video "The Searcher Departs from Honolulu":



After "setting sail" on the Searcher, the students imagined voyaging for 3 days to reach Tern Island where they were to start work as wildlife volunteers.  Therefore, at the conclusion of the Powerpoint, students were put to work in the classroom!  They were divided into small groups and rotated through several activities utilizing artifacts from Tern.

For example, here's an activity featuring actual marine animal eggs.  (They were infertile; they didn't hatch.  Therefore, it's possible for the US Fish and Wildlife Service to use them for education.  The eggs have been filled with plaster of paris, to strengthen them against accidental breakage.)

Most of the eggs are labeled with their birds' identifying, 4-letter code; two are not...or three, since you can't see the whole code for the egg on the right.  

Egg Challenge:  Of those three, which one belongs to the Laysan Albatross, Mōlī?  Which is the store-bought chicken egg?  ...and which one belongs to the Hawaiian Green Sea Turtle, Honu?  (Hint: reptile eggs don't have [much] calcium in them).  Honor system: don't peek until you're ready, but the answers are at the end of this post.

THAT can't be a Laysan Albatross, a Mōlī?!  Your're right; it's a stuffed toy.  Imagine how much bigger the REAL albatross parents are who laid this egg?

JMacaulay took this picture of a pair of adult Mōlī.

 Here's an activity about the Great Frigatebird's wingspan-->

Challenge: Place the Great Frigatebird (GRFR; ʻIwa) skeleton and both sets of wing bones in the proper places to represent a living bird's actual wingspan!

The students have put the GRFR skeleton in the middle of the 7' long fabric strip.  Now, can they correctly arrange the wing bones?

YES THEY CAN!  The answer sheet, which was hidden under a paper taped to the classroom's front board, confirmed their effort.  Wow, that ʻiwa has a chicken-size body and a hang-glider wingspan!

Back at the end of May "A Busy Time at Kānemilohaʻi" was posted.  Mark Sullivan's photo shows a particularly disturbing example of a Honu with marine debris, a porthole, around its neck:

Here's the porthole again.  Now it's being used to help students make the mind and heart connection to what marine debris actually does to life in the ocean. 

How does it feel to be caught in marine debris? Well, how does it feel to have this rubber band around your hand?!

The class period ended with everyone feeling a little closer to Tern Island Field Station and the Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument.  Barb and Wes look forward to "bringing the place to the people" in other classrooms around the state of Hawaiʻi!
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Egg Challenge Answers:

• Laysan Albatross -- the BIG one on the right
• Chicken -- in the top-right corner of the egg carton
• Hawaiian Green Sea Turtle -- bottom-left in the carton