One of the most fun and different activities that we engage in annually is outreach to the local elementary schools. I have worked especially with the local 3rd grade. About once a month my husband David Duggins and I do a ‘lesson’ with the 3rd graders at the school, bringing a group of marine organisms in for hands-on show and tell – which generates a lot of excitement and noise, especially when we do crustaceans! We cap off the year with a field exercise, taking the students to the beach (with the help of Zoobot students) and gathering quantitative data on abundances and sizes of the introduced varnish clam. In this way the young ones (and the older ones!) get to actually contribute useful data to a long term monitoring program.

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