I quietly walk through the mangrove forest, all around me I observe an ecosystem teeming with life. I hear the shuffling of fiddler crabs as they scurry back to their holes in the ground, I smell rotten eggs (sulphuric acid), and I view the light filtering through the leaves of the mangrove trees. This should be the experience all along the coast in the vicinity of the Falmouth pier, but many red mangroves were removed in the wake of its construction.
I’m in Jamaica implementing the final instalment of our mangrove education and restoration programme called the Jamaica Awareness of Mangroves in Nature (JAMIN) and the 66 students from William Knibb and Holland high schools are bubbling over with excitement. It’s the end of the academic year, and in the midst of their busy testing schedules, they take time out from studying to graph and analyse the data that they collected and draw conclusions from it to answer the overarching question — Which type of media do mangrove propagules grow best in? They will return to the mangrove restoration site to plant the mangrove propagules (a seed-like structure) that they have been growing in their classroom for the past eight months.
Today, we are restoring the mangroves and it’s a bittersweet feeling. On one hand, it is the end of a successful programme but on the other, it signifies the culmination of a year working with students and teachers on mangrove education and restoration. As an educator, I often feel like a mother duck leading her ducklings to adulthood. Although I wasn’t in the classroom with them everyday, I still feel proud watching many of them move on to the next level of high school or going off to university.
At 7:00 am the sun is already out in full force, so we planned an early morning restoration. Camilo Trench and Shanna Thomas, our partners at the University of the West Indies Discovery Bay Marine Lab, and I pack up the truck with shovels, gloves, lots of water, and the mangrove propagules, and we head to the restoration site.
For the past couple of weeks, Camilo has been gradually acclimating the seedlings from the fresh water (in which they have been growing for the past several months) to salt water, so that they can more easily adapt to their natural environment once we plant them.
When we get to the site, we come up with a plan on where to plant the propagules, and then we wait for the school bus to arrive. When it does, the students hop off the bus and are smiling from ear to ear. We hand out the JAMIN programme T-shirts and their eyes light up. Next, we go over the safety rules and assign them to groups.
They take great care digging the holes and making sure that the seedlings are firmly in place before planting the next one. It’s ironic that in the same way I feel that these students are my ducklings, many of them feel like the seedlings are their ducklings that they have been caring for over the past eight months. They have taken ownership of these propagules, and exhibit a sense of
stewardship over the mangroves, which I hope will leave a lasting imprint of the conservation of mangroves in their minds.
The Khaled bin Sultan Living Oceans Foundation saw the need for an immersive, year-long experiential education experience in mangrove education and restoration and launched JAMIN in 2014. We bring students out into a mangrove forest, teach them about the ecosystem, incorporate mangrove education into their science class throughout the school year, and help them restore a local mangrove forest at the end of the school year.
After a successful pilot of JAMIN in 2014-2015, the programme was repeated in 2015-2016 and extended to Abaco, Bahamas, as Bahamas Awareness of Mangroves (BAM). There, we work with Friends of the Environment to establish and implement the programme in Abaco Central High School and Forest Heights Academy.
Each programme is implemented in three instalments and includes opportunities for professional development for teachers, as well as programme evaluation and development. The core of the programme takes place over eight months when students grow mangrove propagules in their classroom. This is executed using project-based learning, a teaching method which allows students to explore real-world problems and acquire deeper knowledge over extended periods of time.
After the programme, individual students thanked me for bringing the project to the school, while others explained that the project inspired them to study science at university. I was completely touched by the students’ openness and gratitude.
When I look back at the project, I realise that planting the mangrove propagules is symbolic. We literally planted mangrove seedlings to restore an area from where they had been removed, but I feel that we planted much more than seedlings; we planted the seed of knowledge about the importance of mangrove restoration and conservation for many generations to come.