Students Soak up Army Corps Workshops (With SpongeBob's Help)

A young female school student from New York Public School 43 stands on the Rockaway Beach boardwalk and gently pokes a lifeless yellow mound lying on the bottom of a water tank. What’s this?” she asks.

“It's a yellow sea sponge—like the cartoon character, SpongeBob SquarePants—but unlike Bob, this sponge doesn’t have eyes, legs, arms, or a brain,” explains Lisa Baron, a project manager with the US Army Corps of Engineers’ Harbor Programs Branch.

The girl is stunned, as are her classmates surrounding her. It seems the students didn’t make a connection between the popular cartoon character and the marine life that live in the waters right behind their school near Rockaway Beach, a peninsula on the south shore of Queens, New York.

This was the aim of the Rockaway Waterfront Alliance that had asked the Corps to visit the students.

All Photos: Dan Desmet, Public Affairs, New York District, US Army Corps of Engineers

Robert Smith takes the students out on a mock Piping Plover egg hunt.

Douglas Leite discusses how the Corps is taking sand from the East Rockaway Inlet and placing it on Rockaway Beach to protect the shore from flooding and coastal erosion.

“The Corps’ projects have protected the Rockaway shoreline and waterways for some time, but the local community and youth have never had the opportunity to find out how necessary this work is to keeping their waterways open,” says Jeanne DuPont, director of the Rockaway Waterfront Alliance.

A team of Corps biologists and engineers held several workshops for students at Rockaway Beach along the boardwalk right behind their school.

Dredging Workshop
Douglas Leite, project manager with the Corps’ New York District, informs the students in the Dredging Workshop about the dredging work the Corps is performing off their shore and how it’s beneficial to their community.

Over the years, Rockaway Beach has eroded for a number of reasons, including severe storms.

To help replenish the shoreline, the Corps dredges the East Rockaway Inlet and places sand back onto the beach.

“We dredge sand from the East Rockaway Inlet and place it onto the beach to increase the size and reduce flood risk and coastal erosion, as well as provide a recreation area for the community,” explains Leite.

Sea Life Workshop
Baron tells the students in the Sea Life Workshop that during dredging operations, the Corps does all it can to protect marine life in their natural habitat. The Corps uses deflectors to prevent sea turtles from getting caught in a dredge. Dredging work is done when species are not present.

Baron shows live species of Rockaway marine life for the students to hold and to touch, including slime-covered moon snails, hermit and mole crabs, sea horses, mud snails, sea anemones, sea stars, and a yellow sea sponge. She says the students ask many questions and appear very fascinated with the marine life.

“They were intrigued to learn that male seahorses play Mr. Mom and give birth to their babies and that sea stars regenerate their arms and pull their stomachs outside of their body to feed.”

Some of the sea critters give real-life demonstrations for the students, such as a sea anemone that shot out its stinging cell at a baby sea star and attempted to eat it as students stared in amazement.

Students learn about the marine life living in their Rockaway Beach waters from Lisa Baron.

Piping Plover Workshop
Robert Smith, project biologist with the Corps’ New York District, collects critters from the East Rockaway Inlet.

He talks to students along the beach about threatened and endangered species and how the Corps is taking measures to protect them.

One of these is the Piping Plover, a shorebird threatened by beach erosion. Smith creates a mock Piping Plover egg hunt for the students to show them what the birds’ eggs and nests look like. During their hunt, he explains to the students that as the Corps builds up the beaches with sand, habitat is being created for the birds to nest and care for their young. He also notes that the Corps schedules the sand placement outside the nesting season.

During Smith’s workshop, a horseshoe crab slowly creeps from the shore toward the students. Smith sees this as an opportunity to tell the students that horseshoe crabs are ancient creatures predating the dinosaurs, dating back over 500 million years.

The Corps’ workshops have created such a buzz among the students that their school’s principal has asked the Corps team to visit a class of second-grade students.

“The Corps visit was extremely informative for the students,” DuPont says. “Their workshops also support the efforts that the Rockaway Waterfront Alliance has been addressing by encouraging public access to the waterfront though education with local youth.”

Baron adds, “To know that the Corps’ outreach may inspire the students to become future scientists or merely improve their environmental awareness is rewarding.”

Author's Bio: Dr. JoAnne Castagna is a Technical Writer-Editor for the US Army Corps of Engineers. She has 18 years of experience in public relations, advertising, and broadcasting as a writer, producer, and public speaker for the public and private sector. She is published in over 80 national and international publications.