Welcome back from winter break! Just because it’s still chilly outside doesn’t mean we aren’t going to get some outdoor education in. Our schedule was full of stream ‘bug’ lessons to complement our water quality education in the Fall and an MLK Day of Service with our Teens in Thurston volunteer group.
This month we visited classrooms of students who participated in our Fall water quality monitoring to show them another indicator of water health – benthic macroinvertebrates! We taught students about the importance of stream bugs, how they relate to salmon, and then grouped up around different bins full of water, stream sediment, and real-life bugs! They learned to use a dichotomous key and a pollution tolerance index to identify and group the different critters to determine the health of local waterways. It’s always a treat to show students the importance of water health and having fun while doing it.
Our January Teens in Thurston MLK Day of Service event took place at a local property owned by Dan Mazur, the founder of the Olympia Oyster Seed Planting Project. We were joined by Pacific Shellfish Institute and many volunteers to put together bags of Pacific oyster seed. Our volunteers managed to make 32 oyster bags with hundreds, if not thousands, of oyster seeds! These oysters will grow to provide food, habitat, and filtration services to the marine ecosystem to support the health of the water in Budd Inlet. A huge thank you to our volunteers and for the work that Dan and the Pacific Shellfish Institute put into making this even possible. If you or a high schooler you know is interested in outdoor and environmental volunteer work, please contact Sam Nadell at snadell@thurstoncd.com to join our email list.
This fall nearly 1200 students visited their local waterways to find out how healthy the water is for salmon. With mostly sunny, dry days this fall, students fanned out across the Henderson, Deschutes, Eld and Totten Watersheds. Overall, 57 sites were tested. Student data showed better than optimal levels of dissolved oxygen in the Deschutes River, cold temperatures (all below 9 degrees C), and low turbidity. Students will trek back out to their monitoring sites this February to once again collect and test the water, this time making observations on how increased rainfall might change their results. Many thanks to the teachers and multiple parent and community volunteers who turned out to make this day a success!
