We learned how worms can be used to compost our food waste.

There were many challenges involved in this task because many items in everyday lunches are non-recyclable. Many food items designed for students to take to school in their lunches, items like chip bags, individually wrapped fruit snack wrappers, food trays, containers, etc are non-recyclable. To eliminate these and other items that could very easily end up in landfills, we utilized things like Tupperware containers to carry our sandwiches and chips, reusable lunch boxes to carry our meals, and reusable water bottles, thermoses to carry our drinks and tried to buy in bulk instead of purchasing individually wrapped items. Organic items such as apple cores, banana peels, brown paper bags, and other similar items were places into compost bins instead sending them to a landfill where often even organic items don't get a chance to break down because of lack of oxygen and landfill conditions. Plastic were a particular challenge at first because of some confusion about the different kinds of plastics and which ones could be recycled in different areas, but now we have the hang of it and will always remember to buy plastic items with recycling logos on them and match the numbers with the ones that can be recycled in our area.

It may be difficult at first and take some getting used to, but in the end you too can make a difference by reducing your human footprint and the amount of waste that you send to a landfill!

Most of what the trip gave each of us was inspiration to continue marine biology as a career, so we headed to Shedd's computer lab. There, we explored many career options and variations of how we could continue our new knowledge to the future. Being a marine biologist wasn't the only way to express ourselves through environmental research. Oceanography, engineering, writing, filmmaking; there were so many options we learned that would still impact conservation. We also had a few Shedd employees come to our classroom and explain how they got to where they are today. Their stories gave us an idea of what we could do with Shedd as well as possible paths we can take after high school.

Throughout the three days, we also created posters within our research groups. We put up data supporting our research and summarizing our experiments. With this, we had the opportunity to unveil our creative sides by putting together the posters. Having shared the experience together, it was more fun to assemble them. Teamwork, dedication, and motivation allowed us all to complete it productively. This project strengthened the anticipation for the final event.

On the third day of class, we took our group photos on the main stairs in front of the Shedd. Standing on the staircase, the atmosphere filled with unity and affection. It gave us the strong sense of family. The friends we've made, the interests we've shared, and knowledge we've gained, has, in one way or another, changed us all. What we experienced with Shedd's High School Marine Biology will never be forgotten.

HSMB 2008!

In a large group, it seems easy to simply be a follower, but as HSMB comes to a close, we must realize that we need to become our own leaders and make efforts to gain and inform new followers. For example, at HSMB we were able to comprehend how much waste we were producing everyday by weighing our trash. Now that we are going back to our individual lives, we need to be responsible enough to stay aware of our garbage production. We must not fall back into our old habits. Throughout this program, our instructors, as leaders, have successfully transformed us into leaders ourselves.

Now we need to complete the cycle and take in new followers to teach them to be leaders as well. Half the battle in leading is getting out of your comfort zone. We need to make an effort to stay informed and start informing the public as well. Even if our opinions are not heard, it is still important to try because along the way, someone will listen. If we continue this cycle on and on, this can be our first major breakthrough on making a huge difference in this complicated world.

Karolina uses the densiometer to measure the canopy cover.

The goal of our vegetation survey was to answer the question of whether the invasive species, Australian pine, would impact the occurrence of native plant species in the surrounding area. From this question, we drew our hypothesis. It states that the presence Australian pines will reduce the amount of native vegetation in the surrounding area. In order to calculate this, we measured both the height and canopy cover of Australian Pines in two locations around Bimini because we believe that it is the height and the width of these trees that are eliminating native vegetation from the area by blocking out the valuable sunlight needed for photosynthesis. Vegetation native to Bimini is generally low lying, none of which grow to higher than 10 feet. Therefore we believe that a tall tree species like Australian pine could easily out compete these native species for sunlight, thus establishing itself in a given area. To measure the tree height, we used a clinometer, while we used densiometer to measure canopy cover.

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We used microscopes to examine the plankton we collected..

A successful beach seine requires a lot of cooperation.

In our hypothesis we stated that the grassy bottom would have more biodiversity than the sandy bottom. We came up with this hypothesis because we thought that there would be more fish that lived within the grass of the ocean. The smaller fish and juvenile fish used the combination of shallow water and the turtle grass as protection from the larger carnivores. We predicted that the sandy bottom would not have a large biodiversity because most fish would not camouflage in with the sand and therefore their predators would be able to see them and eat them.