San Diego Students Get Their Feet Wet In Ocean Science

January 2, 2020 at 10:36 AM PST

Speaker 1: 00:00 Speaker 2: 00:14 Speaker 3: 00:17 Speaker 2: 00:35 Speaker 3: 00:47 Speaker 2: 01:03 Speaker 3: 01:15 Speaker 2: 01:23 Speaker 3: 01:35 Speaker 4: 01:51 Speaker 3: 02:17 Speaker 4: 02:22 Speaker 3: 02:42 Speaker 4: 03:00 Speaker 3: 03:17 Speaker 4: 03:31 Speaker 3: 03:45 Speaker 2: 03:54 Speaker 3: 04:06 Speaker 2: 04:08 San Diego has 70 miles of coastline, but for many kids, the ocean isn't as easy to get to. As you might think. KPBS education reporter Joe Hong met up with some young students at Scripps pier who see opportunities to study the ocean as a career. No 10 year old data. Novelis is one of 40 or so students huddled in a circle on a cloudy day on a pier in LA Jolla. He's peering over shoulders to get a glimpse of the plankton caught by researchers. Aiden says he's wanting to be a veterinarian all his life, but he's never been interested in the animals that live in the ocean. That changed when he saw his first Tidepool. I want to be a Fitch Canarian. I let her know, and I'm not like to exotic animals or just maybe like household animals, dogs, cats, birds, stuff like that. Aiden is a fifth grader at the steam Academy in spring Valley. He lives less than 15 miles from the shore and comes to the beach about once a year with his family. But today he and the other students touring the Scripps institution of oceanography are seeing the ocean through new eyes. What'd you see in there? Oh, small. Really just sturdy water. I see little tiny microscopic dirt off the ocean and like germs by growing the students. Spend the day with researchers. Teching plaintiff examining tidepools and looking through microscopes. By the end of the day Aiden's head is full of questions. Okay. It's about how, how ask them animals live and how they grow and when they grow and like who environment they're in. It's like really interesting. Students all over San Diego County are able to have this experience thanks to the league of extraordinary scientists and engineers. The nonprofit connect students from low income schools to scientists around the County lead CEO and founder. Jean Wong says studying the ocean shouldn't be just for the privilege. Two out of three breasts of oxygen come from plants in the ocean and these kids in San Diego County should be at the ocean. And when you hear so often that these kids have never even been to the beach and they live in San Diego County, you know, we've all complained about it and we've all heard these stories. And so our organization, uh, ordinary scientists with J Craig Venter Institute and Scripps Institute of oceanography wanted to address that directly and just bus the kids here. The league reimburses school districts for the cost of busing students to the beach. So in San Diego unified, for instance, a bus would be like $280 to get 54 kids to the beach. But if you're getting them from say, Poway are you getting them from somewhere else? Right? You, Lissa, whatever. The buses can be anywhere from 600 to $1,000 per bus. That price tag in itself is screaming in equity. And what I'm going to have you guys do is can I go ahead and write? John Oren is Aiden's teacher at the steam Academy in spring Valley. He says the class trip to scripts gave life to his lesson about ecosystems. I think they were able to have a concrete connection with, um, a lot of the items that we study. Um, being out touching the animals, um, being out on the pier, watching the scientists, um, bring up, uh, bring up the work, like bringing up the plankton. Uh, that was something that we weren't able to really deliver. Uh, here at school. We're in says before the league is cause field trips were limited to about a 10 mile radius. Jean Wong hopes that physically bring students to the shore is the first step in making the field of oceanography more accessible to students from historically disadvantaged communities. Having different visions on science and especially oceanography. The biggest thing on our planet, right? We need war people, um, from different backgrounds to see that, to study that and to share that information with each other. Aiden says he might consider oceanography as a career. He plans to do more research at school, but now he knows that learning about it in the classroom just isn't enough. Are you read about the ocean and like fish and plankton coming out here and make sure things took a whole different thing. Stories tell you one thing. This tells you another. It's really cool. Joe Hong KPBS fees and stuff. Very small, right? So maybe fish larvae. Crustacean.

By KPBS Public Media

Aiden Avalos, who is 10, says he’s wanted to be a veterinarian all his life, but he’s never been interested in the animals that live in the ocean. That changed when he saw his first tide pool.