Palmyra Atoll

This blog is a compilation of emails and pictures sent by Sanjayan and organized by Sherwood on here

Image courtesy of Kydd Pollack, TNC

We land in Palmyra, after a 1. 5 hr flight from Christmas Island, in a blinding rainstorm. Huge thunderheads line our way and our charter plane has to dodge thunderclouds just to get us on the ground. The plan is a G1 – built in 1962 – so its pretty old. But its a strong plane and it handles the storm well. Its a tiny speck in the middle of the Pacific and its remoteness and the amount of protection it receives – its not just owned by The Nature Conservany but the atoll is also part of the new National Marine Sanctuary adminstered by the US Fish and Wildlife Service – allows it to have some extraordinary life,especially in the form of big fish, sharks, land crabs and huge colonies of nesting sea birds. Soon after we land, the sun breaks out and we have our first real glimpse of Palmyra – An Atoll, about 1000 miles south of Hawaii. About as remote and isolated as you can get. The atoll is formed when a volcano grows from the bottom of the ocean and rises above the sea creating a fringing reef around it. Then as volcanic activity dies and the cone weathers and erodes and slowly sinks back into the sea, the coral simply keep growing till eventually all you see are the tops of the coral and it places where vegetation manages to cling on. This is the eventual fate of the Hawaiian islands.

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Rediscovering Darwin Facebook Page

There is a Facebook page dedicated to the Rediscovering Darwin Project. Pictures, Videos, Member Profiles, Links to Promethean Planet, The Nature Conservancy, and the Palmyra/Solomon Islands Blog.

http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/profile.php?id=1508932288

Please share with friends, family, students, and Co-workers.

Friday the 13th

Personally, I have always liked Friday 13th!  This has been a busy week between trying to make sure my sub is good to go and the students are staying on task and working on this project.  I do think I got a lot done though.  I have completed 3 sets of backgrounds - Palmyra images, Birds, and the miscellaneous marine one of Sharks, Rays, Jellyfish, and Morays.  As a teacher who likes to coordinate, I tried to make a resource that teachers could use that would have a title page as well as different pages that match up.

I also created a writing prompts flipchart with Sanjayan’s pictures.   One of our English teachers and myself created writing prompts with these pictures as the themes.  This does not need to be JUST for science teachers.  We created prompts with higher level questioning in many of them.

The final chart I worked on this week was the marine sanctuary flipchart which teaches about the Marine Sanctuary system and their purpose.  It then discusses Palmyra in specific.

This weekend I will move on to Invasive Species.  I hope everyone has a nice and relaxing weekend.

Denver Museum of Nature and Science

Yesterday 3/11/08 I got a wonderful opportunity to meet with the Chief Curator of the Denver Museum of Nature and Science Dr. Kirk Johnson.

It was an amazing experience to get to go behind the scenes and talk with him one on one. I asked him several questions regarding the Rediscovering Darwin project which he was familiar with.

Mainly we discussed how a scientist goes about planning for a trip like this. I learned that he is leaving soon for a trip to Brazil. So, basically he filled me in on what he was doing to get ready. I also learned that Dr. Johnson is doing a presentation with Sanjayan at the DMNS on April 29th.

I also wrapped things up by asking Dr. Johnson what he want students to get out of this project the ‘big idea’.

His answer was ” I want kids to know and learn that science is fun….there is always something to be excited about, you just have to find what it is for you“.

I was excited just being there!

Thanks Dr. Johnson!

Visiting students

For the last three days I have been doing classroom visits to several different schools, from 1st grade to 6th grade. I have enjoyed my time seeing other teachers classrooms and getting to experience lots of student questions. I must say visiting the 2nd and 3rd graders was my favorit because they actually got into a debate with one another over what they thought was right. I actually got them to start asking more in-depth questions, that I thought was surprising for elementary students. Doing these site visits has really changed my perspective of what I was to do covering content to what I am actually doing.  Little kids surprise me everyday.

Monday

Monday is normally a dreaded day for most people and while it wasn’t a bad day, it was BUSY!  After getting my sub ready for the day, I was ready to start working on this wonderful material!  I worked on the Sanctuary flipchart and cleared LOTS of wonderful pictures from Sanjayan from my email.  I spent the evening researching these organisms and adding scientific data and neat facts.  My favorite picture is the Black Tip Reef shark which has made me also want to do a flipchart/activity on the importance of sharks in the ocean environment! Read the rest of this entry »

The weekend!

Here in Richmond, Virginia we had our first major snowstorm last weekend of 8 inches.  It was still on the ground Thursday when we went back to school.  Today, it was near 80 degrees and absolutely beautiful.  While I definitely enjoyed the sunshine, I was thinking of this project and possible activities. 

I spent some of the day looking online for information about the pictures Sanjayan has taken and emailed from Palmyra.  I have added these to the gallery and hope to add a video clip he sent soon of 5 Manta Rays!!!  With each of the pictures (with the exception of the crab in a tree), I included it’s scientific name, its range, sometimes size, and what it feeds on.  As we get more pictures posted on here, you can use these pictures as observations activities and have students research the organisms.  I knew Manta Rays could grow large, but not 25 feet across!

Tomorrow I will be working on the Sanctuary flipchart, then conference call, and then I get to learn about ActivExpressions.

A thought to what might have been?

Palmyra Atoll's east lagoon. © Suzanne Case/TNC

John Berry, Former Assistant Secretary of the Interior, had this to say about Palmyra:

“Coral reefs today are already yielding potential cures and new medicines and scientists believe that they hold great promise for future discoveries. As such, this island may be the seed corn for cures to diseases or discoveries we cannot even name today. I believe it is not exaggeration to refer to Palmyra as the ‘Yellowstone of the future.’”

Palmyra’s pristine waters harbor five times as many coral species as the Florida Keys, and its shores offer one of the few nesting areas for seabirds within 450,000 square miles. Palmyra’s islets offer an untouched sanctuary to many rare and endangered species.

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Robin Bottini Journal for project

Week 3 -

Monday, I spent the day making changes to my flipchart and lessons. Another conference call to make sure everyone is on the same page.

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