A weekend program offers mid-Atlantic high school students a chance to experience the Chesapeake Bay hands-on.

Two Chesapeake Bay Foundation educators and two Walkersville High School students examine the washed up shell of a horseshoe crab on Fox Island in Virginia.

It's a sunny Friday afternoon in April and high school senior Devon McCurdy stands on the beach using a pocketknife to dissect a round, marble-sized sea squirt.

“This is so cool,” she keeps saying.

“I think that's the digestive system right there,” says Susan Faibisch, her science teacher, as she leans over McCurdy's shoulder and points to a tiny brown curlicue inside the squirt.

A few feet away, two sophomore girls are knee-deep in the ocean and dragging a net between them, hoping to dredge up more shallow-water critters. They're mostly getting winter jellyfish (it's still too cold for larger summer jellyfish)—which they were squeamish about picking up at first but now transfer from nets to buckets without hesitation.

		Mucking in the Mud See the highlights of the weekend excursion on the Chesapeake Bay. Photos and Narration: Sarah C.P. Williams

The group—14 students and 2 teachers—is from Walkersville High School in Maryland. They're spending three days mucking around the mud of the Chesapeake Bay through an HHMI-funded education program run by the Chesapeake Bay Foundation (CBF), a nonprofit group dedicated to improving the health of the Bay. HHMI funds such programs to inspire the next generation of scientists.

This is Faibisch's ninth trip with CBF—she comes both fall and spring with any Walkersville science students who are game for a long weekend of canoeing, crabbing, hiking, exploring, and learning about the history, health, and importance of the Chesapeake Bay.

This weekend, they're staying on Great Fox Island, Virginia, 6 miles off the eastern shore of the Chesapeake Bay—a three-hour drive and an hour-long boat ride from Washington, D.C. This 50-acre archipelago houses one of a dozen CBF education centers. About 18 class trips run every spring in April and May, leaving few quiet days in between, and teacher training institutes and leadership programs are held here in the summer. The lodge is off-the-grid—the few appliances are powered by solar panels on the roof, and the toilets are self-composting; a wood stove is the only heat source. Before they can wash dishes after each meal, the students pedal a bicycle in the kitchen to raise the pressure in a well and start the water running.

Photo: Sarah C.P. Williams

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