JERSEY CITY — The Hudson County Schools of Technology Foundation and New Jersey Sea Grant Consortium were awarded a $14,552 grant from the PSE&G SPARK Foundation to to continue their underwater exploration summer camp, Aquatic Adventures — Science Enrichment Workshop, for High Technology Middle School Explore 2000 students
This is the second year that Public Service Electric & Gas’s SPARK Foundations has funded the summer camp, which focuses on the development and use of remotely operated vehichles, or ROVs, in deep-sea exploartion.
The program is designed to increase the consortium’s Science, Technology, Engineering and Math, or STEM, offerings while continuing to focus on ocean sciences, said Diana Burich, the consortium K-12 program coordinator.
Late last year, the foundation and the consortium were awarded $24,000 in grants from PSE&G and the PADI Foundation to bring underwater robotics programs to afterschool and out-of-school settings.
“We proposed to develop and implement a four-day summer camp program for students from High Technology Middle School’s Explore 2000, in Jersey City, and provide a professional development workshop for their teachers to perpetuate the underwater robotics program in Jersey City in the future,” Burich said. “All of the activities for camp were student-centered and hands-on, and encouraged the children’s natural sense of inquiry.”
WEST LONG BRANCH, N.J. — Bait shop owners will soon receive “Striped Bass Catch and Release” posters, which marine experts hope will educate anglers on the best practices for releasing angled striped bass.
The posters are being mailed to bait shop owners throughout the state by New Jersey Sea Grant Consortium and Monmouth University in advance of the fall stripers. The posters are part of a three-year campaign called Stripers for the Future, which is intended to allow anglers to understand the causes of stress in angled striped bass and educate them about best practices to increase the survival of released fish. We believe that an understanding of proper catch-and-release techniques should be a key piece of every fisherman’s education. A brochure reviewing the best practices for catch and release can be found here: Striped Bass Catch and Release Brochure. Read More …
Catch the Education Department at New Jersey Sea Grant Consortium this fall at two Professional Development workshops presenting “Beaches, More than Just a Day of Fun in the Sun.” Both sessions will present “hands-on” activities on dunes, dune management, the impacts of climate change on the Jersey Shore, and storm preparedness and resiliency.
First you will find us at the New Jersey Science Convention on Tuesday, October 14th from 10-11am. Details about this important event and program information can be found at http://www.njscienceconvention.org/
Then on Thursday, October 16th from 10am-11am we will be presenting at the annual fall workshop of the NJ Marine Science Educators Association. Details about this exciting workshop which includes a boat trip on Sandy Hook Bay can be found at http://njmarineed.weebly.com/
Dr. Peter Rowe, director of research and extension at the New Jersey Sea Grant Consortium (NJSGC), will join a panel on Wednesday, Oct. 1, at St. Peter’s University in Jersey City to discuss how climate change is affecting coastal communities.
The panel, “Climate Change Challenges for Coastal Communities,” is the first of three at the 2014 Jersey City Sustainability Conference. Dr. Jon Miller, NJSGC’s coastal processes specialist and associate research professor at Stevens Institute of Technology will join Dr. Rowe on the panel along with Amanda Nesheiwat, environmental coordinator for the Town of Secaucus.
The Consortium’s involvement in the conference supports the Jersey City Coastal Communities Climate Adaptation Initiative, a resiliency planning project developed by Stevens Institute of Technology and funded by a grant from the National Sea Grant program and the NJSGC.
“The call for proposals was for researcher-community partnerships to develop models, tools, or other methodologies for coastal adaptation, with the long term goal for communities to utilize these tools in their planning,” Rowe said. “The Jersey City project was successful because of its innovative modeling techniques and well coordinated collaboration between the city and Stevens.”
The second and third panels that day will be on solutions and adaptations, and implementation. Dr. Philip Orton, of Stevens Institute and a principal investigator on the Jersey City grant, who built the inundation model for Jersey City, will sit on the third panel.
In July, Jersey City residents had a chance to review some of the model scenarios and adaptations prepared by Dr. Orton and others at an open house coordinated by Tanya Marione, Senior Planner for Jersey City’s Division of City Planning.
Some suggestions that were presented for making Jersey City more resistant to an overflowing Hudson River included building street levees and flood gates. Some sections of the city where the levees are proposed would require raising roads or land to between three and eleven feet above the current grade.
You can now register for two Boy Scout Individual Enrollment classes: Oceanography and Environmental Science. We offer these classes once in the fall and once in the spring. It is for individual scouts (not whole troops) who wish to study Oceanography or Environmental Science.
A workshop on undersea imaging took place on January 14-15, 2014, hosted by the New Jersey Sea Grant Consortium (NJSGC) and the NOAA Fisheries James J. Howard Marine Science Laboratory on Sandy Hook, which evaluated the strengths and limits of photographic, videographic and direct observations, as well as associated platforms, for seafloor imaging as part of a benthic monitoring strategy. The workshop brought together government and academic scientists and engineers to discuss the need for cost effective and comprehensive characterization of offshore macrobenthic and demersal communities and habitats in the Northeast Large Marine Ecosystem. A downloadable copy of the report is available here.
An article based on Dr. Robin Leichenko’s New Jersey Sea Grant Consortium (NJSGC)-funded research project, Economic Vulnerability to Climate Change in Coastal New Jersey: A Stakeholder-Based Assessment, was recently published in the premier issue of the Journal of Extreme Events, published by World Scientific. The project is investigating economic vulnerabilities to climate extremes and climate change in coastal New Jersey before and after Superstorm Sandy and uses a stakeholder-based approach to identify key climate-related economic stresses, risks, and vulnerabilities.
Together with a team of more than 50 educators working as the Harbor Education Task Force, Metropolitan Waterfront Alliance and NJ Sea Grant is proud to present Harbor Literacy Points for Educators, Students, and the Public. Designed to integrate the study of harbors, rivers, and estuaries into the everyday curriculum of elementary, middle, and high school students, Harbor Literacy Points outlines key topics, learning opportunities, and resources offered by our proximity to the waters of New York and New Jersey. Focusing on watersheds, estuaries, marine ecosystems, water quality, and harbor history, Harbor Literacy Points aims to increase interactive learning with urban waterways.
SANDY HOOK, NJ: June 1-7 is Rip Current Awareness Week, a nationally recognized ocean safety campaign aimed at educating the public on rip currents. Organized by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association, the National Sea Grant Program, the United States Lifesaving Association, and the National Park Service, each year NOAA designates the first full week of June as National Rip Current Awareness Week, coinciding with the traditional start of the summer vacation season.