Hands On, Feet Wet! The Educational Outreach of the Wetlands Institute
Naturalist and participant discussing items found during Exploration Point program.
For more than 50 years, The Wetlands Institute has offered one of the best outdoor classroom environments in South Jersey, providing enriching and unique learning opportunities to students and the local community. Though thousands of people visit Seven Mile Beach every year, many don’t know about the amazing ecosystem in their own backyard, and we make it our mission at The Wetlands Institute to educate people of all ages about the marsh and coastal ecosystem at large.
Each year, The Wetlands Institute hosts more than 17,000 visitors who participate in year-round education program offerings and special events. Though open in some capacity year-round, during the summer months we expand our program selection to offer up to eight programs a day, from informational programs where visitors meet and learn about our local turtles to our Catch O’ The Day program where visitors put on the waders and catch fish for our aquarium with a seine net! On the weekends, we even offer specialty crabbing and fishing programs, and in 2021 a visitor caught a Smooth Dogfish shark right off our dock.
On top of our on-site programs, every summer The Wetlands Institute expands visitor programs beyond the borders of the marsh and offers weekly programs in Stone Harbor and Avalon. Partnering with local municipalities, The Wetlands Institute is able to conduct naturalist-led programs on the beaches of Stone Harbor Point, along the Avalon Dune and Beach Trail, and through the wooded trails of the Stone Harbor Bird Sanctuary. These unique programs highlight local conservation efforts and research projects, and showcase the ecological diversity of Seven Mile Beach.
Summer also brings the return of our yearly Summer Nature Program. Under the guidance of the program instructors, participants ages 4 to 13 explore nine weeks of fun themes and topics, each focused on our local ecosystem. During these weeks, children participate in a variety of activities that challenge what they know, stretch their imaginations, and immerse them in new experiences. Most weeks also include a field trip to explore other natural area of Cape May County, and end with a day at the beach to learn and explore with all of their new friends. As program enrollments climb each year, we are honored to carry on family traditions and create lasting memories of the amazing Jersey Shore.
Though summer can be our busiest season, our education efforts don’t stop once Labor Day rolls around! Our formal education programs run year-round, serving more than 12,000 children and young adults, from nearly 150 local schools and organizations annually. These programs run the gamut of topics and locations, and include both programs held at The Wetlands Institute (our Environmental Education Field Trips), as well as our off-site Traveling Environmental Education and Group Outreach programs. As not every school or organization is able to visit The Wetlands Institute for a program, our traveling programs allow us to reach into classrooms in New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania and Delaware, sharing the wonders of marine life with the local community. All of our traveling programs bring live animals (packed safely into coolers for the journey) and allow students who potentially have never even seen the ocean to touch and hold the unique critters that live in our waters.
On-site, our Environmental Education Field Trip Programs emphasize hands-on and experimental learning. We believe children learn more from getting a little wet or muddy than from listening to a lecture, especially when surrounded by the beautiful marsh! School groups visiting The Wetlands Institute range in age from kindergarten to high school and experience a variety of educational activities tailored to their age group. Our younger students might participate in a “Marsh Critter Discover Walk,” where a naturalist leads them down our salt marsh trail in search of ferocious osprey and even the occasional baby terrapin. Our high school students might take a bus to a local beach and use cutting-edge technology to test the quality of the water in our ocean. No two programs and two days are the same, which leads to an exciting field-trip season.
By far, our most unique formal education program is our Science Education at Sea (SEAS) program. What makes it so unique? You might have guessed by the name, but this three-hour educational program is conducted entirely on a boat! As part of our SEAS program, we set sail from Wildwood Crest, travel around Cape May into the Atlantic Ocean and out into the Delaware Bay. While on board, students experience several educational learning stations and all participants get involved with the sampling and learning process. One of the highlights (for both participants and instructors) during the SEAS program is using a 27-foot trawl net to collect live marine specimens. Each time the trawl net is deployed, it brings back some memorable catches, including a 24-inch fluke, a 4-foot dogfish, a juvenile glass eel, and a discarded, full-size aerial drone. However, nothing compares to the rare sighting of a 30-foot juvenile humpback whale. This young whale was rolling playfully on its side while waving its long flippers in the air and crashing them back down into the water. Everyone on board was in awe and very excited about this legendary moment in SEAS program history.
Though our formal education programs serve students from all over, providing high-quality environmental education for students in our local community is an endeavor that is very near and dear to our hearts. For many years, The Wetlands Institute has maintained longstanding partnerships with local schools throughout Cape May County. Each year, nearly 2,000 students from Ocean City schools, Middle Township schools and Stone Harbor and Avalon Elementary schools have the opportunity to experience multi-engagement education programs. These range from an aquarium right in their classroom to guided beach and wetland explorations. All of our programs allow students to explore and understand the surrounding South Jersey ecosystems they call home, and we look forward to continuing to give future students a deeper appreciation for their local environment.
As the pandemic changed the course of environmental education, The Wetlands Institute spent time reworking our programs to foster a virtual connection to the natural world, increasing accessibility and reaching new audiences around the globe. Our Virtual Wetlands Experience is a new gateway to exploring our wetland and marine environment, for both visitors and virtual classrooms. It includes virtual and interactive tours along our salt marsh trail and elevated walkway, in our aquarium and terrapin station, and at our aquarium teaching and touch tank; live animal Creature Features; downloadable teacher and parent resources; and much more.
Perhaps the greatest expansion in virtual programming came with the ability to livestream from the field. The Wetlands Institute has always focused on offering a hands-on, feet-wet experience, with students getting into the mud of the marsh or the sand of the ocean. In order to replicate that experience virtually, we needed to take kids out of our indoor virtual “command station,” and out into the marsh. As we livestreamed from the field, students watched seasonal naturalists in real-time chasing down fiddler crabs in the marsh, pointing out plants and animals along the Salt Marsh Trail, or using a seine net to catch live animals from the tidal channel, adding an element of surprise and “teachable moments” to every trip.
Throughout all that we do, we continue to focus on mentorship through adult and junior volunteer opportunities and undergraduate environmental education internships. We also continue to offer place-based education for homeschoolers, scouts and local youth organizations through customized environmental education programming and overnight experiences.
Much has changed within the realm of education since the first visitors, students and teachers set foot on the marsh many years ago. What remains the same is our desire to teach environmental education and to allow individuals to create a genuine connection to their environment. It might be by offering our grounds as a safe outdoor learning space … partnering with local schools to provide place-based education programs on their school grounds … or by continuing to offer our traditional in-person programs, alongside our new naturalist guided virtual program options. We welcome visitors and participants of all ages to choose from a number of hands-on activities and/or virtual experiences to customize a wetlands experience in the best format for each family group, classroom, youth group, campground, or organization. We’ll see you soon!