HAMPTON, Va. - Fifth grade students from Langley Elementary School, as well as the kindergarteners they mentored, visited a local sanctuary reef Wednesday to add baby oysters they've been raising.
Students also wrote messages of hope on the oysters' shells before tossing the empty shells into the reef to provide something for their oysters to attach themselves to.
Langley fifth grader Reggie Ervin and Betsy McAllister, Hampton STEM teacher specialist and educator-in-residence at the National Institute of Aerospace (NIA), spoke about what they learned and how raising oysters has a positive impact on our local waterways.
This year, nine teachers from eight different schools within the Hampton City Schools (HCS) system have been raising oysters and learning about sampling, adaptations, life cycles, food webs, resilience, water quality and more. This was made possible thanks to donations from the Tidewater Oyster Gardener’s Association, the Hampton Waterways Restoration Project subcommittee of the Hampton Clean City Commission, the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, the Elizabeth Lake Environmental Stewardship Committee and local ecotourism business Shored Up.
With this year's contributions, HCS students will have placed more than 100,000 oysters in local waterways over the past seven years!
