High Tech High Students Publish Book Examining Endangered Species of San Diego Bay

Monday, 09 November 2009
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Students at High Tech High have just completed the fourth book in a series that examines the health of San Diego Bay.

“Our book is not just a story, but rather a call for conservation that we hope will echo across the beautiful city of San Diego and beyond, for the benefit of our biosphere and all its inhabitants.”

Gary and Jerri-Ann Jacobs High Tech High Student Authors

Through essays, photographs, poetry and illustrations, coupled with months of research and interviews, “San Diego Bay: A Call for Conservation” focuses on the bay’s health and 18 species that live in and around the bay, including the green sea turtle, California brown pelican, black skimmer, peregrine falcon and burrowing owl.

Each chapter in the richly illustrated 344-page book discusses key elements impacting the wildlife. Students explain the reasons for the species decline and efforts to recover populations and restore sensitive habitat that is located throughout the bay.

“Through the books, we hoped to empower our students with meaningful work and help provide them with a greater appreciation for nature,” the students’ biology teacher, Jay Vavra, wrote in the book’s introduction.

Famed primate researcher Jane Goodall wrote in the book’s preface that only recently has the importance of preserving biodiversity received the deserved attention from policymakers and the public. Yet she believes little or nothing is done to change the course.

“Thus it is immensely gratifying to see that the students who have researched, written and designed this beautiful book address this threat, along with other problems such as pollution, development, invasive species and climate change,” she wrote.

In addition to the scientific descriptions found throughout the book, the interdisciplinary project involves reflective writing as part of the student assignments. Student poetry is featured prominently throughout the book.

“A spread of muck sloshing under my feet…
I think, ‘What could live in this desolate land?’
Far in the distance, I see its grand splendor:
An ecosystem of life hidden ‘neath the first glance.
Through muck and water,I see the creatures surviving.
Beauty is here.
Life is here.”

High Tech High student Megan Morikawa, from her “Nature’s Unexpected Splendor”

In one of the books’ early chapters, students write about the dramatic changes in the land and water that have occurred over many years, a major ecological problem called “shifting baselines. The students paint a written picture of San Diego in the early days: a place with marshlands stretching from the coast through all of San Diego Bay’s tidelands. They write of a giant offshore kelp forest stretching for miles and they remind readers that at one time the Bay was teeming with fish and birds that lived over vast wetland areas.

They also point out that at times the bay was filled with dead zones and was much worse off then it is now.  The students bring a message of hope through their explorations of some of the solutions to the past destruction of the ecosystem. Included in that examination is a look at the Endangered Species Act, eelgrass restoration, (in which the Port is involved) Marine protected areas and sustainable fisheries.

The students also developed their own innovations to study the bay.  An example of this is the remote-controlled plankton tow boat that was used in the field and DNA bar coding for species identification back in the school biotech laboratory.  To sum up their efforts former Stanford University President Donald Kennedy commented, “If a group of Stanford students had done it, I would have been impressed!”

The student authors began their project when they were juniors. All the students who helped produce this year’s $24.95 book are in various colleges and universities across the country. Since starting the project about six years ago, more than 400 students have participated in the research and writing of the three other published books, and the two books which are works in progress.

About 2,000 copies of this year’s book have been printed. They are available in local bookstores and the Chula Vista Nature Center, Cabrillo National Monument, Birch Aquarium, San Diego Natural History Museum, San Diego Maritime Museum, Seabeeze Books & Charts in Point Loma, Amazon.com and Sdbayguide.com, the web site of the High Tech High San Diego Bay Study.

For the past four years, the Port of San Diego has provided cash and in-kind contributions to the project that is overseen by Vavra along with humanities teacher Tom Fehrenbacher. Since partnering with the school, which is located in Liberty Station, the former home of the Naval Training Center, the Port has contributed about $32,000 over three years.

The Port and other sponsoring agencies including the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and SeaGrant California, a University of California program based at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, will host a book-signing event at a later date.

High Tech High is a public charter school that opened in 2000. About 500 students attend the school which focuses on providing each student a personalized education through project-based work.

More information on the students and their project can be found at the San Diego Bay Study web site.

BREATHE ADIEU

“I watch the tides upon the sand;
They shape the gently sloping shore.
The meeting of the sea and land:
How did this place appear before?
The waters of the bay have seen
The impact of a drastic change.
What could the wordless whispers mean?
Familiar still, and yet so strange.
So rarely now is nature found
Untouched by damage of mankind.
While poisons dwell beneath the ground,
We leave Earth’s treasurers far behind.
With sadness now I face the truth:
Man brings with him an endless pain.
Vivacity of nature’s youth
Will never be seen again.”

High Tech High student Sean Curtice

The Port of San Diego is a public benefit corporation and special government   entity. Created in 1963 by an act of the California legislature, the Port manages San Diego harbor and administers the public lands along San Diego Bay. The Port has operated without tax dollars since 1970 and has been responsible for $1.5 billion in public improvements in its five member cities – Chula Vista, Coronado, Imperial Beach, National City and San Diego.  With a $10.6 billion economic impact on the San Diego region, the Port oversees two maritime cargo terminals, a cruise ship terminal, 17 public parks, various wildlife reserves and environmental initiatives, a Harbor Police department and the leases of more than 600 tenant and sub-tenant businesses around San Diego Bay.