Long Island Aquarium & Exhibition Center Teams Up with Sayville High School.
(RIVERHEAD, NY) Long Island Aquarium & Exhibition Center announced today the formation of an educational partnership that will allow Sayville High School students to work with its Exhibition Center staff to help care for and maintain exhibit plants while housed in the school’s 1,000-square-foot Greenhouse.
Plant life is an integral part of the Exhibition Center’s indoor 5,000-square-foot Butterflies & Birds exhibit that opened in 2011. The exhibit requires copious plant life year-round that acts as sources of food for the butterflies. This same plant life must also be able to withstand an exhibit temperature of 80¡ and 80% humidity. However, despite best efforts, all plants require natural lighting.
Long Island Aquarium & Exhibition Center’s Jeffry Petracca instructing Sayville students how to prune Porter Weed (Stachytarpheta) plants and teaching them how to repot them into larger pots so that they will be ready to bring into the exhibit in a few months. Pictured left to right: Jeffry Petracca, Jill Mediatore, Sarah Koehler, Anna Smith, Gianna Fraccalvieri, Michael Nyman, and teachers Sonja Anderson and Maria Brown.
Explains exhibit co-curator, Jeffry Petracca, “Up till now, we’ve been rotating these plants from the exhibit with those kept in an outdoor location. This has worked for us but becomes more problematic when the weather turns cold. Best case scenario has always been to find a greenhouse to house these plants and to be able to cultivate our own.”
In October 2013, Aquarium intern, Sarah Koehler, who is also a Sayville High School senior, recommended that her high school help house our plants when they are off-exhibit. Sayville research teacher and program advisor, Maria Brown, explains, “Since 1993, the school maintains a large greenhouse on the property that is an extension of their SWEEP (Students Working for Enhanced Environmental Protection) program, a subchapter of Keep America Beautiful. This glass greenhouse is entirely automated, complete with climate control and misting and watering systems. It is a wonderful educational asset to our school and for our SWEEP students.”
SWEEP is an active Sayville High School club that has been committed to the preservation and restoration of the vast natural resources around the Sayville area through a variety of recycling programs, clean-up projects, water conservation, water pollution prevention, and public awareness of indigenous plants.
The project this year will most likely revolve solely around plant propagation and care, plant pathology, and pest management. SWEEP president and Koehler’s classmate, Jill Mediatore, will take the lead on the project. Mediatore will work with Brown to coordinate student responsibilities – not only will SWEEP participants work on the project, but so will students in the Advanced Placement Environmental Science, a self-contained special education class, and research students from Brown’s class.
Aquarium Education Director, Robert Carasiti, has high hopes for the partnership and how it will evolve. “Some potential areas that we are going to explore educationally are IPM (Integrated Pest Management), which is the use of classical and modern approaches to pest control to combat pests in a more sustainable and efficient way. One example is the use of beneficial insects.”
Brown’s students are currently examining genetics of animals and would like to expand their exploration to plants as well. This, as well as the examination of insect genetics, can be made possible through our partnership.
Looking ahead, co-curator Petracca is scheduled to give a workshop at the school on March 20 at 1:00pm.
About Long Island Aquarium & Exhibition Center (LIA & EC)
Two great family attractions in one fin-tastic destination, this full-scale Aquarium and Exhibition Center features one of the largest all-living coral reef displays in this hemisphere, a 120,000-gallon shark tank, year-round sea lion shows, numerous touch tanks, and more than 100 exhibits and interactive experiences, including Shark Dive, Pirate Snorkel Adventure, Atlantis Explorer Tour Boat, and Sea Lion Kiss. Long Island Exhibition Center’s first exhibit is Butterflies & Birds!
Located adjacent to the Hyatt Place East End & Resort Marina, LIA & EC is also the home of the Riverhead Foundation for Marine Research and Preservation, New York’s only authorized marine mammal and sea turtle rescue and rehabilitation center, and the 120-slip transient marina, Treasure Cove Resort Marina. The Aquarium was ranked by Parents Magazine as one of the “Top Aquariums for Kids.” The Aquarium & Exhibition Center is open from 10:00am to 5:00pm daily (closed Christmas & Thanksgiving Days). Visit Web site for more details: LongIslandAquarium.com.
