Mrs. Kushin and I have started on a new collaborative project, Albatross Bolus Dissection. Why? We have a shared interest and the animal that produces the bolus, the albatross. Albatross migrate for food between the Hawaii Archipelago and the North Pacific/Bering Sea. What a fantastic connection!
Albatross are pelagic seabirds. That means they spend all their time out in the ocean and come to land ONLY to breed. Many of the North Pacific Albatross breed in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands in Papahanaumokuakea National Monument. Sometimes they fly all the way up to the Bering Sea just to get food for their babies!
What do they find when they go to get food?Lots of marine debris! Both St. Paul (in the Pribilof Islands) and Maui (in the Hawaiian Archipelago)witness the marine debris and both teachers participate in a beach clean up every year. Mrs. Kushin and Mrs. Prevenas thought that an Albatross Bolus Dissection Project would help their students understand the terrible impact of marine debris on these majestic animals.Mrs. Kushin and Mrs. P had a chance to meet face to face at the PolarTREC Orientation and Sharefair held in Fairbanks Alaska in February. It was there that they planned to go forward with the different projects. The Albatross Bolus Dissection is the first project of this schoo
l year. There will be about one each quarter so that we may learn together and share our observations.The next project will be a Beach Clean Up where we will sort our marinedebris into different categories, graph it, and compare what we have found. We plan on doing this in May.
