Over the past couple of weeks, fifth grade classes from Cottage Lane Elementary School have been visiting the Hudson River Field Station to explore and study their environment! Students have been engaging in place-based learning at the Piermont Pier to study the diverse species that can be found in the Hudson River as well as its water chemistry with scientists from Lamont-Doherty.
On Tuesday, students in Chris Haggarty and Vincent Marinelli’s class as well as Bill McAuliffe and Melanie Nunes’s class took a trip down to the pier and rotated between various hands-on activities. Students learned about the topography of the Hudson River and studied the water chemistry of the river water by testing the temperature, salt content and how much oxygen is dissolved in the water. Students also donned waders to go into the Hudson River and using a seine net, worked together to catch Atlantic silversides, striped bass, crabs and eels. Afterwards, they learned how to identify the marine life they caught using a fish identification guide.
