Seaweed School on Hornby Island: training the next generation

Roy L Hales/ Cortes Currents - UBC partnered with Hornby Island to run Seaweed School, a program that allowed high-school-aged students to remain in their community for an additional year instead of attending high school in Courtenay. Through fieldwork with UBC instructors and biology undergraduates, students learned to identify, study and monitor local seaweed species. This is more than an academic excersize. According to Dr. Bridgette Clarkston, “Seaweeds are the forests of our oceans—the primary producers of ecosystems, providing oxygen, food, carbon sequestration, and more.” Yet these vital underwater forests are under threat: “Most of the big canopy-forming kelps have perished over the last few decades, likely due to rising temperatures.” The research conducted by Seaweed school is adding to our knowledge of local seaweeds. In today’s program, we speak with Dr. Clarkston, a co-creator of Seaweed School and an associate professor of teaching in UBC’s Department of Botany, and Seaweed School alumna Ava Zielinski.