SMORE is back for another year of discovery and challenge. The new school year brings new classrooms of students and new teachers together. Teacher Matt Conforti and his students from Barrow High School join SMORE AK. Coincidentally, his 9th grade students were last years 8th graders working with teacher Deb Greene. Sadly, Deb is unable to work with us this year, but will continue as a mentor to Matt. We look forward to working with Matt and his students in the Arctic!

Texas Teacher Lollie Garay is back with new back with a new group of middle school students to carry on the work. Actually, she has five students who worked alongside the 8th graders last year doing the freshwater sampling on the upper watershed. This year they'll work the Trinity Bay area all the way down to the Bolivar Peninsula. They are preparing for our first sampling to be done on Oct. 5.

Of course I am back in the classroom our high school students from Bradwell Institute and at this writing have already completed our fall sampling! Also Mrs. Lindsey Martin's class will be joining us in our sampling this year from Bradwell. Read about it soon in my blog. I have also recruited fifth grade teacher Becky Busby from Frank Long Elementary to work with my students and am in a local sampling collaboration. We are excited to have them and look forward to reading more about them!

For anyone reading this blog for the first time, there's history on how SMORE (Students Monitoring Ocean Response to Eutrophication) began in the archived blogs for 2011. Just click on the archived section on the right hand side!

I hope you'll continue to check in and read the blogs posted by our teams in Alaska, Texas and Georgia ( links are on the right hand side of this blog page). I've also provided links to webpages for the research scientists working with us on this ocean science project: Dr. Tish Yager, University of Georgia at Athens, and Dr. Marc Frischer, Skidaway Institute of Oceanography.

Back soon with a report on our first sampling !!!