Team Marine
We are a group of eco-minded students from Santa Monica High School who participate in various ocean stewardship/environmental science competitions, such as the QuikSCience Challenge, Edison Challenge, and the Solar Cup. We try to raise awareness about the global marine debris, energy and climate change crises through different service learning and community outreach projects. Team Marine was started by the Marine Biology students of 2006/2007 and coached by Marine Biology teacher Benjamin Kay,. (Benjamin Kay’s Class Website)
Team Marine has, for the second time, split into two groups. While one group primarily focuses on the electric car conversion of a 1971 Volkswagon Beetle, the other group focuses on the ban of the plastic bag, backing up this ban with two years of research. Team Marine went to support the Sustainability Bill of Rights Resolution for Santa Monica by speaking in front of the city council board. We visited schools in order to teach and spread awareness about plastic bag pollution and the effects of tailpipe exhaust. The two teams collaborated on a common project: working with the district board to make our schools more environmentally friendly… Read more
Team Marine 2010- 2011
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Student projects varied by team. Team Marine QuikSCience focused on raising awareness about solutions to our global plastic pollution, climate, and energy crises while Team Marine Edison (a.k.a. “The Lab Coats”) focused on the Surfrider Foundation Teach and Test Ocean Water Quality Monitoring Program and the Recycle for Life Straws Program. While varied in focus, the two teams frequently collaborated with one another and recruited numerous peers and community members to participate in their endeavors. Some of their achievements this year include producing an educational documentary about plastic marine debris, making how-to videos for the Teach and Test and Life Straw Programs, collecting 26,764 recyclables to raise money to buy and send water-purifying Life Straws to Cambodia and Africa, conducting a waste characterization study on marine debris around the Pico-Kenter and Venice storm drains, performing research on the buoyancy of disposable plastics, building a predictive model for plastic accumulation in near-and offshore marine habitats, organizing and leading a large student march through the city to promote a ban on single-use plastic bags and water bottles… Read more.
After attending numerous conferences, workshops and lectures to educate ourselves, we taught community members about marine debris, storm drain transport and runoff, sustainable products and practices, renewable energies, and global climate change. Our eco-projects included beach clean ups, a school-wide plastic bottle cap drive, erecting a REthink Art Display on the 3rd St. Promenade made out of the collected 34,727 bottle caps, organizing two student marches against single-use plastic products, testifying at City Hall to express our support of the ban on plastic bags from all retail stores in SM… Read more.
We attended many conferences, workshops, and lectures to teach ourselves about sustainable living and the effects of plastic on marine life. We attended beach cleanups, conducted a plastic bag drive at our school, displayed a REthink Art Piece on the beach near the bike path using the collected 111 lbs of plastic bags, testified at City Hall to persuade city council members to ban single-use plastic bags from retail stores in SM, organized two student marches to promote reusable bags over plastic bags, hosted and presented in a Generation Earth Water Pollution Workshop… Read more.
We were the “guinea pigs,” the first Team Marine ever!!! Weconducted a school-wide recycling survey involving 1050 of our peers, and after finding that many of our peers either didn’t recycle or know what to recycle, we organized and presented in a school assembly with a recycling expert, Neil Guglielmo. We also organized a beach clean-up with 100 participants and later sorted, counted, and weighed all trash categories. Furthermore, we presented our recycling lesson plan and skit to several local schools and congregations, and made an iDVD movie of our environmental work (soon to be posted onYoutube by Team Marine 08-09). We won Best Community Service in the QS Challenge… Read more.
