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Youth Area Watch - Community Restoration
Project - Cordova 2000
Introduction
Our restoration project was creating an
artificial habitat in the local Cordova harbor. We
made our artificial habitat by sinking 10 tires,
tied to the docks, in the local harbor at various
places. We got our idea from the local science
center which had one tire sunk in the harbor. Our
Marine Biology class used this tire all year to
collect organisms for our saltwater tank. We had
one of the best saltwater tanks in town. Our extra
tires will allow Mt. Eccles Elementary School,
Cordova Jr-Sr High School, Prince William Sound
Science Center's Discovery Room, and the Forest
Service to collect marine organisms (mussels, sea
stars, anemones, crabs, and nudibranchs) for
educational purposes. The tires will be especially
useful for science projects at the high school. We
spoke with teachers from the Elementary and High
schools, as well as the Discovery Room and Forest
Service and they were all excited about the
idea.
Our Plan
Our plan was to sink 10 or 12 tires in the new
harbor in Cordova. The tires would have holes
drilled in them so they would sink and then they
would be tied to the docks (floats) so we could
pull them up to study them and take samples. We
also wanted to sink a tire near the fuel and Coast
Guard docks to see if the tires would have
different animals and plants on them. We planned on
making a map of where the tires were so teachers
and students could find the tires. After the tires
were sunk we were going to send maps to all of the
teachers in the Elementary School, all of the
science teachers in the High School, and the
teachers in the Discovery Room and Forest
Service.
We planned to sink the tires during May, before
school was out. We asked students from the High
School's Marine Biology class to help us with the
project.
We asked the Harbormaster for permission to sink
the tires. He told us to use the new harbor area
since it didn't get used as much as the old
harbor.
We planned on collecting old, abandoned tires
for the project and drilling them with holes so
they would sink well. We decided to use old line
that was laying around the school to tie up the
tires with.
Implementation
We had collected a couple of tires earlier on
during the year and then we found 10 more in a
ditch near the school. Students from the Marine
Biology class drilled the holes in the tires for
us. This was very hard and smelly. We sank a couple
of tires in the new harbor on May 5 and we
discovered that the line we used was not sinking
line. It floated at the surface when the tide was
out. This was a problem because boat propellers
could get caught in it. We ended up getting old
scrap metal and tying it to the line so any slack
line would sink. This worked very well. We ended up
sinking the rest of the tires on May 9 in the new
harbor where there weren't many boats. We ended up
sinking 9 tires total.
While we were sinking the tires a lot of
fishermen asked us what we were doing. When we told
them they all thought it was a good idea and were
very excited.
We did not sink any tires yet on the fuel or
Coast Guard docks because the tide was too powerful
there and we thought the tires would get wound
around the pilings. We are going to talk to the
Harbormaster this week (May 12) and see if he has
any suggestions. We would really like to be able to
compare the animals from the harbor to the animals
from the fuel dock.
Summary
We really enjoyed doing our project because the
weather was great and it was fun to run around on
the docks. We are very excited to see how fast
animals colonize the tires. Some of the first tires
we sank already have small mussels and barnacles on
them and sea stars in them! The tires will be very
useful for the schools and great for lots of
science projects next year.
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