Spring 2026 Education + Outreach
With the end of the school year approaching, Back to the Bays’ Outreach and Education program has been busy reaching hundreds of local students through field trips and in-school programs over the past 2 months.
Over the past couple of months our educators visited Bridgehampton High School, Amagansett Elementary school, and West Hampton Beach Elementary School with some of our most popular programming, including traveling touch tanks, seaweed pressing, classroom Discovery Tanks, Blue Carbon curriculum, and salt marsh grass propagation.
We are celebrating the culmination of our year-long Reef Raisers + Meadow Makers program, made possible by a Long Island Sound Futures Fund grant, in which students learn about the importance and ecological role of oyster reefs, salt marshes, and eelgrass, and how CCE Marine Program restores these precious habitats.
This May, an energetic group of 6th graders from Southampton enjoyed a mini Reef Raisers program at Camp Quinipet on Shelter Island. They got to observe and handle live spat-on-shell oysters and use our new waterproof Long Island Marine and Coastal Field Guide to discover the diverse marine invertebrates and fish that utilize oyster reef habitats.
Using this new knowledge for inspiration, the students crafted their own mini oyster reef habitat from modeling clay and real oyster shells.
Above, students learn to measure spat-on-shell oysters they are raising in their classroom. Read our dedicated RR + MM blog HERE, to find out what all of our north shore students have been up to.
One particularly inspired student manipulated the multicolored pipe cleaners in a unique way to recreate specific species of the red algae she was studying in the field guide!
Over 4 days, with the help of many CCE staff experts and volunteers, we hosted the entire second grade of Miller Avenue School from Shoreham-Wading River at our Southold facility. Students toured our hatchery, met live animals in our touch tank room, and explored the salt marsh.
Engaging youth directly in our restoration methods helps foster a sense of responsibility and deep connection to the local environment.
We involved local youth in eelgrass restoration with a Marine Meadows workshop where they helped make burlap discs to be used in future eelgrass plantings.
At a SEAd Bomb workshop, students mixed soil, clay litter, and native wildflower seeds to make little balls that can be tossed in gardens, roadsides, or bare soil to restore pollinator plant growth.
Field trip season is now officially in full swing, so lots more schools will be visiting our facilities over the next month before school lets out. We can't wait to see all of those excited little faces as they get to explore our coastal habitats and meet live marine animals in our hands-on touch tank room. What an inspiring way to kick off summer!