Ruud Kleinpaste: Teaching time in the Marlborough Sounds

Saturday Morning with Jack Tame

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12d ago 4:40

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I’ve just come back after a week on an offshore Island in the Marlborough Sounds – its name is Maud Island (Te Pākeka).

One of those wonderful closed Island Reserves, managed by the Department of Conservation. All sorts of pretty special birds and native frogs, as well as rare insects of course.

And in the water, all sorts of marine beauties, such as colourful hermit crabs.

These critters move into an empty snail shell to protect themselves from being eaten by predators, live in front of your eyes!

But this wasn’t just a jolly trip to Paradise, it was a lot more important than just a field trip.

DOC organises overnight trips for local school kids in the Marlborough Region. A dozen or so board a boat late morning and end up walking around the island with some DOC rangers, my friend Richard, and myself. And the stuff we come across is literally part of their environmental curriculum that will stick inside their brains for decades to come.

Seeing these students live locally, these 24 hour education experiences are likely to be beneficial for the young locals of the future. This was teaching time for students! Wouldn’t it be a great idea to have these kinds of amazing encounters for all of our kids (so they learn about the Operations Manual of Planet Earth)?

One of the cool things you can do with kids on an environmental trip away, is putting on a bright light at night – especially lights with some Mercury Vapour emissions that attract the moths, beetles, flies, and all the nocturnal flying invertebrates on a nice dark night. The numbers of species can be significant, and the stories always come down to the question: “What do these creatures do, out here in the night? What’s their job? What is the ecosystem service?”

The research is brilliant work for teachers and the kids – it never ends!

The next few weeks (in the school holidays) it’s the teachers turn. The Sir Peter Blake Trust tackles a lot of environmental education in the form of virtual reality sessions whereby kids (and teachers) see the marine creatures through 3-dimensional masks, as well as the quality of our coastlines – or the not so beautiful areas destroyed by pollution and kina barrens.

Gathering plankton and magnifying the incredible life.

Visiting Campbells Bay rock pools, Stardome Observatory, getting into Matauranga Māori and spending a day at Tawharanui in the most wonderful forest track with rare birds, orchids and Kiwi. The whole idea is to create nature literate teachers who create cohort after cohort of nature literate kids – a key part of our Education to restore our Country and its Ecology.

And you know what? I love the way we’re going!

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