Jacob Cohn Photo
16-year-old Etienne Recapet at the wheel of the Island Rover.
Jack Walsh, second mate aboard the Island Rover, reached into a wooden tank and showed a group of wide-eyed kids, their most fearsome catch.
The fearsome catch was probably a crab, which had to be detached from the tail of a fish. The crew of the Island Rover had also unearthed several shrimp as well as both summer and winter flounder. Walsh explained the difference between the two: The easiest way to tell them apart is by looking at the eyes, which are on different sides of their heads.
The oohing and aahing — and explaining — took place on a cruise Wednesday in New Haven Harbor designed to show how a group of high-schoolers are spending part of their summer.
The Island Rover‘s crew had collected a fine haul, which it planned to use as part of a project logging organisms found in New Haven Harbor.
This crew was different from most: apart from Walsh and the captain, the ship was manned entirely by high school students as part of a summer program to provide education in the marine sciences.
The Sound Summer Exploring Aquaculture (SSEA), now over 10 years old, is based out of the Sound School, an inter-district high school in New Haven which concentrates on aquaculture and maritime trades. The school, founded in 1981, is one of 19 vocational agriculture schools funded by the state of Connecticut.
This year the summer program there has 192 participants from eight different school districts: Cheshire, East Haven, Guilford, Hamden, New Haven, North Branford, North Haven and West Haven. (Branford and Madison have also participated in previous years.) The three-week program is funded by state grants promoting desegregation; the program’s main goal apart from education is to introduce students to peers from other backgrounds.
And to the water.
Second mate Jack Walsh holds a flounder out for inspection.
The SSEA involves plenty of hands-on activity working with wildlife as well as extensive work with boats. The Sound School has around 30 boats, Pynn said. Many were built onsite, though most are smaller than the Island Rover.
A young volunteer casts a buoy into the water as second mate Jack Walsh looks on.
On Wednesday’s cruise, orders were given by Captain Jack Cardello, but a group of trained Sound School students handled much of the boat’s operation. They took turns piloting the boat on the open water and working together to catch creatures with what Walsh called an otter trawl. The name comes from the word “outer,” as in the Outer Banks, spoken in a Maine accent.
One crew member who helped pilot the Island Rover was Sound School junior Etienne Recapet of Branford, who is in his first year working with the program. Recapet, 16, said he became “really interested in boating” after his brother began attending the school. He said that the Sound School, along with the opportunity to participate in the SSEA, “is helping me train for a career.”
SSEA students haul in a net from the harbor.