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Canoeing the Sloughs

Many of the sloughs that riddle the edges of the Bay look like little more than ditches. But a new Save the Bay program is giving middle and high schools students an up close-and-personal view of these channels and their ecological importance.

Canoes in Sloughs teaches participants about canoeing and then takes them into the sloughs for a day of bird and plant observation, water testing, and pollution-source identification. "Canoes let you go places you wouldn't ordinarily see," says Save the Bay's Amy Windrope. "With this program, the kids get to see that there's really lots of wildlife right in their own backyards."

"It was an incredible opportunity to get students out on the water and show them in the real world what we are learning in the classroom," says Redwood High School teacher Joe Stewart, who recently took all three of his freshman/sophomore integrated science classes through the program. "It's a unique program because we start by talking about the issues confronting the Bay and then go into the science of it, instead of the other way around," says Windrope.

So far this fall approximately 800 students have participated in the program, which was launched last spring with a grant and technical assistance from the Chesapeake Bay Foundation. The Toyota Corporation recently awarded the Foundation a grant to export its 30-year-old Chesapeake canoeing program to other areas. In addition to the student program, Canoes in Sloughs has also held two one-week programs for teachers, "focusing on the Bay as a teaching tool and a resource management dilemma," says Windrope.

Windrope says that one of the best things about her program is that it is completely mobile. "There are sloughs all over the Bay," she says. "Recently we put the canoes in the water just a few hundred yards from the back of a school," she says. Most excursions so far have focused on the North Bay, but eventually Windrope says she hopes to include not only the entire Bay Area, but also upstream rivers as well. "We want to show everyone in this watershed that they are connected to the Bay," she says.

Contact: Amy Windrope (510)452-9261

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