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Sports at Harbor
Garden Weathers the Storm
by Modesty Encarnacion by Jasmine Hernandez order to have teams that can compete with teams from other NYC high schools, we’ll have put our existing sports clubs on what’s called a PSAL (Public School Athletic League) track. This is a public organization where we’d have to-- well, first develop a team. They would have to play for one year to show they’ve got a consistent roster. We’d have to have regular practices, NYHS Girls Soccer: meet ups, uniforms, etc. -basically everything a real Participation via Bushwick Campus PSAL Team team has. Then PSAL will grant the team official status. So we all know that New York Harbor We do have a lot of clubs and sports School has after school programs and sports programs, but they aren’t official teams. This equipment, but why have sports equipment if we kind of upsets some kids, because (for example) can’t play on real teams? To get that to happen the guys love to play basketball. They are we as a school-- which means staff members and dedicated to it, but it’s kind of a letdown to them students-- have to work together. If we work that they can’t compete against teams from other together we will be able to get the different teams schools. If we had a PSAL basketball team, that up and going which not just guys will like, but would allow the kids to actually work together as girls as well. a team and share the success. We can’t do We do have one official team --cross anything with lot of the after school programs country-- but not everyone wants to just run. In and clubs without this team work. But why have kids from NYHS compete against each other, when they could be working together to compete
Beneficial Bivalves The Importance of Oysters in the Wake of the Storm by Joy Junious
New York Harbor-- In the wake of the storm, who’s going to come to the rescue of New York City? Oysters, of course. Oysters will be part of the team that may help protect the city from a repeat of the damage that it was faced with during hurricane Sandy the next time around. Oysters are the answer to several of the problems that we face in New York City. For one thing, oysters are filter feeders who filter water all day long. One adult oyster can filter 24 gallons of water a day. Thus they help to clean the water that New Yorkers want to fish and swim in. Put in simplest terms, the way it works is that they suck in water on one side, filter it inside their bodies, and send the filtered water out the other side. The fact that oysters act as natural filters is one of several reasons to bring them back into our estuary.
Editor-in-Chief: Joy Junious News Editor: Amy Mahon Features Editor: Jasmine Hernandez Contributing Writers and Collaborators: Paul Blatt, Ameena Peters, Kennington Hall, Modesty Encarnacion, Naquan Sanders, Quentin Crandle, Martha Stewart, Jasmine Hernandez, Cate Hagarty. Special thanks to Matthew Haiken, Murray Fisher and Cate Hagarty.
As a bonus, oysters populate in colonies that take the form of reefs. That means that when oysters are in the larval stage and they are looking for other oysters to live with, they attach themselves to other oyster shells. So, if we have oysters who have formed reefs in the Harbor, then there will be more and more protection for the city against such storm surges as we experienced with hurricane Sandy. Harbor School especially, along with a few other organizations, works hard to restore these wonderful creatures to the Harbor. Harbor School has planted huge numbers of oysters in the Harbor, through the Career and Technical Education (CTE) aquaculture program. Aquaculture’s main focus is the restoration project. The goal of the project is to restore a billion oysters to the Harbor by the year 2030, so that years from now there will be a Harbor full of oysters and so that New Yorkers can swim and fish in the estuary. Even though Aquaculture is the CTE focused most on the restoration project, several of the
Adviser: Susannah Black Acting Principal: Edward Biedermann New York Harbor School Battery Maritime Building 10 South Street, Slip 7 New York City, NY 10004
Governors Island-- New York Harbor School has many plans that it hopes to achieve for the school garden. When this reporter visited the garden recently to check on it following Hurricane Sandy, members of the club were to be found caring for cover crops for the winter, one of which is hairy vetch. Cover crops are plants that help prevent the erosion of the soil, and preserve the soil’s nutrients. In order to help these plants germinate, members of the club were spreading out the soil beds to make them even. Hurricane Sandy did not affect the garden in any way, because the plants has not started growing yet. Kimberly Morales, a garden club member, explained that now that it is winter time, crops are not growing. There are still living organisms in the soil, though, which they are hoping to keep for the spring. These organisms are preparing themselves for the spring to help grow the crops. The garden club has many advocates who are helping the garden to be successful and grow many crops for New York Harbor School. These promoters and helpers include members of the A.P. Environmental Science class. When visiting the garden, this reporter found members of that class doing hard work alongside the club members, in order for them to put in to practice the principles they were learning in the classroom.
CTE programs help. SCUBA, for example, both helps plant oyster reefs and also goes diving for samples while Aquaculture students measure and record organisms pulled in from the samples. And how would SCUBA and Aquaculture get to the oysters if not for Vessel Operations? Vessel Ops transports the SCUBA and Aquaculture students over to the different sites to gather information about oysters involved in the restoration project. Hurricane Sandy has left a devastating and long lasting effect on the city, but luckily Harbor School’s oyster restoration locations escaped damage. Pete Malinowski, in charge of Harbor School’s oyster restoration efforts, went to visit the Wallabout Basin location, a major part of the restoration project, following the storm to check on the floating docks. He reported that “because we prepared in advance, there was minimal damage, which we easily repaired.” The Harbor School community prepared its oysters for the storm; they in turn can help the city be more prepared for a storm. Oyster reefs act as natural wave barriers to slow and break wave action. Continued on page 7
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