Wild Oysters – A citizen science education program for Grades 9-12
Wild Oysters is a high school program that uses native Olympia oysters as a teaching tool. Serving 500 students a year, Wild Oysters provides a comprehensive Meaningful Watershed Educational Experience, offering in-class lessons and field trips about oysters, climate change and ecosystem resilience.
Want to bring Wild Oysters into your classroom? Contact education@thewatershedproject.org for more information.
Wild Oysters teachers share their experiences:
“The Wild Oysters program helps students see themselves as scientists, protecting a place of great value and beauty to their community. They come away from the experience with a new sense of stewardship that they can make a difference in the protection of an important ecosystem.”
“It allowed my students to have a living taste of the great San Francisco estuary from both an ecological and gastronomical perspective. Thanks!”
“Wild Oysters is a wonderful opportunity for Bay Area students to see places that they have not been to before and interact with the aquatic ecosystem. My student love their experience being outside and learning about an organism and ecosystem that they are not that familiar with.”
Through Wild Oysters, students collect and analyze data about Olympia oysters at our artificial oyster reef at Point Pinole. They experience a day in the life of a marine biologist as they put on rubber boots and explore the San Francisco Bay. Students gather information from a variety of sources and work together to construct an explanation for what is happening at the oyster reef. They engage in argumentation as they evaluate evidence and discuss which hypothetical location would be best for a new oyster project. They have the opportunity to taste oysters in Tomales Bay as they learn about aquaculture and explore shoreline habitat.
Wild Oysters is provided through the support of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the National Marine Sanctuaries
