Q. Dear Twig: My teacher told us about a class called Project SeaCAMEL. What is it?
A.: It's a live, underwater class in marine biology. Except you don't go under the water yourself (for better or worse) (when you're older I hope you'll get to if you want to). Instead you explore through a live Web broadcast. You watch on a computer. You go along with teachers and scientists as they dive in and live in a super-huge coral reef, the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary, world's third-largest barrier reef and the only living barrier reef in North America. The class takes place Nov. 12-14.
Get this: The teachers and scientists really do live underwater! They live some 60 feet down below in the Aquarius Underwater Habitat. They call themselves aquanauts.
See what you can see and when at http://seacamel.livingoceansfoundation.org/.
(It mentions a fish that sleeps at night in a bed of its very own mucous. Whoa! Now that I want to see! Or not.)
Submersibly,
Twig
P.S. The "CAMEL" part of the name stands for Classroom Aquarius Marine Education Live.
Notes: SeaCAMEL is a project of the Khaled bin Sultan Living Oceans Foundation, Washington, D.C., http://www.livingoceansfoundation.org/, with the Virginia Institute of Marine Science, College of William & Mary, Williamsburg, Va., serving as academic partner. The Aquarius Underwater Habitat is owned by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and is operated by the University of North Carolina.
"Smart Stuff with Twig Walkingstick," published by The Ohio State University College of Food, Agricultural, and Environmental Sciences — specifically, by the Ohio Agricultural Research and Development Center (OARDC) and Ohio State University Extension, the research and outreach arms, respectively, of the College — is a weekly column for children about science, nature, farming and the environment. It's written at a 4th-grade reading level. For details, to ask Twig a question, and/or to receive the column free by mail or e-mail, contact Kurt Knebusch, CommTech, OSU/OARDC,1680 Madison Ave., Wooster, OH 44691, knebusch.1@osu.edu, (330) 263-3776. Online at http://extension.osu.edu/~news/archive.php?series=science.