Seining Makes Sense

Kathy Nolan
St. Francis College, Brooklyn, NY

knolan@stfranciscollege.edu

It was a hot day in June (1998) on the dusty Nebraska plains. We walked along the braided Platt River looking for a good spot to put our seine in. The venue was a pre-workshop of the 21st Annual ABLE conference at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln, Nebraska. Ah, we found the place! On go the waders -- those funny-looking boots that come up to your waist and have suspenders. Out came the cameras for our photo-ops. I was apprehensive about doing this in the first place, let alone doing it later with students. We put the net in, and after a minute or so, pulled up all kinds of fish! This wasn’t too bad, I was thinking to myself, I think I could do this with my students.

I teach at St. Francis College in Brooklyn, New York, which draws commuters from mostly Brooklyn, Queens and Staten Island. As I teach biology, I find that most of the students want to go into the medical field -- they are not really acquainted with the environmental fields and have not been exposed to much field work. When I was assigned to teach Ecology, I bought three pairs of waders in different sizes from Carolina Biological Co. and a seine net. The seine net didn’t come with the sticks to hold it up, so I purchased 2 broomsticks from the hardware store down the street. When April came, off we went with our waders and nets on the subway to the Salt Marsh Nature Center in Brooklyn. We had to put our net in three times before we got the knack of it and caught fish, but it was eventually loaded with silversides! We were ecstatic!

Since then, I’ve taken several hundred students seining at various locales, both in my ecology courses and through my five summers as director and teacher of the St. Francis College Summer Science Academy. I highly recommend that you “take the plunge” and put that net in the water with your students!