Bayside Marine Science Fundraiser

About this campaign

We call ourselves the Bay Warriors. We are a group of 7th and 8th graders from Bayside Intermediate School in League City, Texas. Our job is to collect water samples from Galveston Bay each month and test for red-tide causing phytoplankton. There are 4 species of plankton we don’t want to find (Alexandrium, Dinophysis, Pseudonitzchia, Karenia Brevis). If these species are present in Galveston Bay, people can get sick by eating local oysters, mussels and clams, which have filtered these plankton from the water. We are an actual volunteer site for NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration), and our data gets entered into the national NOAA database each month. If we do find red-tide causing phytoplankton, we send the samples to NOAA and depending on their findings, they could send scientists to check our waters. Since red-tide causing phytoplankton affect oysters, clams and mussels, they could issue a warning against eating seafood caught in the bay for the period of time that the red-tide causing phytoplankton are present. Each day at the pier is followed by a day in the lab, where we will be using microscopes to look at our samples and identify the plankton we catch. This is a really cool program that lets us learn real science while also helping the community.