Nearly 1,000 middle school students from 32 different schools got an in-depth lesson in marine life at the 36th spring student summit hosted by Clean Ocean Action last week. The two-day summit at Gateway National Recreational Area in Sandy Hook focused on the importance of environmental preservation.

The summit included hands-on stations and field activities including lessons on ocean pollution and how to properly handle different species. Local educators, scientists and Clean Ocean Action volunteers, including students from the Marine Academy of Science and Technology, shared their environmental knowledge with the students.

Christal Crosby, an eighth grader at Speedway Avenue School in Newark, who attended the summit, said, “This is a great experience for me and my peers since we are not close to this stuff. I feel like this is a once-in-a-lifetime chance. I think the most interesting thing I heard was horseshoe crabs were used as bait and their numbers are really going down and how they are harmless to humans.”

Dorothy Marino, a teacher at Speedway Avenue School, Newark, said, “So it took us about an hour to get here — just the change of scenery and the change of environment. We were up there, and it was warm, and we are down here and it’s windy and cold. It’s a great experience and get to see the high schoolers here and their future paths and see what they were not even thinking about as a career path.”