EDUCATION
Community Outreach
Our volunteers are active in the Community, our local schools and with our partner group, BC Nature. We strive to develop and deliver a wide variety of quality educational outreach programs and materials and participate in local conservation initiatives including:
-
Georgia Basin Habitat Atlas: Boundary Bay
-
Interpretive Signage
-
School programs (see below),
-
Training programs and presentations (see below for Shorekeepers and Beach Hero)
-
Habitat Restoration Projects - native plantings, cleanups and invasive removals.
School Programs
Thanks to support from our sponsors and a dedicated group of volunteers, we have been pleased to offer quality educational programming by donation to schools in the White Rock, Delta, Surrey and Langley areas over the past two decades!
Our School Programs are conservation-minded and provide a rich complement to classroom inquiry and study (particularly for grades two through seven) and are linked to BC Science curriculum.
-
Birds in Focus
-
Wetland / Pond Discovery
-
Beach Hero Marine Discovery (Dowload Narrated Slides)
Traditionally, our programs began with a local area naturalist visiting the school to introduce the students to the area of study. Since 2020, we have had a more difficult time finding volunteers for the in-school programs and so are putting our efforts into designing online resources that teachers can download for use in their classes: "Invasive Green Crabs" (intermediate through high school audience) and "Be a Beach Hero: a walk in the intertidal zone" (for elementary school classrooms) are available for pilot programs now! (free of charge). The audio narrated presentations are easily adapted to meet the needs of students of varying ages and is full of high quality photos and videos of local animal and plant life.
For teachers wishing to pilot our resources, we can also loan a resource kit that includes teaching materials, student reading materials, storybooks, posters and field guides. In the case of the marine program, we also include some hands-on artifacts.
Once teachers have engaged their students in their studies, we can try to arrange a naturalist to meet the class for a field experience: bird watching or a beach walk. For the pond program, instead of a field trip, we bring the pond to you (a small fish tank with bubbler). We facilitate some in-class pond peeking on the presentation date and leave it set up for up to two weeks! After that time, we come back to remove it and return the pond water to our collection site.
Please select the 'Inquire about a program' button at right for more information, to book a resource kit and confirm if we have volunteers available to assist. Please provide your name, school, grade level, number of students, preferred program and 'time period'.
Beach Hero Marine Discovery Program
Learn about the small –scale world that is right under your feet on the beach. Watch hermit and shore crabs scurry as their rock roof is carefully moved. Whole colonies of periwinkles, snails, and maybe a sea star, hide under there when the tide is out. Hear about how we can walk gently on our neighbors on the shore. Join us at special events throughout the summer beginning with World Oceans Day!
In years when we have sufficient funding, you may see the Beach Hero Marine Interpreters out on the beach scanning assisting with conservation efforts, providing on the beach educational information related to conservation, crabbing, fishing and shellfish poaching,
Please note that FoSBS is a volunteer-based and not for profit organization. Our administration and coordination efforts are also fully volunteer - we truly do operate on 'a shoestring'! Our Beach Hero program, we try to hire dedicated young people (generally university students) in order to provide them with much-needed job experience in their field of interest or study. For this reason, the program is subject to change based on funding. We rely on grant funding and donations to continue this valuable program Please contact us for more information, to inquire about positions or to make a donation!
Training Workshops
Shorekeepers
Shorekeepers monitor and steward coastal marine habitats following a protocol developed by The Department of Fisheries and Oceans Canada. This protocol has been adopted by Friends of Semiahmoo Bay at several beaches in Boundary Bay as a community science initiative. Data has been gathered for almost a decade on our local beaches by dedicated volunteers.
FoSBS has organized and sponsored annual Shorekeepers training free of charge and have lead various local site surveys occur annually in June and July.
Currently, this project is on hold due to the urgent needs of our IEGC Invasive European Green Crab monitoring and trapping program. Visit the Shorekeepers page for links and information about this valuable community science program.
Eelgrass Training
Seagrasses are indicators of nearshore health and they are phenomenal carbon sinks, storing carbon for thousands of years, but seagrass is disappearing. As a member of the Seagrass Conservation Working Group, Friends of Semiahmoo Bay Society contributes to the monitoring of eelgrass habitat and conservation initiatives of eelgrass in Boundary Bay.
Come join us to learn about the importance of eelgrass, and get FREE training on how to map Eelgrass!
Invasive Spartina Removal/Training
Spartina anglica (English cordgrass) is an introduced, aggressive, aquatic grass that invades mudflats, beaches, eelgrass meadows, algae beds and salt marshes.
The plant takes over to form monotypic “Spartina meadows” resulting in loss of important habitat for fish and wildlife. The large root masses of Spartina trap sediment, raising the elevation and thus changing the entire ecosystem. Friends of Semiahmoo Bay Society is an active member of the British Columbia Spartina Working Group (BCSWG).
