On Friday, a small group of Riverhead High School students stood in rubber waders on the edge of South Jamesport Beach, peering down at the calm cold waters of Peconic Bay. Clipboards in hand, they called out numbers — air temperature, cloud cover, wind speed — while others crouched over tide sticks and compasses, tracking the direction and velocity of the current. Later, students used seine nets to gather and study local marine life. It was part classroom, part field trip, all science.

The students were taking part in ‘A Day in the Life of a River or Bay,’ a countywide marine research program that has become one of Long Island’s most durable environmental education projects. Now in its 15th year, the initiative turns thousands of students from dozens of school districts across Suffolk County into hands-on researchers for a day, collecting real environmental data from local rivers, estuaries, bays and creeks.

“It’s about getting them to think of their local waterways not as storm runoff depositories, [but as] thriving ecosystems — right off the highway, right in their own backyards,” said Tim Motz of the Central Pine Barrens Commission, which runs the program in partnership with the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation and Brookhaven National Laboratory.

The program pairs students with scientists, environmental organizations and volunteers who lend their expertise to guide the teens through professional-grade fieldwork.

“We have dozens and dozens of environmental organizations that assist to help us,” Motz said.

Countywide, about 2,000 kids are involved in the program — charting site characteristics, examining biological species and conducting chemical analyses including dissolved oxygen, salinity, nitrates and phosphates, according to Motz.

“The hope is that these kids learn to be better stewards of their environment, but also that it even fosters an appreciation for the environment enough to perhaps go on to careers in the sciences.”

Nationally, research on K-12 environmental education, especially hands-on watershed programs, shows measurable gains in students’ environmental knowledge, stewardship intentions and test scores. A 2023 Stanford University-led meta-analysis of more than 100 studies found environmental education increases pro-environmental behavior and supports real conservation outcomes.

On Friday morning, several dozen students split into two sessions, each spending roughly three hours at the waterfront, rotated through a series of stations where they recorded data on the physical, chemical and biological conditions of the bay.

“It’s great when you’re learning this stuff in the classroom,” said Alexa Annunziata, a marine scientist with Peconic Baykeeper who volunteered as an expert mentor. “But it’s different when you get to be outside, knee-deep in the water, seeing it all firsthand.”

At the “physical data” station, Riverhead High School marine sciences teacher Kristen Realander led her students through a simple but revealing experiment: measuring current speed.

“What’s a current?” she asked the group. A few tentative answers came back — “the speed of the water?” and “how it moves?”

“Exactly,” she said. “We want to know two things: which way it’s moving, and how fast. So instead of wading out, we’ll throw a stick, start the stopwatch and see how far it drifts in 60 seconds.”

Students crouched at the shoreline, eyes on the floating stick, stopwatch running. When it barely moved, a few laughed. “That’s quite possible,” Realander said. “Sometimes the current isn’t doing much at all. But we measure anyway. That’s what science is — observing what’s actually happening.”

Nearby, another part of the group was recording air and water temperature and wind direction. Students used sampling jars and probes to measure water clarity, salinity and turbidity — key indicators of the bay’s ecological health. Others swept the sand for invertebrates, carefully identifying small shells and plant fragments before noting them on their data sheets.

Hauling seine nets

By far the day’s highlight came when the students pulled on chest-high waders, grabbed a long seine net — a fine mesh stretched between two wooden poles — and waded out waist-deep to drag it slowly through the shallows.

When they hauled it back to shore, squeals and shouts of discovery filled the air. The net was alive with motion: mud snails, hermit crabs, Atlantic silversides, pipefish, comb jellies and the occasional knobbed whelk — a large marine snail with a spiraled shell that glistened in the sun. The students crowded around plastic tubs, giddily sorting and identifying the catch before releasing the creatures back into the bay.

“You can always tell when they pull up something unexpected,” Annunziata said with a laugh. “Some kids get really into the fish identification, some get into measuring the tides or the math behind the current speeds. It’s fun to see what they get excited about.”

The students’ field notes don’t just disappear into a binder at the end of the day. The data they collect are compiled and shared across the network of participating schools and environmental organizations, creating a long-term record of local water quality and ecological trends.

Motz, who has overseen the program for the past three years, said it has evolved over time. In its early years, schools sometimes brought large groups of students for a day at the bay. Now, many districts bring smaller groups, often made up of students in environmental clubs or marine science classes who are deeply engaged and eager to learn.

“We try to get students at the same sites every year because we do have them collect actual data, and we’re trying to make it meaningful. The more consistency you have — both the time of year and the location — the better the data,” he said.

For students, though, the day is about the thrill of discovery, and the realization that science isn’t confined to lab benches or textbooks.

“It’s one thing to learn about ecosystems,” said Riverhead High School science teacher Claire Yannacone, wading into the water. “It’s another to stand in one.”