Techno beats thumped as girls dressed in the latest high fashion gowns glided into the room on the arm of young gentlemen wearing custom tailored suits. Nervousness and excitement filled the air as girls exchanged complements on dresses and boys talked about where they took their dates for dinner. In the middle of a city of 18 million people student’s danced and giggled the night away as they enjoyed the vainly ceremonious American event known as PROM.
In a blur of immigration lines, substandard prepackaged airline food the stilettos were stealthily exchanged for flip flops as we found ourselves careening across the turquoise tropical waters toward an island off the East Coast of Malaysia, Pulau Redang to live for a weeks time to conduct IB Environmental Science projects and voluteer to help SEATRU with Sea Turtle nest monitoring. As the motors slowed to a quite idle the boat made its way into an enchanting lagoon. The contrast of crystal clear water, intense green jungle against a vivid blue sky was the catalyst for student’s jaws to drop and comments such as: “this can’t be real” or “I didn’t know that the sky could be so blue” or how about “looking at this makes me realize just how GRAY everything in Shanghai is.”
Dr. Chan Eng Hang, the director of the Turtle Research and rehabilitation Group at the University of Malaysia Terrenganu gave a wonderful introduction to tagging and nesting research of both the green and the hawksbill turtle population around Redang island. After settling in to a one room wood shelter that doubled as a Sea Turtle research exhibit gallery the students plunged into the lagoon for an afternoon snorkel. They were welcomed in style by two white tip reef sharks and four sea turtles, one of them being a rare Hawksbill. They were immersed in wild uninhibited nature from that point forward.
In the days to follow students fell into a rhythm of gathering data for various environmental science projects, cooking their own meals and just plain enjoying being outside. The beats of traffic, pollution and competitive school life where drowned out by cicadas and quickly became a remote memory to the 13 students from Shanghai .
As quickly as they could set up a new group on Facebook the students had set simple rope snare traps and caught a 1.5 meter monitor lizard in an effort to relocate it to a beach free of innocent fragile turtle eggs. They witnessed green sea turtles come to shore and laying eggs in the moon light just as they had seen on National Geographic. They successfully marked and recaptured over 400 hermit crabs with the dexterity developed through the typing of thousands of text messages sent through their cell phones over the past semester.
They were adapting and blending into a simple life of removing human marks of plastic trash on the beach and ropes tangled in the reefs as they reflected on their additive actions back in Shanghai were they never think about where all their garbage comes from.
Increasingly, 24/7 communication and the flow of information seems inescapable; yet over the past week two teachers and thirteen students managed to disconnect from “human created” information and tune into “wild” information, 24/7. Surprisingly, what followed was an inspirational series of events that should give us all hope that it isn’t in the least bit to late to reverse global problems. The ability of our youth to adapt and help has never been higher. Many of the activities that at times are criticized for “disconnecting” students from that natural world just may be allowing them to gain the skills they need to understand and be able to jump head first into reversing global problems.
Wilderness is not peaceful and calm if you take the time to look beyond the surface. It’s chaotic and ruthless much like the human urban environment. This past week students showed time and time again their ability to be flexible, adaptable and patient and if they are given the opportunity to be surrounded by wilderness they will demonstrate the same level of enthusiasm as they would for their own PROM. Showcasing hope that the a lack of connection with nature isn’t because they aren’t capable it’s because standard educational curriculum rarely allows for it.
In a recent article in the NYT, Op-Ed Contributor Taras Grescoe states “Whether it’s wild or farmed, I’m swearing off salmon.” He goes on to explain that the state of salmon in the pacific is in dire straights. Most runs south of Alaska as collapsing and even in the home of “Wild Alaskan Salmon” along the banks of this large most northern state are almost extinct due to overfishing, negative effects of fish farms and the destruction of salmon breeding grounds. So much so that the Chinook salmon fishing season never opened this year in Oregon and further south in California pushing salmon to a scarce and very expensive offering to put on your dinner table.
