Floating marine lab relocated to Treasure Island gives students unique learning opportunity

SAN FRANCISCO (KGO) - An innovative floating lab is now helping young students become Climate Ready by understanding the marine life in the San Francisco Bay.

And as ABC7 News learned, the journey starts when they hit the water.

Dozens of young students enjoyed a day of sailing and learning about the marine creatures that inhabit San Francisco Bay.

The program is run by the Treasure Island Sailing Center. It takes kids, often from inner-city neighborhoods, onto the water in small sailboats with longtime instructors like Chris Childers and Justine O'Connor.

"I've sailed my whole life, run a bunch of programs, but Chris is my neighbor and I'm helping him out today," O'Connor said.

While the voyage circles the cove at Treasure Island, there's a new addition to the trip: a white dome that looks something like a floating sea turtle. It's the creation of Margaret Ikeda and Evan Jones, along with their team at the California College of the Arts.

ABC7 News first profiled the lab several years ago. That's when it was anchored near the Port of Oakland, helping college students and faculty researchers test climate-resilient, bio-friendly architectural designs. Recently, Jones and Ikeda moved the platform to Treasure Island where it will be now accessible to younger students.

"We haven't ever had this chance to be able to be around kids this age and engage them with the float labs, with questions about things that grow on it, about questions as they're older, about buoyancy. It's just been pretty amazing," she said.

"Do you guys want to check out the really cool project that they have in the water down there?" O'Connor asks her crew of students. "They're measuring how sea grows on the bottom of that. Can change the biodiversity and actually help mitigate some of the climate change impacts."

After circling the float lab, the group is ready to head dockside for a closer look at some other sea creatures the floating lab is designed to study. Instructors have several platforms placed in the Bay to attract sea creatures. And for the students, it's a chance to discover on their own, while lying on their tummies on the dock or pouring through illustrations in a classroom setting.

At the end of the day, it's a melding of education, adventure and a dose of citizen science. It's training a new generation to be Climate Ready by better understanding the environment around them.

Some of the designs developed with the help of the float lab have found their way into locations here in the Bay Area, including Crissy Field at San Francisco's Presidio.