ST. MICHAELS -- Pete Imirie has a theory about education.
"I picked seamanship to teach the kids because it's based on the weather and the weather is uncompromising," he says. "Seamanship creates a totally honest environment. It doesn't matter who you are."
That theory is the guiding principle for his buoy tender field study, which took eight Wicomico middle and high school students and two of their teachers onto the Miles River on Thursday. It was the sixth in a series of nine such trips this spring designed to show students how math and science are applied.
The students and the teachers assembled on the dock behind the Maritime Museum shortly after 7 a.m. under dripping, gray skies and boarded the John C. Widener, a 70-foot vessel that is one of the state's three buoy tenders.
"We live on the largest estuary in the world," Imirie told the students as the boat left the dock. "Sometimes we take that for granted. You'll say to yourself at the end of the day, 'Boy, they go to so much trouble to set a buoy.' "
For the next 4 1/2 hours, the students saw firsthand what it takes to maintain the plastic buoys. The day's task was to set a half-dozen or so regulatory buoys for watermen to establish the clamming and fishing limits around St. Michaels. The Coast Guard maintains the red and green markers that delineate channels, marine "highways." The state's buoy tenders, under the auspices of the Department of Natural Resources, maintain the rest.
"The ice and the weather destroy these things as fast as your parents' tax money can replace them," Imirie told the group.
The students divided their time among three stations. One station was on deck, where the Widener's crew took measurements, and lifted by crane, cleaned and replaced the 45-pound buoys and their 1,000-pound anchors.
A second station was on the bridge, where the vessel's captain, Doug Outten, and engineer Jerry Tolobziecki explained the intricacies of navigation, modern (the Global Positioning System, GPS, uses satellites to determine location) and ancient (a sextant and some applied trigonometry).
At a third station in the cabin the water's salinity, temperature and acidity were tested, and some marine life that came up with the anchors was studied.
As the day wore on, the adolescent sullenness of early morning was replaced by interest and even amazement.
"One of the kids said, 'I didn't realize trigonometry was actually worth learning, that you actually use it,' " said Nadine Barker, a computer science teacher at Bennett Middle School in Salisbury. She spent most of the day on the bridge.
Ellen Jones of Wicomico High, an environment and earth science teacher, worked in the cabin helping students test water and identify plankton, barnacles and even a few tiny crabs.
Out on deck, Imirie showed the students how to measure depth, how to convert fathoms into feet (1 fathom is 6 feet) and how crew members look out for each other.
"I can't do this," said Christine Brittingham, 17, of Salisbury, as she attempted to take a sounding with Michael Henry, 13. But she could -- and with a little encouragement from Imirie, she and Michael got a reading that was very close to the one taken by sailors Louis Redd and Jack Harmel.
The buoy tender program is one project by Chessie Kids, an educational initiative run by Imirie. In addition to taking students on the Chesapeake, he also teaches them how to build boats, how to sail them and water safety.
A former high school basketball coach who grew up in St. Mary's County, Imirie began the program out of Talbot County in 1988. Boats were his avocation -- he lives on one now -- and he got the idea when he saw kids one day throwing rocks at boats.
"I said, 'Why aren't you out on the water?' " he recalls. "They said, 'We don't have a boat,' and I said, 'I'll show you how to make one.' " And he has been educating students in Maryland and elsewhere about water and boats ever since.
Imirie sees his role as an adjunct to a classroom teacher, a bridge to state agencies that can serve as learning tools. These are resources that many teachers don't realize are available, he says, but they can be a way to show students the practical application of classroom instruction.
The field trips are offered to elementary, middle and high school students, and there is no charge.
"Everybody says, 'I need more money,' " he says. "I say, 'Hey, wait a minute, we've got all these agencies.' We have these resources -- the problem is digging them out of the hands of bureaucrats."
Pub Date: 5/11/96
