Jose Martí MAST Academy (JMMA) students from the Marine Biology club have built their first-ever salt water tank. Over the summer, a few students and marine science teacher Jeneissy Comas Balcazar started building the lab. They set up a list of donors in order to help fund their tanks. Corals will inhabit the tank for research.
Sophomore Hector Duran designed a proposal for an interactive tide pool tank for the lab, which will provide a hands-on way of showing students invertebrates that live in the pools.
The tank itself will be very expensive, so Duran along with junior Luis Orozco presented the idea to North Region superintendent Jose Bueno and superintendent Alberto Carvalho for funding. Bueno was able to provide half of the money needed to complete the project.
A future project students at JMMA are thinking of implementing is a lionfish tank. The invasive species have drastically harmed the ecosystem and fishing economy. The goals for the lab is to expose students to research and come up with projects that can help solve problems in the marine world.