Service Learning Kayaking Patrol- Eloina

  

 

I signed up for Kayak patrol on Lake Union with Puget Soundkeeper Alliance, an organization that works to protect and preserve waters of the Puget Sound. Part of their mission is to make water clean for fishing and to prevent contamination of marine life by toxins from storm water runoff. The name of the event was Kayak patrol on Lake Union and I volunteered for two hours. The contact person for the event was Kerry McGowan and her email is kerry@pugetsoundkeeper.org. Kayak patrol was a group of volunteers that kayaked on Lake Union to collect trash and debris along the South Lake Union shore. I was partnered with another volunteer to share a kayak and part of our duties included identifying and reporting and sources of sewage or oil spills. At the end of the even all of the trash we collected during the event was combined and weighed.

It was interesting to understand the major sources of pollution to Lake Union and that a lot of old chemical waste has not been able to be treated. It made me realize that there's a lot of work for scientists to do in order to help fix a lot of pollution problems in our community. This experience was great because it made me view the Puget Sound as an ecological niche which relationships between organisms and their environment similar to some environments we discussed in our course.

This service learning experience was really inspiring and it made me really interested in knowing more about other work and events that Soundkeeper Alliance does. It also made me realize how much there is to understand and do to become a more responsible and proactive community member.