Past Projects
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Blue Vision Summit: Washington DC, May 20-23rd 2011. 
After a very successful fundraising event with Academy Award Winning documentary director Louie Psihoyos on May 19, Teens4Oceans attended the Blue Vision Summit in Washington, DC. As a Colorado coalition, Trevor Mendelow and his students (Allison Kolberg, Addy Wagner, Nate Newman, Jack Turnage, Liz Beaver, and Jason Brody) were part of a lobbying effort at Capitol Hill Ocean Day on May 23.
The students attended seminars hosted by the Blue Vision summit several days preceding the lobbying 
effort, where they met marine advocates, non-profit leaders, and local community organizers. The seminars exposed the students to the desperate circumstances of our ocean resources. Teens4Oceans also connected with some inspirational students at an experiential school in New York called The Harbor School. Two students, Cesar and and Jericsson, will be accompanying the Kent Denver group this summer on a webcam installation at the Aquarius facility in Florida. The installation of the two new high-definition webcams is slated for June 17th and 18th!
During the Capitol Hill Ocean Day, students also met with staffers of Senate and House of Representatives legislators. The trip offered a unique opportunity for Kent Denver participants in Teens4Oceans to become involved in the legislative process and contact organizations with similar objectives.
New T4O SCUBA program! Boulder, Colorado.
In cooperation with Ocean First Divers in Boulder, Colorado, Teens4Oceans students can now complete a SCUBA open water diving course. As Teens4Oceans investigates prospective deep water installation zones, the necessity of scuba certification becomes ever more apparent. Between March 26th through April 2nd, students completed the certification process in Akumal, Mexico. Check out our blog page for images and details of our trip!
PADI certification of Marine Biology students: Kent Denver School, Colorado.
The senior Marine Biology class at Kent Denver School embarked on a scuba diving trip to the Florida Keys in November to study coral populations and fish taxonomy. Each student enrolled in Marine Biology has been PADI certified! Also, several members of Teens4Oceans are taking the PADI course and will be accompanying the senior class on the Florida trip.
Aquarius Project: Key Largo, Florida
Teens4Oceans is embarking on an exciting new project! We are excited to work with the University of North Carolina Wilmington’s Aquarius Reef Base to deploy Reef Cams on the Undersea Habitat at Key Largo, Florida. Students from Kent Denver School formed a T4O crew and surveyed the Aquarius Habitat and the surrounding reef on December 16th and 17th of December 2010. Examining the current structural infrastructure allowed the students to design two camera systems that will be deployed in June, 2011. The Aquarius Habitat offers a unique opportunity for Teens4Oceans, as four key elements that have previously limited the deployment of a camera on a deep-water reef: security, high-bandwidth network, power, and regular maintenance visits.
In addition to streaming high-definition video from the structure 24/7 anywhere within the local area network, including at the Eco-Discovery Center in Key West and the Key Largo NOAA facility, Teens4Oceans will work with its partners to disseminate the content around the nation. The group will build user-generated content and interpretive materials to divulge the beauty and wonder of America’s only living reef.
DEMA Convention 2010: Las Vegas.
In November 2010, Teens4Oceans and Ocean Classrooms faculty and students staffed a booth at the DEMA convention in Las Vegas, Nevada. At DEMA, members of the diving community viewed a prototype submersible camera similar to the model deployed in the United States Virgin Islands. Also on display were monitors with interactive footage harvested from camera systems in Bahia Honda and the Dry Tortugas. The three day conference allowed T4O students and educators to meet associates in underwater exploration and interact with prospective collaborators.
Tropical Marine Ecosystems: Saint John, US Virgin Islands.
In June 2010, Teens4Oceans members visited Saint John Island and installed a high definition webcam under a dock at the Virgin Islands Environmental Resource Station. In addition to installing the webcam, students also snorkeled the NASA Tektite site, Hurricane Hole (a mangrove system), Trunk Bay, and the Lameshur bays, learning about marine ecosystems of the Caribbean. Unfortunately, the underwater camera was struck by lightning during a powerful storm just days after our departure; thanks for your help in replacing the device! The replacement camera is currently up and running-- let us know what you see!
LME (Large Marine Ecosystems): The LME approach, implemented by the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), has designated sixty-five large marine ecosystems (LMEs), eleven of which are governed by US territories. T4O invisions each region of the country dedicated to one LME. Chapters of T4O, and schools within each region, will prioritize projects that emphasize their LME for conservation, research, or community awareness/involvement. This will allow students in coastal regions to focus on the waterways near their homes that most affect them and are most affected by them. More landlocked students will also have a system to focus on, which will give them a sense of ownership despite their distance from the coast. However, landlocked students may also focus on their local waterways and how the health of those waterways affects the oceans that they eventually drain into.
Over the last six months, students have begun detailing the nine unique Large Marine Ecosystems (LME) in the United States’ Exclusive Economic zone. The portraits of each LME includes general information, the political situation of the specific region, environmental conditions, economic data, and a productivity assessment. To access information on each LME, please visit our LME page, under the Education heading.
BioBlitz: Biscayne National Park, Homestead, Florida.
From April 30th to May 1st 2010, National Geographic and the National Park Service hosted a BioBlitz at Biscayne National Park in Florida. And of course, T4O had to attend!
The Blitz is a culmination of ecologists, taxonomists, naturalists, photographers, families, teachers, students, as well as both governmental and non-profit organizations for a weekend of biology mania. In twenty-four hours, these scientists, including members of T4O, catelogued as many species as possible in the pristine waters of Biscayne Bay.
T4O set up an educational booth, part of the students-teaching-students side of Teens4Oceans. Trevor Mendelow and the Student Ambassadors, ran a booth for both days of the convention, entirely devoted to the education of local elementary school students. This was a great chance for the organization to reach out to a community as well as spread the word about the work that we do!
Thank you to all of the students and teachers who took the time to visit the Teens4Oceans booth at the 2010 Bio Blitz in Biscayne National Park. The students came up with a fish identification game for students to play using footage from the webcams, some gathered by the general public as well as clips collected by T40. We met a bunch of fantastic people and we were introduced to many organizations and schools who we are excited to begin working with. The day was a huge success!
Kent Denver School, Goliath Grouper Research Project: Dry Tortugas National Park and Bahia Honda State Park, Florida.
Bahia Honda initial installation
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For more information on this exciting project, visit our GGRP page.
Click the image below for the project brochure.
Please contact Trevor Mendelow for more information. Cameras can be located in the "webcams" section of the site.
Kent Denver Aquarium: Englewood, Colorado
Kent Denver has an aquarium maintained by Teens4Oceans staff and students. We are currently renovating the “fish room” and assigning tasks to new group members. The fish room provides a hands-on experience for Kent Denver students, and allows club members to observe and care for marine life at school.
Spanish Cay, Bahamas: Summer 2005-2008
When T4O was first formed, students would perform field research on and around Spanish Cay in the Bahamas. Starting with reef surveys, students learned the process of sampling techniques, experimental design, and data analysis. Over the three year period a portfolio of work was developed that highlighted the types of fieldwork that can be performed in the field with high school students. Students report to us how valuable a meaningful field experience can be, and how it profoundly changed their perspective of how science operates and the scope of research that is just now beginning to help us how our natural environments function.