Lobster lecture puts new curriculum on a roll
NORWALK — Students squealed as a lobster squirmed its way toward them on the table.
More than 100 sixthgraders moved around in their seats at West Rocks Middle School cafeteria, anxiously raising their hands to ask and answer questions about lobsters in Connecticut.
“Can lobsters blink?” asked one student. “If you catch a lobster with eggs, can you go to jail?” another sixth-grader inquired.
Norwalk Public Schools recently incorporated a new science curriculum called the Next Generation Science Standards. The new curriculum is intended to help educators design classroom learning experiences that pique students’ interests.
“Instead of teaching, you lead them on an exploration,” said Louis Weinberg, a science teacher of 15 years at West Rocks. “It opens their eyes to the world around them. It’s not just an academic exercise. This is really tangible.”
Following the standards, the school district invited local lobsterman Mike Kalaman, also known as “Lobster Mike,” to teach sixthgraders about the factors that affect the local lobster population.
Before the lobsterman visited, Weinberg gathered data about lobster migration and briefed students on the lobster population changes. Water temperature, salinity, oxygen levels and pesticide use dominated the conversation.
Kalaman told students climate change is causing lobsters here to move north, toward the Gulf of Maine.
Plankton, the microscopic organisms that lobster eat, are moving that way, prompting lobsters to follow. Maine has the largest lobster population in the U.S., according to the Maine Secretary of State web page.
“The lobster is an iconic New England symbol and there’s not many places in the United States that have such a treasured resource, a natural resource, like this,” Kalaman said.
Lobsters are indigenous to Long Island Sound’s ecosystem and are nature’s perfect barometer for what’s going on in the environment, he said. When environmental conditions are good, lobsters thrive.
Kalaman told students that lobsters shed by ejecting themselves from their shells. Immediately after, the jelly-like being eats its own shell for nutrients. It’s called the molting process, he said. Lobsters can go through the process up to six times during their lives, teachers added.
Students made funny faces as Kalaman told described how lobsters can regenerate an eye, a limb or an antenna. He said only 30 percent of lobster eggs survive.
Kalaman is one of the last lobstermen left in the region. About 20 years ago, the lobster population began dying off. He believes it’s because of the pesticides used to kill mosquitoes after West Nile virus came to the region. He said there were about 15 other working lobstermen in Norwalk back then, and that he’s now he’s the only one.
“It’s hard to maintain hundreds of thousands of acres of open bottom,” he said. “I’m giving it my best, but we’re only allowed 800 pots, and to fish 16 miles of territory from Greenwich to Bridgeport, that’s a lot of territory.”
He goes out on the water year-round to maintain the lobster population by stocking feeding stations. , he said. Not only the lobsters benefit from the food, it benefits other marine life that lives in the Sound, he said.
“They’re very resilient creatures, as is the ecosystem of the Long Island Sound. They will always be here as long as we take care of the water.”
He’s been fishing since he was 13 and said he loves his job.
“I get out of it what I put into it. I don’t know how many people can say that,” he said.
At the end of the assembly, Kalaman walked around allowing students to pet the lobsters. Some kids were eager, others declined.