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WBMS pupil will appear in upcoming edition of the Friends of Acadia Journal
News · May 25, 2017


Editor’s Note: Ellison Walsh of West Branch will appear in the upcoming quarterly publication, Friends of Acadia Journal, which features articles on Acadia National Park, two islands on the coast of Maine. The Journal has given the Times permission to reprint the article:


BAR HARBOR, Maine — A West Branch fifth-grader’s unlikely attraction to the North Atlantic Ocean is a tale featured in the newest edition of the Friends of Acadia Journal, a quarterly magazine that showcases the natural beauty of coastal Maine’s Acadia National Park.

Ellison Walsh, an 11-year-old student at the West Branch Middle School, says she wants to be a marine biologist. No small dream for a kid who has always lived in land-locked Iowa, a thousand miles from the scent, the surf and the daily tide cycles of the sea.

How did that happen?

Ellie spent two weeks last summer immersed in an OceansWide marine science camp for kids. That involved living with other campers within the Schoodic Section of Acadia National Park while doing hands-on ocean research every day with a staff of professional oceanographers. Her classroom was the Gulf of Maine, with what she learned often involving working on a research vessel provided by the College of the Atlantic in Bar Harbor.

“I used to be really freaked out by the ocean, when I went to visit my grandparents in Maine,” Ellie says. “And at camp I was nervous, because I had never been away from home, away from my mom for that long, and I would be living where I wouldn’t know anybody. But after about 10 or 20 minutes, I felt really comfortable. My roommates were very nice, and we all got along really well. And on the second day we went to a tidal pool at Schoodic Point and caught urchins and crabs and other sea creatures.”

Can’t have fun like that in Iowa.

Now in their fourth year, OceansWide’s camps for kids and the curriculum it offers continue to work their magic on “kids” from fifth grade through graduate school. It’s been a labor of love from founder and director Campbell “Buzz” Scott, an expert in exploring the depths of the sea with submersible research vessels, both robotic and manned, like those used in exploring the seafloor remains of the Titanic.

“Over the past few years we have taken our students and campers out and about to learn about their natural ocean and land based environments,” Scott says. “We have traveled to places that excite their imaginations and incite curiosity. We teach them to snorkel and SCUBA dive and how to use research boats in exploring the deep ocean, allowing them to ‘fly’ ROVs (remotely operated vehicles), not just watch from the sidelines. Our students have dissected whales and learned the value of conserving the ocean through exploration and adventure.”

OceansWide works closely with the Schoodic Institute and the new Schoodic Marine Center in Winter Harbor, Maine, offering both two-week and three-week programs. Tuition is substantial, but several scholarships available to students who couldn’t otherwise participate. Looking back, Ellie now describes her two-week OceansWide camp session in life-changing terms.

“It made me a lot less shy with people,” she says. “It made me much more curious. It made me a lot more competitive and a lot more serious. Now I always have questions and always have my hand up, and the teacher says ‘Ellie, right now is not the time for questions.’

“It was the best time I ever had in my life,” she says. “I would recommend it to anyone who is comfortable with it, especially kids from places like Iowa, where we have lakes and rivers and swamps, but not an ocean.”

Ellie plans to return to Maine this summer to attend a two-week sailing school, where she will learn about rigging and handling small sail boats, navigation and seamanship’s “rules of the road.”

Can’t have fun like that in Iowa.