When SPLASH members took the students on Freeport’s Nautical Mile to Bracco’s Seafood Market, they were greeted by a school of fish, on ice. There was flounder, grouper, fluke, and tilapia as well as sea bass, perch, snapper and porgies. The objective was to show the students that the assortment of seafood Bracco’s offers did not come from a distant place, but from a nearby ocean. “If you hurt the ecosystem, you hurt yourself, said Block, pointing to the display of fish.

Following the outing, the students were asked to work together to build a model of their neighborhoods, using cardboard and other arts-and-crafts materials.

“I’m making a fish,” said Alexander, as he began folding the corners of a yellow construction paper. “I have fishing rods at home.

“I live right by the boat sails,” said Matthew. He tapped the pads of his fingertips on the desk as he waited for his share of a globular clump of green play dough, to begin molding his portion of the model.

“A house,” added Vanessa, with a slight pause. “A little one.”

“I’m going to make my apartment,” said Jon, who clarified the spelling of his name for a Herald reporter as she scribbled in her notepad. “It’s Jon, J-O-N.”

After the students gathered around the model of their town, Crupar poured a brown liquid composed of coffee grounds through a tube embedded beneath it, to mimic the process of storm water runoff, soiling the bright greens of the trees, and muddling the blue waters.

“I tell them that’s what happens,” said Crupar. “Whatever you put in the drain is going to go on the wonderful things that you created.”

“They’re identifying things and learning about their environment,” said Don Harris, vice president of SPLASH. “The modeling that they’re doing, they’re making a link between how what goes out to the storm drains directly affect our waterways.”