Posted by Shore Publishing on Nov 06 2008, 03:24 PM
By Marianne Sullivan, Source Senior Staff Writer:
The Shellfish Commission needs a simple wooden workboat to help it distribute shellfish along the town’s public beaches and shellfish beds. Daniel Hand High School team teachers Mike Docker and Bryan Amenta wanted to provide their approximately 30 marine science students with a hands-on experience. Enter the Madison Foundation.
With a $500 grant from the foundation, the students, Docker, and Amenta have started to build a Brockway scow as part of the class’s regular curriculum.
Amenta explains, “This is a great project for the students. They really enjoy it. I never thought we would have the opportunity to do this.”
He has managed to sandwich the incomplete shell of the scow into the limited space within the school’s manual arts workshop.
Recently Perry Rianhard and William Cika, two members of the Shellfish Commission, had the opportunity to see the progress being made on the construction and to meet with the teachers and students.
“It’s what we need. It’s just what we need,” Cika said.
Rianhard and Amenta explained that Brockway boats are built “really with no plans” and from plywood. The one now under construction will be “a little longer and a little wider” than “most Brockways…but it will be a good, stable boat.”
Perfect for the work the Shellfish Commission undertakes, Rianhard said.
The commission and the classes have worked together in the past. Students have helped to assess the clam population off Seaview Beach and have helped with the sorting of oysters at the commission’s upweller at the town dock. The commission grows, harvests, and distributes clams and oysters in public areas and commercial beds in local waters. It also does significant water testing. To gain access to these areas–and to haul shellfish to them–the commission needs a steady boat with plenty of room. The Brockway is it, everyone agreed.
Everyone agreed on one other factor–none of this would have been possible without the $500 grant provided by the Madison Foundation. The grant represents just one example of the many projects funded in whole or in part by the foundation. The Madison Foundation is a non-profit community foundation serving all of the residents of Madison who share a common concern–preserving and improving the quality of life in Madison.
Pictured: Members of the Daniel Hand High School Marine Science and Technology course crowd into the still-to-be-completed shell of a scow the class is building for the town’s Shellfish Commission. The project is being funded by a grant from the Madison Foundation. The 30 students are joined, at right, by William Cika and Perry Rianhard of the Shellfish Commission, Madison Foundation President Dick Benson, and teachers Bryan Amenta and Mike Docker.
Photo by Marianne Sullivan
