Healing Waters: Kelp, Nitrogen, and Ocean Science

Developed by: Darlene Troge, Denise SilvaDennis (WeeTahMoe), MIT SOLVE (Eliza Berg, Michael Byrd), Roger Grande (Consultant)

For Grades: K-12

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Understand Indigenous Climate Solutions by Learning from Shinnecock Kelp Farmers

This activity invites students to investigate the science behind two of the most pressing threats to coastal ecosystems: nitrogen pollution and ocean acidification. Through hands-on experiments, including shell pH demonstrations that make invisible chemical changes visible, learners connect global emissions and local wastewater runoff to the disappearance of mussels, scallops, and quahogs that Shinnecock people have depended on for millennia. Through this exercise, students will connect between data, lived reality, lab observation, and understanding better our ancestral waters.

At the center of this curriculum is the Shinnecock Kelp Farmers, an Indigenous-led organization restoring the waters of East Long Island, New York, through regenerative aquaculture. Students will learn how kelp removes nitrogen and carbon from the water, why that matters for ecological reciprocity, and what it looks like when a community refuses the story that extinction is inevitable. This science presented in this exercise is technical while also being relational, rooted in sovereignty, and oriented toward a next generation of water stewards.

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