6A • June 10, 2016 • Seaside Signal • seasidesignal.com
Pacifi ca projects on display
LYRA FONTAINE/SEASIDE SIGNAL
Dana Ottem, Annuka Brown and Jesse Trott discuss what
they learned from working with Sea Turtles Forever/Blue
Wave to remove microplastics from beaches.
LYRA FONTAINE/SEASIDE SIGNAL
Seniors Esteban Becerra, Joanna Ramos, Marilu Peon and
Xitlali Bello focused their Pacifi ca project on community gar-
dens. The trio revitalized the school’s culinary garden.
‘The Sound of Gravel’
The Friends of the Sea-
side Library host Ruth Wari-
ner, author of “The Sound
of Gravel,” Thursday, June
16, at 7 p.m. “The Sound of
Gravel” is the true
story of one girl’s
coming-of-age
in a polygamist
family. The event
will take place in
the Community
Room and there
will be book sales
and signings pre-
sented by Beach
Books.
Ruth Wariner was
the 39th of her father’s 42
children. Growing up on a
farm in rural Mexico, where
authorities turn a blind eye to
the practices of her commu-
nity, Wariner lives in a ram-
shackle house without indoor
plumbing or electricity. At
church, preachers teach that
God will punish the wicked
by destroying the world and
that women can only ascend
to heaven by entering into
polygamous marriages
and giving birth
to as many chil-
dren as possible.
After Wariner’s
father — the man
who had been the
founding prophet
of the colony — is
murdered by his
brother in a bid for
church power, her
mother remarries,
becoming the second wife of
another faithful congregant.
Wariner lives in Portland.
Seaside Public Library is
located at 1131 Broadway.
For more information call
503-738-6742 or visit us at
www.seasidelibrary.org.
DINING
on the
LYRA FONTAINE/CANNON BEACH GAZETTE
Seaside High School seniors Brittany West, Dante Still and
Jack Whittle restored a Circle Creek trail with the North Coast
Land Conservancy.
A way for students to ‘reach
higher,’ leave comfort zone
By Lyra Fontaine
For Seaside Signal
For their Pacifi ca projects, Seaside High
School seniors devoted 50 to 100 hours to
a range of activities. They organized events
like Cinco de Mayo, plays and the school’s
centennial celebration. They tutored,
coached sports, worked with Foster Club
and food banks, spearheaded emergency
preparedness efforts and more.
Students presented their work to the
community June 1, articulating how they
balanced their time and found creative solu-
tions to obstacles.
Pacifi ca projects are “a place for stu-
dents to excel, to reach higher, to get out of
their comfort zones,” Pacifi ca adviser and
social studies instructor Mike Hawes said in
his opening remarks.
Hawes thanked “the larger community
in which we send our students.”
“A community of incredibly gifted vol-
unteers and achievers, ordinary people per-
forming the ordinary acts that make a place
extraordinary, that make a place home,” he
said. “A community of business owners
that pitch in, donate, support, promote, vol-
unteer.”
Pacifi ca has been a graduation require-
ment since 1993.
“The class of 2016 did an amazing ar-
ray of unique and individualized projects,”
Hawes said after the presentations. “We are
proud of this group and still amazed after
24 years of projects and presentations how
moving, vital, and challenging this program
remains for our students.”
Microplastics removal
Dana Ottem, Jesse Trott and Annuka
Brown spent days fi ltering sand to remove
microplastics — formed from larger plas-
tic debris in the ocean breaking down over
time — from local beaches. Mentor Marc
Ward, founder of Sea Turtles Forever/Blue
Wave, guided them.
“Marine animals often ingest micro-
plastics mistaking them as food and cannot
digest them properly,” Brown said. Toxins
from the plastics are passed down the food
chain.
The presentation included a photo of a
sea turtle with plastic stuck in its nose, and a
bird necropsy that contained microplastics.
For their Pacifi ca project, the students
used a static-charge screen for plastic fi ltra-
tion patented by Sea Turtles Forever, which
helps conserve marine turtles and preserve
their nesting and foraging habitats. The or-
ganization has sent screens to California,
Australia, Florida, Canada, the Netherlands
and Oregon coastal communities.
The “tenacious trio,” as they called
themselves, removed plastics at Fort Ste-
vens State Park, Manzanita Beach, Crescent
powered by
LYRA FONTAINE/SEASIDE SIGNAL
Seniors Paige Ideue, Alexander Barker and Abel Ryon helped
Providence Seaside Hospital with the fundraising event
Festival of Trees.
Beach and Short Sands Beach, saving thou-
sands of seabirds from ingesting plastics.
To fi lter for plastics, the students
scooped dry sand onto the screen with a
shovel, moved sand to see if plastic was
beneath the surface and ran the screen by
moving it around to ensure that sand passed
through.
After, they dumped the screen’s debris
into a bucket that collected all plastics,
which were taken to a McMinnville landfi ll.
They made their way up and down
beaches repeating the process, often by the
high-tide line, where microplastics usually
wash up due to storms and ocean patterns
called gyres.
“As capable human beings we are, we
need to put forth the effort into bettering
our world,” Brown said, “whether that is
doing recycling, beach cleanups or becom-
ing more educated about the problems that
plastics are causing.”
The project changed the students’ plastic
consumption and how they view beaches.
“I used to think our beaches were really
clean, and now I am down there constantly
scanning for plastics,” Trott said.
Community garden
From their experiences community gar-
dening and revitalizing the school’s garden,
seniors Esteban Becerra, Joanna Ramos,
Marilu Peon and Xitlali Bello hope to con-
vey that growing your own food can be a
fun, rewarding way to learn about plant
biology, spend time outdoors and enjoy or-
ganic produce.
The students learned about balancing
work and school, benefi ts of organic food
and taking proper care of fruits and vege-
tables they planted, with help from mentor
Dorota Haber-Lehigh, English language
learning and ethnobotany teacher.
“We learned how to use different mate-
rials to enrich the soil and help the plants
grow better,” Becerra said.
Each student had roots in gardening or
farming.
They began working in community
gardens like Green Angels Farm and Sun-
ny Pool Gardens last spring, helping with
weeding, watering, readying garden plots,
planting fl owers to attract bees, planting
and harvesting vegetables, composting and
more.
The students fondly looked back on see-
ing their hard work blossom into fruits and
vegetables they could pick, eat and share
with others in the community.
They also transformed Seaside High
School’s culinary garden, which they no-
ticed was “growing nothing but weeds.”
They cleaned it up and spent 10 hours weed-
ing the garden, discovering a bird’s nest in
the process. After moving into the gardens,
they planted tomatoes, zucchini, oregano,
raspberries, potatoes, chard and more.
“We are hoping that the culinary classes
will harvest and use the foods we planted,”
said Becerra, who hopes to study botany.
Restoration project
Brittany West, Danté Still and Jack
Whittle worked with North Coast Land
Conservancy, a nonprofi t that preserves
and manages land and wildlife, to restore
a trail.
They worked with mentor Katie Voelke,
North Coast Land Conservancy executive
director, as well as land steward Eric Owen.
“We wanted to give community mem-
bers and visitors a place to experience
the unique beauty of the northern Oregon
Coast,” West said.
North Coast Land Conservancy re-
stored Seaside’s Circle Creek and made
the land available for the public to enjoy
through hiking, fi shing and bird watching.
The area is beautiful, the students said, and
home to bird species, elk herds and salmon
running in Necanicum River.
However, the overgrown Legacy Trail
was not clearly marked, leading to confu-
sion.
“The fi rst time we went to the trail, we
had a hard time fi nding it,” Whittle said.
The students cleaned the trail, creat-
ed 10 trail markers using recycled wood
boards, then placed the trail markers in the
ground through both digging holes and us-
ing a mechanical auger.
They learned about planning and orga-
nization, woodworking, outdoor labor and
what the North Coast Land Conservancy
does. The four are still helping the organi-
zation to make posts for the second Circle
Creek trail.
“We hope you go out and enjoy the
amazing, beautiful place we fell in love
with,” Whittle said.
Festival of Trees
Seniors Paige Ideue, Alexander Barker
and Abel Ryon volunteered with Provi-
dence Seaside Hospital to help organize
a major event: the 18th annual Festival of
Trees gala, a December fundraising event
and holiday tradition.
The gala helped raise money for surgi-
cal equipment that allows the hospital to
perform more complex surgeries.
With help from their mentor, Provi-
dence Seaside volunteer coordinator Ra-
ven Brown, the students fi rst advertised the
event, attended the hospital’s board meet-
ing and called business donating trees and
other auction items.
For the event, they helped create the
popular “Santa’s corner,” decorated cook-
ies and trees, ushered guests, helped guard
each tree and assisted during the tree auc-
tion.
“To create a wonderful winter wonder-
land and have the public enjoy it made us
feel accomplished,” Ryon said. “Our hard
work and fl exibility paid off.”
The event raised $116,000. Ideue volun-
teered additional hours at the Jason Good-
ding memorial, handing out remembrance
bracelets and asking guests to sign a book.
ROBERT CAIN LD,
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