While sitting in a classroom, confined to a desk, and listening to a long lecture, students’ minds slowly lose concentration and resort to entertaining themselves with their own thoughts. This, however, was not the case when AP Environmental Science and AP Biology students took a three-day field trip, Oct. 23 to Oct. 25, to Catalina Island.

These students traveled in total 22 hours to spend their weekend at the Catalina Island Marine Institute (CIMI). CIMI is a camp that hosts schools for three to five day periods, teaching them about the importance of conservation of the Earth.

During the trip, students were able to learn more about sharks, fish, and algae, through various labs and activities, as well as dissecting squid and snorkeling in the Pacific.

“[The activities] were really informational and they were really cool. I learned a lot about the ocean and the island ecology during the activities,” stated sophomore Sarah Martino.

The trip was also a phone service free learning environment, which although may sound like torture to some, really helped the students. “The people were 100 percent engaged, especially since there’s no technology, they were just looking at what [the activities] were,” explained AP Biology and AP Environmental Science teacher, Melanie Lyon.

This is the second year that these classes have gone to Catalina and benefits of the time spent there proves returning worth it. “I think it’s beneficial for both classes because it’s an opportunity to have classroom setting be outside, when we’re talking about science stuff and actually literally be immersed in it at the exact same time,” explained Lyon.

CIMI is a place where students are able to learn while experiencing the world around them.

“The biggest goal is to have fun, but I want [students] to know that the ocean is cool, to want to protect it, to want to learn more about it,” stated Marine Science Instructor, Theresa Fukuda.

And that goal was received by the students. “I’ve always wanted to work with the ocean but this trip really got me interested in the conservation of our ocean. We learned how important everything in our ocean is to us,” Martino stated.

The Catalina trip proved to be a big success, and extremely beneficial for the content learned. “Unfortunately, I don’t have a giant fish tank and there’s nowhere to hike around Perry, so there’s no going out and saying ‘let’s talk about island ecology,’ we were literally on an island,” stated Lyon.

Martino concluded, “I would do the trip again, especially because I want to do something with the ocean when I’m older. You meet a lot of great people on the trip and you learn a lot of interesting facts,”