April 17, 2018
Palm Beach Daily News
“Do your part” was Rosarian Academy’s theme for Earth Day 2018, and on April 13, fifth- and sixth-grade students spent the day teaching their classmates in grades K-4, 7 and 8 about ideas for improving our planet and its environment.
The students offered creative suggestions on conservation, recycling, repurposing, alternative forms of energy and reversing the effects of pollution.
Georgina Keogh, a sixth-grader from Palm Beach, and her partner, Eleanor Hall, a fifth-grader from West Palm Beach, took on an atypical project.
“We wanted to do a project that was less common, something that not many students might try,” said Hall.
Their project revolved around raising consciousness for the importance of sharks in the ecosystem. As apex predators, sharks are feared and reviled, but they’re in need of a little good press, the girls say. Sharks’ importance to the aquatic environment is a crucial component of the ocean’s ecological balance, the girls say.
“In China, sharks have been used for years for their fins,” Hall said. “They’re being killed for their fins. People cut the fins off and throw the sharks back in the water, where they can’t swim right and they drown.”
So the girls devoted their project to raising awareness of the sharks’ life cycle and importance to the aquatic environment and food chain.
“We made a couple of models and posters, and we’re trying to raise awareness among our classmates and at local restaurants that serve shark-fin soup,” Keogh said.
