Students at Robertson Elementary and Warwick Veterans Memorial High School are discovering that their classrooms don’t always need to have four walls. Nor do students always have to be seated at their desks.

Thanks to a grant from Defenders of Greenwich Bay, instructors from Save the Bay have taken Robertson sixth-graders and Vets students on hands-on, educational voyages in their own backyards – Narragansett and Greenwich Bays.

Over the course of two weeks – the last week of October and the first week of November – students got aboard Save The Bay’s 45-footlong education bio-diesel fueled vessel Alletta Morris.

The sixth-graders set out as far as Warwick Neck, while the high school trips ventured to Prudence Island, says Eric Pfirrmann, an education specialist with Save the Bay.

The younger students were on the water for about two hours, while their older peers stayed out for the entire school day. In all, some 200 students got about the vessel and about 11 trips were made.

Save the Bay education specialist Grainne Lanigan says students not only got to ride Alletta Morris, but trawled as well<\m>that is, they cast a large net overboard. The net was used to collect a variety of sea life, including various species of crab, sea stars and flounder.

On Prudence Island students also combed the shoreline, pails in tow, flipping over rocks, investigating animal life and invasive species.

Pfirrmann explained that the overall purpose of the trip was to look at how estuaries survive, through “some very basic marine science.” Students were asked to look at the amount of plankton in the water, as well as measure the bay’s salinity and oxygen levels.

“We were trying to focus on Greenwich Bay,” Pfirrmann said, noting that it was the site of a devastating fish kill in August 2003, when millions of fish and other sea life turned up dead along Warwick’s coast.

Save the Bay instructors asked students to play the role of detectives, to see if they could determine the cause of that fish kill, and how to prevent it from happening again.

“We were really trying to answer questions and trying to solve the puzzle of why so many fish were killed in 2003,” Pfirrmann said.

He called Greenwich Bay a resource that students needed to be more aware of.

“It’s a complete ecosystem,” he added. “ And students got to see their town from a different viewpoint.”

“It was a great trip,” Pfirrmann said. “Anytime you can really show them their great resource, and show that they themselves are connected. It’s important both to them and the bay itself. They will eventually be taxpayers, homeowners, voters and decision makers.”

Pfirrmann pointed out that the trip was part of a larger Save The Bay administered education program, which served more than 20,000 Rhode Island students last year.

“This is exactly what we do year-round. It was nice to be able to concentrate in a single area,” he said.

Lanigan added that the Warwick students “had great prior knowledge” of the bay before heading out on their voyages.

Robertson fourth and fifth grade classes went on seal watches last week. Other classes will also visit the organization’s Exploration Center at Easton’s Beach in Newport later this year.

Defenders of Greenwich Bay President Jack Early says supporting educational programs is a component of the organization’s overall mission to support and defend the bay.

Early explained that the goal of the voyage is to show students how “the things they do at West Shore Road affect the bay a mile away.”

“There are many sources of pollution and they are not necessarily the obvious ones,” Early said.

Early explained he felt that educating young minds was key to ensuring a healthy bay in years to come.

“What we would like to do is introduce the children to the bay,” he said. “Maybe their parents have boats, or maybe they’ve never been on the water at all. We want to plant the seed… because they are the budding biologists and marine biologists that we need. That would be money well spent.”

Robertson Elementary School Principal Lynn Dambruch seemed to agree.

“We have the bay right at the end of our street,” she said. “It was very hands-on, a meaningful field trip.”

According to Dambruch, students returned enthusiastic about the trips they had taken, saying, “It was the best field trip they’ve had. Even though it was very chilly, it was very meaningful.”

Dambruch added, “We’re very thankful to Defenders of Greenwich Bay and Save the Bay.”