It was restoration meets learning and getting muddy at Admiral Farragut Academy in St. Petersburg on Tuesday.
Sari Deitche, a teacher at the academy, thinks the kids are getting a better understanding of Tampa Bay through the Bay Grasses in Classes program.
"We are learning about this in our classroom through notes and textbooks, but this is applying it hands-on as well," she said.
The program allows students to grow seagrasses at school and then plant them in the Bay. Students can use half of the crop to grow even more grass, a good thing when you consider how much has been lost over the past century.
About 45 percent of the wetlands in Tampa Bay have been lost because of population growth and pollution in the past 100 years.
Alexa Smith, an eighth-grader at the academy, was busy getting her hands dirty with her friends in the last few minutes before they had to put back on their school uniforms and head to math class.
She took a stalk of plants harvested from the Bay at one of Tampa Bay estuary's starter farms, divided it into two and put the plants into trays so they could grow.
Joey Dalton, a seventh-grader, was working with the plants for the first time.
"I think it's good to help overall because some people just don't like to help and they kind of pollute (the Bay) so it's good to change and help."
The kids know that their hard work will pay off. The bed next to the one they were planting was filled with last year's plants that are ready to be planted in Tampa Bay.
The salt marsh grass being planted, native Spartina alterniflora, will eventually be home to fish and act as a buffer against erosion.
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