An AP class going on a fun field trip? It’s unheard of, but this year ten APBiology students recently went kayaking.

Ms. Amy Ondeck attended an educational seminar on climate change this summer that allowed her to choose to take one class on a field trip.

The AP Bio students were chosen to participate in the trip.

The class had the choice of hiking, biking, or kayaking, and in a unanimous decision kayaking was chosen.

September 25, the students traveled to North Park in Allegheny County to kayak and learn about water quality.

“I felt that the kayaking experience helped to make students more comfortable with each other,” Ms. Ondeck explained.

The trip was sponsored by Venture Outdoors and Kayak Pittsburgh and there were three guides from the organizations with the group.

Ms. Ondeck said that “The company that did it offered the experience [to us] free of charge, but the programs are still in development, so I would have liked to see a little bit of a longer day.”

The class members were paired up and put into tandem kayaks after a brief safety meeting and overview of the purpose of the trip.

Each pair in the kayaks had a specific job that they had to finish before the trip was over, while of course watching for wildlife.

Two groups had to find different aquatic plants that were in the lake, another group had to test the turbidity of the lake with a balloon, another collected water samples, while the last group checked water temperature.

The group was on the water for 45 minutes, and no one tipped over!

After the actual kayaking trip (and a hunt for a bathroom) the class and Ms. Ondeck searched for macro invertebrates in a bay-like area of the lake. If there were organisms that were found and were identified to be pollutant intolerant then the entire lake was seen to be compromised and couldn’t adapt to pollution.

Thankfully, none of these organisms were found and the lake was seen as pretty healthy.

The guides reported the lake as an 8-10 on a healthiness scale, which is good considering the park is in a suburban area.

After the fun of the day the group stopped for a quick lunch and then loaded back on the bus to return to Beaver before the end of the school day.