Tabor Leads the Way in Marine and Nautical Science

At the School by the Sea, we are incredibly grateful for the unique opportunities that our location presents. One of the highlights our prospective students and families experience on their tour of Tabor is the Marine Science building, located directly on Sippican Harbor. The Marine Science team is always looking for ways to support their curriculums and further advance the hands-on learning that is possible in their courses. We are excited to say that we have added the Nortek Eco, which is an acoustic doppler current profiler (ADCP), to our research tools. 

Even though Eco is relatively new having been developed in March 2021, we are excited about the opportunities locally and globally that working with this device will provide us with. Lila Johnson is hopeful to connect Tabor to other Eco users, which will allow for the sharing of data and understanding of current flows in other areas. “Tabor is the first high school to purchase and use the Nortek Eco, and we are so excited for all of the amazing opportunities that the Eco will bring to our students and the marine science program as a whole,” states Marine Science Teacher Elizabeth Leary.  

Lila Johnson, a marketing engineer at Nortek, visited campus to assist in the assembly of our Eco and provide an overview of how it works, what it is used for, and how to interpret the data that is provided from the device. Not only are we extremely fortunate to have added something of this caliber to our curriculum, but we are the first high school to have one. The Eco will directly support the curriculum in both Oceanography and Advanced Topics Marine Science but will also be used in connection to coursework done in many of the other marine sciences courses.  

So, what exactly is an Eco and why are we so excited to have it at Tabor? An Eco measures the speed and direction of the current in three depth layers. The students are then able to access the data measured from the Eco through an app on their phones. Leary says, “this data will allow us to monitor the water in Sippican Harbor, most notably, how the movement of the water impacts the aquatic habitats as the currents bring oxygen, nutrients, and play a role in the reproductive success of many marine organisms.” When deployed in the harbor, the Eco will gather a baseline of currents in various locations throughout the harbor and as Leary states, “when these datasets accumulate, we hope to not only bring this information to our classrooms, but also make the information available to anyone that is interested.”  

Tabor is very grateful to have collaborated with Nortek and is looking forward to future collaborations with other Eco users. Stay tuned for data from Sippican Harbor to be available soon.