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PEEKSKILL, N.Y. -- Peekskill Middle School students will participate in a live Skype session with third-generation ocean explorer Fabien Cousteau, who will be deployed 63 feet beneath the ocean off the coast of Key Largo, Fla., on Thursday, June 19 at 4:30 p.m.
The Skype session will take place at 212 Ringgold Street, Room 309, Peekskill.
Cousteau is leading Mission 31, a 31-day long research exploration in the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary aboard Aquarius, the only underwater marine habitat and lab in the world.
The students have been following Cousteau’s Mission 31 as part of their participation in the 20th Anniversary Wheelabrator Symposium for Environment and Education. The students traveled to South Florida last month to present their Symposium project on the impact of urban development on local waterways and learn about Mission 31 from Cousteau, who served as a VIP panelist and keynote speaker at the 4-day event.
The groundbreaking exploration honors the 50th anniversary of the Conshelf Two expedition led by Fabien Cousteau’s grandfather Jacques-Yves Cousteau, who is credited with creating the first ocean floor habitats for humans and taking a team of ocean explorers on the 30-day mission.
Mission 31 will expand the 50-year-old Cousteau legacy by one full day, 30 more feet of depth and will broadcast every second of the mission. Three main topics will be highlighted throughout Cousteau’s Mission 31: climate change and the related challenges of ocean acidification; ocean pollution with an emphasis on the effects of plastics; and over-consumption of resources with specific focus on the decline of biodiversity.
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