“The children and parents are thrilled by this award!” exclaimed Leslie Evans, Team Leader at TN Tatem.

Last Friday at the Agricultural Exhibition, Mrs Evans was presented with the 1st Prize Blue Ribbon Award for a six-week long project the students completed on the “Environment and Over-Fishing”.

“This was no ‘textbook-research project’,” Mrs Evans said. “The children went out into the community and interviewed persons who have valuable information about this important topic.

“We visited the Bermuda Underwater Exploration Institute as part of our research” said student Alshaunte Symons. “Mrs Crystal Shultz told us all about how overfishing can destroy coral reefs by taking all the fish away.”

Teacher Roshandra Trott arranged for the students to meet with local fisherman and restaurateur Delvin Bean.

“I love fishing” said student N’Jai Evans. “Mr Bean told us all about the types of fish that he catches for his restaurant such as tuna and wahoo which tourists to Bermuda really enjoy.”

“At BUEI, Mrs Shultz told us about an international organisation called Seafood Watch,” Alshaunte added. “This organisation tries to stop illegal fishing in different parts of the world.”

“We also learnt different vocabulary words,” added Amira Turini. “We learnt that ‘by-catch’ means that you catch more fish than you really need.”

“The children used all the information to create a video called Save The Fish,” noted Mrs Evans. “I think this helped us towards getting 1st Prize!”

Additionally, the children created their own song called It’s Raining Fish!

“They used cut-outs of about 100 small paper fish,” Mrs Evans explained. “Then as they sang, they tossed the fish into the air and watched them ‘rain down’ to simulate the enormous amount of fish there would be in the ocean if overfishing came to a halt.”

This is the third year in a row that TN Tatem has won such an award.

“We are all looking forward to the 2020 Agricultural Exhibition!” Mrs Evans added.