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Student Directed Projects

Some of the most powerful learning experiences at WHEA have been those students have started themselves. Listed below are examples of past and present topics students have chosen to explore. They reflect the broad range of students and interests found at WHEA.

Shark Lagoon


Originally proposed by students in 2000, it was the staffs’ consensus that it would never get built. How wrong! Over a three year period, various teams of students worked in fits and starts, but never lost the vision. We haven’t heard of any other school having live sharks on campus, but we’re still looking...

Larval Rearing


Baby seahorses and clownfish, among others have been reared by students since about 1998. After early difficulties, students realized that raising these types of baby fish was much more complicated than raising guppies. Over time, they have developed skills in raising rotifers and copepods, and culturing micro algae to feed the feeder animals. Got Bioencapsulation?

Cephalopod Intelligence


How smart in an octopus? Can they learn to do tricks? Well, maybe not “sit and speak”, but certainly to open a jar to retrieve a food reward...

Deep Sea Creatures


Students from the West Hawaii Explorations Academy PCS (WHEA) have teamed up with mentors Jan War and Chris Kelly scientists from the Natural Energy Lab of Hawaii (NELHA) and have been regularly collecting and observing deep sea creatures found at 3,000 feet. Usually a group of 4 to 5 students including the teacher and advisor of the project Liana Carroll will go down to the pumping station up to four times a week and collect data. The most commonly caught creatures have been shrimp, jellyfish and rat tails. After the creatures are caught they will be photographed, sizes will be taken, species if known, and then they will be kept alive as long as possible. After any creature dies they will be frozen and preserved.

For more information on Science, Technology Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) on a national scale, see this 2008 Popular Mechanics article featuring WHEA

http://www.popularmechanics.com/blogs/science_news/4245161.html