The Seaside Center in the summer of 2019

Naturalist Brendan Murtha Spearheads the Environmental Education Center’s Innovative Move to Online Programs and Learning Activities

Every summer since 1979, the Bruce Museum Seaside Center, a beachside environmental education center located in Greenwich Point Park, has offered local children and their families a wealth of programs and activities centered on exploring the region’s diverse ecology and natural history. There is no admission fee for the Seaside Center, housed within the Floren Family Environmental Center at Innis Arden Cottage, though from May through October, both residents and non-residents need a beach pass to enter the park.

As the spring of 2020 progressed, it became increasingly clear that the Seaside Center would not be able to open as usual this summer. Almost all of the programming is geared toward close interaction and tactile exploration, and the physical space of the Seaside Center is not well-suited for social distancing. Ultimately, Kate Dzikiewicz, the Bruce Museum Science Curatorial Associate who manages the Seaside Center, made the difficult decision to keep the doors closed for the summer. However, just because the Seaside Center was physically closed, didn’t mean that it had to be completely absent this summer. That’s where Seaside Center naturalist Brendan Murtha came in.

Brendan is an undergraduate studying ecology, evolution, and marine biology at Bowdoin College, in Brunswick, Maine. Having grown up in Norwalk, Connecticut, he volunteered at the Seaside Center during summers in high school and was accepted as a full-time naturalist for the 2020 season. When Kate told Brendan that the programming would be entirely digital this year, he adeptly rose to the challenge.

“At the beginning of this summer, I was nervous,” Brendan recalls. “I had come on board as the Seaside Center naturalist just before leaving for my winter semester studying abroad in Ecuador, and everything looked like it would line up quite nicely – I had a solid, concise idea of what the season would look like, what programming I’d run, and throughout my time away more ideas continued to come to me.”

“Even after getting sent home from Ecuador in late March, I figured lockdown would let up by summer and an in-person season could be salvaged,” says Brendan. “Kate and I traded in this optimism until reality set in.”

“The question that soon arose, of course, is what would an ‘online’ Seaside Center look like? Whatever the answer, it would be unprecedented, and challenging to get right,” says Brendan. “Much of the Seaside Center’s magic comes from its entanglement with place, its ‘hands-on’ approach to local wildlife and ecosystems. Could any digital format hope to replicate that?”

Kate and Brendan spent late spring brainstorming potential programming, and together they designed a three-pronged virtual approach that they hoped would bring the fun and learning of the Seaside Center to area kids and their families, whether they were enjoying a socially-distanced day at the beach or staying safe at home.

They prioritized three lines of programming: educational videos, articles, and, in collaboration with Bruce Museum educator Corinne Flax, “guided explorations” featuring art and science activities focused on the ecology of Long Island Sound. The scope of this content was intended to mirror what might be covered during a typical season at the Seaside Center, with the series of videos, articles, and activities released online on a weekly basis.

A flat-clawed hermit crab at the Seaside Center in 2019

Serving as cinematographer, writer, editor, narrator, and producer, over the course of the summer, Brendan created six brief video documentaries that dived into the ecology and history of Long Island Sound. In these videos, which can be accessed via this link, viewers can learn about what critters might be lurking around the rocks that line the shallow waters off the beach, how the Long Island Sound was formed by ice age glaciation, what invasive species are impacting our shores, and more.

“Brendan’s lifetime of passion for the environment clearly comes through in his videos, from tackling big-picture issues like climate change to making even the smallest crabs shine as important members of our natural communities,” says Kate.

Specific animals were highlighted in more detail in Brendan’s written series, Local Wildlife Weekly. These articles can be found on the Bruce Museum Science Department’s blog, Storage Room No. 2. In these entries, Brendan combines his nature photography with personal anecdotes and facts about birds, insects, and other animals that are frequently seen near the Seaside Center, but often ignored.

Finally, Brendan, along with Corinne Flax, Manager of School and Community Partnerships at the Bruce Museum, produced weekly summer activities in the Seaside Saturday series. These eight activities guide learners and their helpers through four different seaside topics, encouraging families to learn in nature, and to take nature home in simple and fun art and craft projects.

“Though we would have liked to be out with our community in person this summer, Brendan Murtha’s great work ensured that it was still a summer well spent for the Seaside Center,” says Kate. “We wish Brendan well in his final year at Bowdoin, and hope to work with him again, and in person, next summer!

Please read on for a fascinating postscript from Brendan, recounting a richly productive and rewarding summer as the Seaside Center’s Digital 2020 Naturalist.

For more information about the Bruce Museum Seaside Center, please visit this page at brucemuseum.org, or contact Seaside Center Manager Kate Dzikiewicz at kdzikiewicz@brucemuseum.org or 203-413-6747. To support the Seaside Center’s educational programs, please visit this page at brucemuseum.org.

Reflections on the Seaside Center’s Virtual Summer

By Brendan Murtha, Seaside Center Summer Naturalist

“2020 was not the year anyone was expecting. While I’m sure none of us need a re-cap, suffice it to say the “cancellation” of the Bruce Museum Seaside Center’s in-person season felt like just another blow in a summer of disappointments. As will become common testimony, I think, during the first bout of COVID-related chaos, I underestimated the magnitude of the situation.

Kate and I spent a good deal of time brainstorming strategies, thinking up a staggering array of potential programming early on, though we knew I’d only be able to get to a fraction of it over the course of the summer. On the bright side, I quickly realized I would have a great deal of creative freedom (I was, after all, the only naturalist on staff) but with such freedom came responsibility – the translation of Seaside Center magic would be in my hands.

We decided to prioritize three “lines” of programming: educational videos, blog posts, and “guided explorations” (in collaboration with Corinne Flax from the Education Department). The scope of this content was intended to mirror what might be covered during a typical season, with embellishment. After all, I was no longer tied to Greenwich Point alone – looking out over the whole of the Sound, I could paint with a broader brush. Considering that the Center’s audience was now decentralized, this was essential: I could both “take the Point to them” and produce generalized content applicable to whatever stretch of shoreline they found themselves on. This also provided a good incentive to wander, albeit responsibly: the more locations around the Sound I visited, the more broadly applicable my content would be. I rarely need incentives to explore (as an obsessive birder and naturalist, I spend much of my time outdoors) but during the doldrums of an often-dispiriting summer, such incentive couldn’t hurt!

Video production was the most time-intensive part of the job, but also the most rewarding. I made six videos over the course of the summer, and served as sole cinematographer, writer, editor, and producer for each. While occasionally overwhelming, it was fun to play all these roles: I quickly identified what I liked and disliked about them, much like I was “speed dating” across positions. Many of these videos function as quasi-nature-documentaries, which is a genre I’ve long admired but had never worked with. I’m glad I finally got to. I really enjoyed blending my writing (the narration) with vibrant imagery, casting a discerning eye on the “emergent properties” that blossom at their intersection. In certain ways, the process of video production felt like a reliable manifestation of the way I actually view the natural world: no easy task, as the final goal of effective communication is always just out of reach.

To make my videos, I would choose a topic and then sketch out the “story” I wanted to tell: “what specific places, species, and dynamics do I want to highlight? How will I connect them?” I then took this roadmap to the field to collect my footage. Inadvertently, changes would be made: as I can never predict exactly what I’ll find in the field, some parts of the plan were forcibly omitted while others were added in. Writing and recording the narration was the final step in the process, downstream of video collection. I tried to plan my videos out several weeks in advance, so I could collect footage for future use every time I went out. This proved to be a useful model, and filled in many of the gaps in later (longer) videos.

While my videos tackled big topics (specific ecosystem ecologies, geological history, etc.), putting local species in context, my weekly blog posts were intended to function as an inverse: individual organisms were the lens through which big topics in ecology and evolution were explored. I think naturalists must burn both edges of the match simultaneously: individual organisms are products of complex ecosystem histories-processes, but those processes are continuously shaped by the organisms themselves. As I say in one of my posts, there is a distinct dialect to natural history. In this sense, my videos and posts are always in dialogue with one another, and are best read/watched together.

At season’s end I’d published 10 “Local Wildlife Weeklies,” each looking at a different “under-represented” member of our local fauna. Unlike my videos, these posts were not planned out in advance: intending them to be chronologically (seasonally) relevant, I’d write about whatever organism I happened to spend time with and photograph that week. Posts thus sprung out of afternoons in a wildflower garden, long walks on the mudflat, a salt-marsh sojourn or two. Written in near real-time, they were designed to capture the raw joy of discovery and the run-away curiosity I hope follows suit: a proxy for experiences I may have shared in-person with visitors to the center. Sure, there is really no substitute for the latter – but, as a silver lining, at least these posts will exist out there forever, accessible to anyone. The discovery has been liberated, you could say, from the constraints of space and time.

The third line of programming, my guided explorations, were released for “Seaside Saturdays” every other week, with Corinne Flax, the Museum’s Manager of School and Community Partnerships, organizing a relevant craft or family activity in-between. These crafts and explorations were perhaps the most familiar to Seaside Center regulars, and were also the content most accessible to young audiences.

If my blog-posts captured specific moments of discovery, my explorations functioned as the nature walks in which those moments might be found. On such nature walks I am the guide, not the lecturer: the reader is supposed to explore in equal measure. They offer up more questions than they do answers, and are sort of a “how-to” guide for observation. Coupled with Corinne’s crafts, this programming passed the torch to the reader: As all in-person Seaside Center programming is typically interactive, we knew we had to preserve that crucial element in at least a part of the digital format.

The summer is now over, and all this programming is behind me. Six videos, 10 articles, four explorations – did I produce enough? There is no standard for comparison; how do you compare such work to the typical duties of an in-person naturalist? Conversion isn’t straightforward – but perhaps it isn’t necessary, either. We were wading in uncharted waters.

In retrospect, I am happy with and proud of what we produced. I truly think we made the best of a bad situation, and found silver-linings bright enough to stand on their own. We demonstrated that the ideals of the Seaside Center – our commitment to education, dialogue, and outreach – remain paramount and transcend the physical Center itself. The material we produced will live on, and will be incorporated into many seasons to come: in some ways, I feel I’ve left a deeper fingerprint on the Center than I ever could have working a normal season. For that, I suppose, I am quite grateful. I also am grateful for the opportunity to do the work I did: I learned a ton, experimented a lot, became a better writer and naturalist with each passing day – while I can’t say for sure what I would’ve gained from an in-person summer, I know it wouldn’t be the same. I extend a huge thank you to everyone who supported my work and made it possible.

Now, with the season over, I’m “back” at school for a remote-semester in Maine. Much like this past summer, this is not the senior year I was expecting. The Bowdoin College campus is only a few rooftops away from the house I’m leasing, yet it’s entirely off-limits to my housemates and me. I can’t help but be reminded of my last few visits to Greenwich Point, with the Innis Arden cottage locked and shuttered even as I went in and out of the Seaside Center’s equipment shed next-door. So close, yet so far – will we ever get back to where we were? The answer is, of course, no: there is no going back. Any normal will be a new normal, and what happens now will live on whether we like it or not.

Approaching my graduation, I, like many young people, am being forced to reconsider what I want from my life— as we enter a new world, old plans must adapt or perish. While I will continue to pursue a career in environmental outreach, education, and communication, the contours of my vision have changed as a result of this job: perhaps I want to continue documentary work, or chug full-speed ahead as a writer? Only time will tell – whatever happens, I’ll be able to look back on this summer and know it played a pivotal role in the path I’ve beaten forth.”