(Children’s Library Title: “Our Island of the Blue Dolphins Adventure”)
Ever wanted to fly through a forest like a bird?
In this presentation your students will… as they learn about the astonishing underwater forest environment that surrounds the island in the award-winning children’s book – ‘Island of the Blue Dolphins’!
A look at the giant kelp forest environment and animals and plants that live there. Here we bring our lifetime of diving the California giant kelp forests and underwater encounters with the animals that live there to life with this funny, exciting, action-packed marine science adventure!
In this program we use the book, Island of the Blue Dolphins, as a way to introduce the giant kelp forest ecosystem around the California Channel Islands. The program begins with a demonstration of the high-tech Aqua Lung® SCUBA diving equipment we will need to use to explore the giant kelp forest around the “Island of the Blue Dolphins“ — San Nicholas Island. Students are chosen from the audience to put on the actual SCUBA equipment used on our expedition. After seeing how we adapt ourselves to visit the underwater environment we look at the key part of the ecosystem that we will be visiting — giant kelp. During this demonstration, a specially constructed giant kelp plant is used to compare and contrast kelp plants to typical land plants.
After the demonstrations, undersea explorers, Wayne and Karen Brown, then take your students on an exciting tour of the “Island of the Blue Dolphins” giant kelp forests via an exciting and fast-paced, high-definition, digital multi-image presentation.
Your students join the Browns on the expedition boat where they meet the captain and divemaster. As they hop on the underwater scooters and accompany Wayne and Karen on their scuba dive, your students see 
the incredible diversity of life in the Island of the Blue Dolphins’ giant kelp forests. Your students learn howkelp plants grow and discover how kelp forests are important natural resources. Your students make the kelp forests their home. They will see a fascinating variety of marine animals big and small, from the most docile to the so-called “dangerous” marine creatures, including encounters with sharks! The students learn about the important relationships between different creatures. They also learn how fishes protect themselves from predators and how some fishes search for food.
After the multi-image presentation, your students are shown surprising examples of some of their favorite foods that contain giant kelp.
If time allows, at the end of the presentation a brief time is set aside for a questions and answers.
