CLAYTON — Working 16 hours a day would seem like the least desirable way to spend summer. But more than a dozen teachers on a weeklong summer learning cruise on Lake Ontario called it a fantastic voyage.
"It's beyond expectation. It's absolutely fantastic. It's a learning experience beyond anything," said Larry Grisanti, a biology teacher at East Aurora High School, one of the cruise participants.
During the weeklong Shipboard and Shoreline Science Teachers' Workshop on Lake Ontario, 15 teachers and other environmental educators participate in field exercises and collect lake data with federal scientists.
The workshop is hosted by New York Sea Grant and the Centers for Ocean Sciences Education Excellence, which gathered teachers from New York and five other states for the workshop.
The crew spends most of its time on the Peter Wise Lake Guardian, a 180-foot research vessel operated by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Great Lakes National Program Office.
"Anybody can get information from a textbook, but retaining or gaining any real knowledge is a different story," Mr. Grisanti said. "You get so much more long-term knowledge when you actually do it yourself."
By the end of the cruise, which started in Buffalo and arrived Tuesday in Clayton, teachers will have presentations and classroom activities to take back to their schools.
"We will share all our presentations on a disk so that they can use all this information in their classrooms," said Helen Domske, a coastal education specialist with the New York Sea Grant, who is leading the summer workshop.
"The teachers are very excited," she said. "Some mornings we start at 6 a.m. and they go until 10 at night. Except for meals, they don't really get any downtime, but they are not complaining."
Ms. Domske said the crew has regularly monitored various factors of the lake, including water temperature, pH levels and chemical pollutants as well as algae and plankton abundance.
She said this is the third year of a five-year special monitoring program established by the EPA and Environment Canada that involves more than 60 scientists and students from various agencies.
The cycle rotates every year for each of the Great Lakes: Superior, Michigan, Huron, Erie and Ontario.
"Next year, the cruise will be out on Lake Huron and Lake Superior," Ms. Domske said.
Jana R. Lantry, an aquatic biologist with the state Department of Environmental Conservation, said the project is important to set up goals to restore the damaged ecosystems of the lakes.
"Going out and collecting data of a whole lake, in both New York and Ontario waters, helps us better evaluate a project for restoration," Mrs. Lantry said. "As far as New York waters, we have started assessments in the early '80s and have continued until now and have 14 research sites on the New York side."
She said human activities on the lakes caused the ecosystems to suffer from toxic chemicals, loss of species and invasive species such as the zebra and quagga mussels.
The research group also studies the lakes' food web and nutrients and will conduct a lakewide fishery assessment.
Mr. Grisanti said it is getting more important to educate students about the up-to-date conditions of the Great Lakes because in the near future, they will be the ones who will protect one of the largest sources of fresh water in the world.
"They are the next generation. They have to know what they are going to take care of," he said.
Mr. Grisanti said he will not be starting the next school year with a usual first-day routine.
"I'm going to show them a PowerPoint presentation and we are going to discuss what we did on this trip," Mr. Grisanti said. "It's going to be real science. How cool will that be?"
The crew made a stop at Oswego on Thursday and will stop at Rochester today and Youngs-town on Saturday.
