The weekend of July 18-19, 2026, our summer watershed coordinators joined some of our full-time staff on their trip to New York! This trip was filled with learning experiences for these students. On Saturday, they stopped by Elmira, New York to hold a Stream Team training for Chemung County and the Friends of the Lamoka-Waneta Lakes Association. Then, on Sunday, they drove to Otsego, New York to meet our friends at OCCA and host a macroinvertebrate identification training.
Keep reading to learn more about their experiences!
Hakeema:
This summer as watershed coordinators, we had a lot of great opportunities at ALLARM. One of them was our trip to New York. This trip was full of learning and fun, from giving presentations and training to doing a macroinvertebrate event. These activities helped me to improve my confidence, enhance my public speaking and learn more about streams.
One of my favorite activities was training people on how to use pH and nitrate-nitrogen kits because I had a chance to share information about my pH kit experiment and give them an idea of what source of light is the best for reading pH results. I enjoyed how people were eager to learn and I was able to see their excitement. Another interesting activity was collecting macroinvertebrates and identifying them. We did this in Ocquionis creek, which was so fun to do in such a beautiful creek, and it was a much easier way for people to learn than just getting an explanation. If I have another chance for a trip like this, I will practice more to be ready to answer more of our volunteers’ questions.
Hakeema and Anna training Stream Team volunteers in Elmira, New York.
Ryan:
Near the end of the summer, we took a trip up to New York for two events. After a very long day spent in a van crammed full to the roof with supplies, we made it to New York. Joey, our stream team coordinator, and I had some fun stretching out our cramped limbs with some rock skipping on the river. Bright and early the next day was our first event, a Stream Team training where we met with volunteers and taught them how to engage in water quality monitoring. It was a rainy morning, but everyone was super enthusiastic and the room felt alive with curiosity.
Ryan describing common ways to identify macroinvertebrates in Otsego, New York.
After the training we got back into our now slightly less full van and drove on once more. The next day was our second event: a macroinvertebrate identification training. Hakeema, Alyssa, and I got to present to the volunteers by showing them a whole lot of zoomed in pictures of bugs. Our audience was thrilled. After this we took the volunteers down to the stream and taught them how to catch macros. Three excruciatingly long minutes of doing the macro shuffle in front of twenty people later, the macro identification could begin! All of the volunteers readily took to the process of pointing out identifiers, making for a fun end to our expedition.
We packed up the van and hit the road one last time, coming back to Carlisle tired and fulfilled.
OCCA volunteers identifying macroinvertebrates by the stream.