Contact: 

Nate Drag, NYSG Great Lakes Literacy Specialist, E: nwd4@cornell.edu, P: 716-645-3610 


New York Sea Grant: Great Lakes Educational Resources for Teachers and Students

— filed by Emily Lampa for AM Buffalo, WKBW 7, and ABC affiliate



Buffalo, NY, September 24, 2021 - If you are a teacher or a parent wanting to get your kids interested in the outdoors, there are resources for you. Nate Drag is a great lakes literacy specialist with New York Sea Grant and he explains what is available. Nate says he has so much stuff available for teachers, parents, home schoolers, and anyone who is interested in learning about the Great Lakes.

The is one activity called, How well do you know the Great Lakes? It has kids learning how much water is in each of the lakes, amount of shoreline, the amount of fish in each of the lakes and the amount of people. Nate says it’s fun because for instance Lake Erie, the closest lake to us, is a small lake compared to Lake Superior but actually, the most fish of any great lake are in Lake Erie and there are more people around Lake Erie than any other lake.

Another set-up shows fishopedia. It is all different types of native fish to the great lakes. They have life-size cutouts so kids can understand how big certain fish get like the lake trout and salmon. Also, to go along with fishopedia is something called attack pack, which focuses on invasive species, things that have come from around the world that we really don’t want here that are hurting some of these native species. They also have preserved samples like rusty crayfish and zebra muscles.

If you would like access to the NY Sea Grant educational resources, go to www.nyseagrant.org/gleee or www.nyseagrant.org/cyeducation. There's also a direct link to "Great Lakes Curriculum".

You can also email the Sea Grant Buffalo Office SGBuffal@cornell.edu or call 716-645-3610.

AM Buffalo reports on the best of Western New York weekday mornings at 10 am.




New York Sea Grant: Teaching About the Great Lakes

— Filed by WWNY TV 7 News

Watertown, NY, September 10, 2021 - The New York Sea Grant has a lot of resources for teaching students about the Great Lakes.

Great Lakes coastal literacy specialist Nate Drag says Sea Grant has Great Lakes-focused educational materials for K-12 teachers, homeschoolers, and nature center educators.

Watch the video for his interview on 7 News This Morning.

New curricula include “Enviro-Time Storytime: Recommended Environmental Reading Lists,” “Lake Sturgeon Intermediate Curriculum,” and “Freedom Seekers: The Underground Railroad.”

If you would like access to the NY Sea Grant educational resources, go to www.nyseagrant.org/gleee or www.nyseagrant.org/cyeducation. There's also a direct link to "Great Lakes Curriculum".

You can also email the Sea Grant Buffalo Office SGBuffal@cornell.edu or call 716-645-3610.

Since April 2006, New York Sea Grant specialists have been bringing the coastal program's "message" to the morning masses at WWNY TV 7, a Watertown-based CBS-affiliate, during one of the highest rated TV blocks in the "wake-up hours," the 6:30-7 am stretch.

Sea Grant's 'five minutes of fame' - which potentially reaches around 10,000 viewers in New York's Jefferson and Northern Oswego Counties - has featured topics over the years such as boating safety, aquatic invasive species, diving in search of sunken wrecks, the dune and Salmon River stewards program, shoreline land issues, tourism, and marine safety.


More Info: New York Sea Grant

New York Sea Grant (NYSG), a cooperative program of Cornell University and the State University of New York (SUNY), is one of 34 university-based programs under the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Sea Grant College Program.

Since 1971, NYSG has represented a statewide network of integrated research, education and extension services promoting coastal community economic vitality, environmental sustainability and citizen awareness and understanding about the State’s marine and Great Lakes resources.

Through NYSG’s efforts, the combined talents of university scientists and extension specialists help develop and transfer science-based information to many coastal user groups—businesses and industries, federal, state and local government decision-makers and agency managers, educators, the media and the interested public.

The program maintains Great Lakes offices at Cornell University, SUNY Buffalo, SUNY Oswego and the Wayne County Cooperative Extension office in Newark. In the State's marine waters, NYSG has offices at Stony Brook University in Long Island, Brooklyn College and Cornell Cooperative Extension in NYC and Kingston in the Hudson Valley.

For updates on Sea Grant activities: www.nyseagrant.org has RSS, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube links. NYSG offers a free e-list sign up via www.nyseagrant.org/nycoastlines for its flagship publication, NY Coastlines/Currents, which is published quarterly.