The Treasure Island Sailing Center (TISC) now has access to an important channel to teach kids about climate change: The Float Lab, a project of the California College of the Arts’ Architectural Ecologies Lab. TISC, a Foundation grantee, creates opportunities for people to learn and grow through sailing by providing facilities, sailing instruction, and access to the water for people of all socio-economic backgrounds, abilities, and skill levels, from novices to Olympians.

The Float Lab is the brainchild of Margaret Ikeda and Evan Jones who wanted to build and study how floating structures could help local ecosystems and support climate change resilience.  They partnered with Kreysler and Assoc (company owned by TISC Board of Director’s President Bill Kreysler, also a Foundation Board member), who uses fiberglass to make “anything but boats,” to build a Float Lab. Different from a boat or other floating structures, the Float Lab has lots of diverse curves and nooks and crannies underneath (the underside is the same form as the top, just flipped) to help different species grow, rather than just the barnacles and mussels one would usually see, like native oysters and other interesting creepy-crawlies, according to TISC Director Chris Childers.

“Other than being super cool to look at, the idea is the floating columns of biomass will attenuate waves and sea level impacts from climate change,” said Childers. “The Float Lab has lived at Oakland Middle Harbor for some five years and was too far away to be accessible to kids or the public. We arranged to bring it to the entrance to Clipper Cove so it could be utilized by Set Sail Learn, and also be more accessible to the academic and research communities. Projects like this are something TISC hopes to become more involved with.”

* A grant from the St Francis Sailing Foundation in October 2015 facilitated the launch of the Set Sail Learn (SSL) program, an education initiative offering fourth graders STEM-based curriculum with San Francisco Bay as the classroom. In the past nine years, more than 6,000 San Francisco school district students have been given the chance to sail on and learn about the SF Bay through TISC’s one day SSL STEM program, and its Sailing to Save the Sea (SSS) program in the safe waters of Clipper Cove located on the north side of Treasure Island.