Canaveral National Seashore Audio Postcards by the Young Sound Seekers

Canaveral National Seashore. NPS/Lord.

The Young Sound Seekers

The Atlantic Center for the Arts runs Young Sound Seekers, a five-year program funded by a grant from the National Park Service's Natural Sounds and Night Skies Division. It encourages people to value natural sounds, and it opens a safe, undistracted outdoor space to blind and partially sighted students aged 13 to 22. Its partners are Canaveral National Seashore, Stetson University, the Conklin Davis Center for the Visually Impaired in Daytona Beach, and the Florida Department of Education's Blind Services.

Students from the Conklin Davis Center visit the park every month. Stetson professors and students lead them in listening and field-recording activities that teach why a natural soundscape is worth conserving, both for people's wellbeing and for the way wildlife communicates. Their recordings at Turtle Mound and Eldora became three audio postcards, dated December 15, 2021, which can be heard on the National Park Service's page.

History

• Turtle Mound rises 50 feet between the Atlantic Ocean and the Indian River Lagoon: a protected archaeological site built of oyster shells discarded by early Native Americans in Florida. One student picks it as a favourite spot for the feeling of being on top of the world, with the trees rustling and the birds flying around.
• Farther south, Eldora was a wilderness community and trading port on Mosquito Lagoon. Its state house is one of only three historic homes still standing in the park, and sitting on its old porch feels like living in another time.
• On the west side of the Indian River Lagoon, Seminole Rest is a historic house on a Native American clam-shell mound, a good place to hear the calm of lagoon life.
• The students say why sound matters to them: it tells you what is happening around you, and it fills in details that sight alone can miss. One remembers kayaking with a grandmother at a place like Eldora.

Water

• The students describe the water as quiet, calming and peaceful; the rhythm of rain and waves; and, a favourite, the bubbling in the mangroves.
• Many animals depend on the water for food, travel and shelter. On clear days dolphins may be seen; on quiet moonlit nights, loggerhead sea turtles nest.
• With a hydrophone the students listened underwater: snapping shrimp popping, something like a crab snapping its claws, fish passing, and boats in the distance.
• More than 4,000 species of animals and plants live in the Indian River Lagoon, all in less than four feet of water. Long ago the Timucua prospered on its oysters, shellfish and mussels, and left behind huge mounds of shells like Turtle Mound.

Wellness

• Birds, waves, the sound of a rocket launch: the park makes visitors feel something, and feel small.
• The students argue for protecting it as a refuge from everyday life. Once houses or an airport replace a habitat, it is very hard to bring back.
• Their advice to a first-time visitor: leave your electronics at home apart from your phone, and mute that, so there is less human-made noise (anthrophony) and you listen to nature instead. Headphones shut out the rhythm of wind in the trees.

Sources

• National Park Service, Canaveral National Seashore, "Canaveral National Seashore Audio Postcards." https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/cana_audiopostcards.htm
• The audio postcards are © 2021: recorded by students of the Conklin Davis Center for the Visually Impaired, edited and narrated by Eve Payor, Shane Norton and Grace McEllroy, with final production by the Atlantic Center for the Arts. They are not reproduced here.
• Corrected: "muscles" to "mussels".
• Words on this page from people and organisations outside the federal government are paraphrased; rewritten in hubnx's own words.