Charting a Course

At Oyster Point, in the harbor of New Haven, Connecticut, New England’s seafaring tradition is anything but history. The point is the birthplace of America’s oyster industry and home to the Sound School Regional Vocational Aquaculture Center. Aquaculture—the cultivation of aquatic organisms such as fish, clams, and oysters—is obviously the main focus, but the public high school’s curriculum touches on all things maritime. Students learn math through boat-building and navigation, music through sea-shanty-singing, literature and history through the study of nautically themed writings, and physical education by rowing traditional dories. Not that everything’s crusted with the past—the school also teaches plenty of modern chemistry, oceanography, and marine...