Dip-In Events
Dip-In Events to Educate the Public
We encourage you to make the Dip-In part of a media event for your monitoring program. Want to host a media event for your monitoring program? A Secchi Dip-In event is an easy option. Here are some tips!
WHEN should I schedule my event?
- During July – Lakes Appreciation Month and the Secchi Dip-In occur simultaneously each year during the entire month of July. Both are sponsored by the North American Lake Management Society and serve as excellent focal points for media events.
- To celebrate a local, state, or regional Lake Day.
- To complement an established event/celebration at your site.
MEDIA COVERAGE
If you would like to have the media cover your event, please see our page attracting and handling media coverage.
Please feel free to use our sample press release for the Dip-In.
EXAMPLES of past Dip-In events*
*If you host an event, please send us pictures and details so we can update our examples!
- Kansas City Urban Youth Program, 1996 – Jerry Pitt, then with the U.S. EPA, was working with a Kansas City urban youth program. When he found out about the Dip-In, he got a local paint manufacturer to donate paint can lids and had the kids paint black and white quadrants on the lids. They then took their disks out to a lake for their first experience in volunteer monitoring.
- Cuyahoga River Dip-In, Kent, Ohio – The Secchi Dip-In founders measured transparency of the famous Cuyahoga River at the City of Kent’s Heritage Festival in 1999.
- Vermont Governor’s Lake Dip-In – Vermont conducted a Governor’s Lake Dip-In on Lake Bomoseen in 1999.
- Rhode Island’s Department of Environmental Management – Andrew McLeod, then director of the Rhode Island’s Department of Environmental Management, joined volunteers in taking samples in Johnson’s Pond for the Dip-In. Susan Baxter, a student at the University of Rhode Island, taught McLeod, who had never done water sampling before, how to perform a Secchi disk measurement.
QUESTIONS?
Contact us at secchidipin@nalms.org.