The mysterious Kelkar lurks with his fish in the darkness of S13 conducting experiments. His 60 tanks line the walls, stacked on cabinets, stacked on desks; fish look down on the students and they look up to them. Fish are everywhere — omnipotent and omnipresent.
But let’s back up. Who is this Mr. Kelkar?
This dude’s instagram is full of interesting pictures of plants, critters, and fungi from studying mushrooms at UC Berkeley. He has been interested in living things since his childhood, and this interest only grew after taking care of a tank of Guppies in middle school.
“I honestly cannot imagine being interested in anything else this much,” he admitted.
Mr. Kelkar now shares his love of fish with his students by working as our 9th grade biology teacher in the most fishy of houses: Neptune House. His hands-on approach to teaching allows students to conduct experiments in groups of 3-4 on various fish to learn how adaptations develop, how to thin and take care of populations, and guppy sex-ratios.
“I want my students to learn about how different creatures have evolved into their environments,” he said.
Mr. Kelkar’s interest in adaptations to unique environments has driven him to collect rare fish that live in unusual environments. One of his tanks has a deep orange dye to simulate a chemical called tannins that tree roots release in jungle waters. Fish in these waters develop special blue stripes that make it easy for them to see each other in such dark water, but harder for their predators to spot them.
“The color blue is a very obvious color when viewed from very close,” Kelkar described, “but from farther away it’s practically invisible!”
Mr. Kelkar’s love for biology is evident in the hours after school he spends watching his fish. With so much familiarity with them, he can tell if any one of his hundreds of fish is sick by noticing minute details from small spots to slow swimming.
Mr. Kelkar’s not the only one who loves his fish; they also love each other. One pair of fish love to get freaky, participating in recreational sex a lot! Their activities are a useful example for the class’s Sex Ed unit. They also show love for their babies. When we interviewed Mr. Kelkar, the male was “pregnant”. He was holding his fish eggs in his mouth to incubate them. During that time, he can’t eat. One of Mr. Kelkar’s goals with his fish is to show students that taking care of young is not a uniquely human thing, other animals do it too!
However, staring lovingly at his gorgeous little buddies is not the only way Mr. Kelkar shows his care; he takes excellent care of them over breaks. Just this Winter break, Mr. Kelkar put black worms on the various sticks for the fish to feast on throughout the break. Most of his fishes survived, but sadly…he lost one sick comrade. After developing spots, he was isolated from his other fishy friends in a separate little container for a while — he didn’t make it.
Kelkar, to prepare his students for future lab work and fish whispering (knowing when they are sick), gives them the responsibility of replacing the water, monitoring the PH levels, and feeding them.
To pay for his enormous fish enterprise, Mr. Kelkar sells some of his Guppies and Shrimp. The species breed fast and are typically easy to maintain, which makes them perfect for the job.
Mr. Kelkar is ecstatic when talking about his passions. He is aware this may be students’ only experience in the world of biology, and his energy and infectious spirit inspires them to continue it further. He gave up a career as a researcher to pursue a larger change through the field of education so young people can make informed decisions about the climate and pave a brighter future forward.
“I realized that at this point science was not going to solve the world’s problems, all of the solutions already exist,” Mr. Kelkar reflected. “What we need is a cultural change.”