Florida Marine Science (8th)
Dates: 4/5-4/11
Location: Domestic
Price Range: $3,000-3,500
Theme: Science & Culture
Faculty Contact: Barrager, Burton
MarineLab Environmental Education Center is a non-profit organization founded in 1970 to promote ocean conservation through education, research, and collaboration in Key Largo, Florida. We are partnering with MarineLab to bring 8th-grade students to experience the biology, geology, oceanography, and biodiversity in this beautiful, amazing, and fragile sub-tropical marine ecosystem. Students will be swimming, snorkeling, performing marine science labs, researching seagrass, mangroves, coral, plankton, and reef fish, and taking field trips via foot and boat while staying in dormitories at MarineLab. After arriving in Florida, we will grab breakfast and drive directly to Everglades National Park. There, we will go on a guided ‘wet walk’ through a cypress dome swamp with a park ranger. We will get some lunch on our way to MarineLab in Key Largo (key means ‘small island’).
After four amazing days of learning and experiencing marine science with MarineLab, we will head to the very southeasternmost point of the United States, Key West. On the way, we will visit The Turtle Hospital in Marathon Key. After spending a night in Key West, we will take a ferry to Dry Tortugas National Park and explore the key in the evening. The finale of our trip will be at Biscayne National Park, where students will kayak or stand-up paddleboard in its protected waters and do a beach clean-up, with the potential to see sea turtles, manatees, and baby sharks. This is a fun yet rigorous EBC experience with extended exposure to salt water, sun, and the outdoors.
Planned Itinerary:
(Please note that activities and days may adjust and change.)
- Saturday 4/5: red-eye flight from SeaTac International Airport to Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport, Florida.
- Sunday 4/6: arrive in Fort Lauderdale, breakfast, drive to Everglades National Park for a 2-hour ranger-guided “Wet Walk,” lunch, check-in with MarineLab, orientation, swim test, lagoon snorkel, dinner, seagrass ecology discussion, and a zooplankton identification lab.
- Monday 4/7: breakfast, seagrass/mangrove ecology field trip, lunch, coral reef field trip and discussion, dinner, and microplastics and invertebrate diversity labs.
- Tuesday 4/8: breakfast, Nest Key seine net field trip, lunch, Rodriquez Key zonation field trip, dinner, reef fish identification, and night lagoon snorkel.
- Wednesday 4/9: breakfast, coral reef field trip #2, lunch, check out of MarineLab, drive to and visit The Turtle Hospital in Marathon Key, head to Key West for dinner & hotel.
- Thursday 4/10: breakfast, take a ferry to Dry Tortugas National Park, lunch, explore Key West, dinner, 2nd night in Key West.
- Friday 4/11: breakfast, drive to Biscayne National Park for a stand-up paddle board/kayak adventure, late lunch, fly home from Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport to SeaTac International Airport.