Floating Classroom with Blue Scholars Initiative and Girl Scouts of Southeast Florida

Overview

On Friday, March 28th, 2025, The International SeaKeepers Society and Blue Scholars Initiative hosted a floating classroom with 16 2nd through 4th-grade students and 2 educators from the Girl Scouts of Southeast Florida aboard Biscayne National Park Institute's educational vessel in south Biscayne Bay. We met our students and chaperones at Dinner Key Marina and made our way to Dinner Key Picnic Island while discussing the coastal ecology of South Florida, as well as how the local watershed functions and results in different types of pollution in the bay. Students had the opportunity to visually explore seagrass and mangrove ecosystems, and even got to see some small seagrass critters like shrimp, marine snails, and even brittle stars up close! Following our critter exploration, we finished up our floating classroom by discussing the impacts of pollution on local marine health while taking water quality measurements with our trusty Earth Echo Water Challenge kits.

We were happy to provide the students of Girls Scouts of Southeast Florida with an experience out on the water with our partners at Blue Scholars Initiative and Biscayne National Park Institute. We hope that these students were able to leave the floating classroom with a better understanding of how pollution impacts our waterways and how we can prevent different types of pollution in our everyday lives. We had a great time hosting the Girl Scouts of Southeast Florida and we hope to work with them more in the future!