Floating Classroom with Miami Nature School

Overview

On the morning of March 31st, 2025, The International SeaKeepers hosted a floating classroom experience with 25 students and 2 educators from Miami Nature School. To start our morning, we met our students at FIU’s Biscayne Bay campus in Miami, Florida, where after hopping on board DISCOVERY Vessel River Queen we set out for a fun day on the water. Our Educational Outreach Associate, Jack, started us off with a discussion on the key ecosystems that comprise Biscayne Bay, the history of South Florida’s watershed, as well as the nature of pollution and human impacts on the Bay. Our students were natural scientists, able to fire off types of pollution and anthropogenic impacts we rarely get to discuss with most audiences. Following our discussion, we moved on to some water quality topics utilizing our Earth Echo Kits, where our Community Engagement Associate, Lillian, instructed our students on how to conduct four different water quality tests. The previous few days had seen immense amounts of rain throughout South Florida, so we were hopeful to find some unique results in its aftermath. As we finished our water quality tests, we arrived at Sandspur Island which following Spring Break the previous week had been left covered in high amounts of trash. Our students received a briefing on the island before spreading out and quickly beginning to remove immense amounts of trash. By the time we had finished, our students had shattered our previous record at Sandspur Island and collected more than 132 pounds of trash in just half an hour! We finished our day with a short wrap-up discussion on reducing and reusing common types of trash in our daily lives. We give a huge thank you to the students and teachers of Miami Nature School for their hard work and to DISCOVERY Vessel River Queen for a fantastic day on the Bay.