Floating Classroom 2 with Blue Scholars Initiative and Treasure Island Elementary

Overview

On Thursday, May 30th, 2024, The International SeaKeepers Society and Blue Scholars Initiative hosted a floating classroom with a second group of 16 4th and 5th-grade students and 4 educators from Treasure Island Elementary aboard DISCOVERY Vessel River Queen in Biscayne Bay. We met our students and chaperones at Bill Bird Marina and made our way through Biscayne Bay to Oleta River State Park 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 a baby lobster and giant marine hermit crab 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, which showed high temperatures and low dissolved oxygen in the Bay as we get into the summer months.

We were happy to provide the students of Treasure Island Elementary with an experience out on the water with our partners at Blue Scholars Initiative and the help of our trusty D/Y River Queen. 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 Treasure Island Elementary and we hope to work with them and other Miami-Dade County Public Schools more in the future!