Floating Classroom with Toro Homeschool

Overview

On the morning of Monday, October 28th, 2024, The International SeaKeepers Society hosted a Floating Classroom with seven students and five chaperones from Toro Homeschool. We started the day by meeting our group at the docks of FIU’s Biscayne Bay Campus and beginning with a discussion on our local waterways and what parameters and methodologies we use to study the health of Biscayne Bay and the oceans. Our students flexed their ocean knowledge muscles, asking a plethora of great questions and giving plenty of great examples of water health parameters. Following the discussion, students were split into groups and were able to put their skills to the test using our Earth Echo kits. They were easily able to perform tests analyzing temperature, pH, dissolved oxygen, and turbidity. Students made several inferences and observations about the differences in readings between groups as well as some predictions on why we got the readings we did. Following these tests, we hopped aboard DISCOVERY Yacht River Queen and departed the dock headed for Sandspur Island. Along the way, our Community Engagement Associate, Lillian, and our Educational Outreach Associate, Jack, gave the students an overview of the island as well as led discussion on the causes, effects, and solutions of common types of pollution. We finished up our day by participating in an island cleanup, where armed with our trusty gloves and buckets we were able to remove more than 65 pounds of trash from the island and Biscayne Bay! We give a huge thanks to the students and families of Toro Homeschool for their participation and patience, and to River Queen for a great morning out on the water, and hope to see some of the students at future SeaKeepers events.