Junior SeaKeepers 24-25 Beach Seining and Biodiversity Workshop

Overview

On Sunday, November 24th, 2024, SeaKeepers Education hosted 11 of our 25 Junior Seakeepers 2024-25 cohort students at Marjory Stoneman Douglas Biscayne Nature Center for a seagrass beach seining adventure and biodiversity training workshop.

To begin our day, we met with our BNC Naturalist Sophia and received a short introduction to seagrass communities and the value that they hold as nurseries for coastal ecosystems like ours here in South Florida. After answering some warm-up questions, students geared up with seining nets, water shoes, and waterproof worksheets and were briefed on minimally intrusive beach seining practices so that we could reduce any potential stress to the seagrass ecosystem. With this knowledge, participating Junior SeaKeepers took a short trek to the shoreline and waded in around chest-deep to explore the seagrass community and the critters that call it home. For about an hour, participants carefully sampled and observed over 23 different species of marine organisms, including filefish, pipefish, crabs, marine snails, sponges, a larval lobster, and even juvenile trunkfish, parrotfish, and toadfish! Following our sampling session, the SeaKeepers Educational Outreach team led a discussion on the differences between the species we found, their roles in the larger ecosystem, and how to make basic biodiversity calculations using the data we collected.

By attending field outings and floating classrooms, Junior SeaKeepers can take lessons they are learning from webinars, workshops, and cleanups and apply them directly to the local natural environment. In this bonus workshop, we hope students were able to better understand how seemingly small habitats can be vital for preserving biodiversity in a regional and global context. As always, we aim for students to leave experiences with us with a better understanding of how their everyday choices impact the world around them, and, therefore, how their conscious actions every day can create a better natural world for their future.