Winterfest Family Fun Day 2023

Overview

On November 19th, 2023, The International SeaKeepers Society's Education and Outreach team participated in the annual Stoked On Salt Conservation Village as a part of the Winterfest 2023 Family Fun Day event in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. This massive community event was attended by over 7,000 locals and visitors who were welcomed by over 50 South Florida-based organizations that work in outreach, education, and community assistance. In the SOS Conservation Village, we were accompanied by fellow ocean-oriented non-profit organizations like Miami Waterkeeper, the International Game Fish Association (IGFA), South Florida Wildlife Center, Broward County Sea Turtle Monitoring, and more!

The SeaKeepers Education and Outreach team was excited to join this event for the first time and engage families, boat owners, and community leaders alike in marine conservation education. Our tabling materials included models of our Floating Classroom lessons with Earth Echo water testing kits and Foldscope paper microscopes, as well as our trusty Mahi Mahi model to illustrate fish physiology. Visitors were able to participate in marine conservation trivia Jenga, where each piece removed contained a question for folks to answer themselves or hear the answer from the SeaKeepers team. As always, we distributed information about our education, research, citizen science, and coastal cleanup programs to all those interested, over 350 people in total!

Outing Goal

By participating in community events like the Fort Lauderdale Winterfest Family Fun Day, SeaKeepers is working to improve our reach for community engagement, citizen science, and education, while always aiming to recruit new DISCOVERY Vessels to our network of change-makers. We were excited to meet so many new faces at this event, and we look forward to seeing some of our participants at programming events in the future!