This Adventure will center on exploring one or more of these specific habitats within either St. Andrew’s or Choctawhatchee Bays: seagrass beds, oyster reefs/hard bottom communities, living shoreline restoration locations, and soft bottom communities. If a trip is planned for Andrews State Park, sampling in the Gulf of Mexico along the jetties can also be arranged.

Within the habitat(s) selected, the adventure will focus on sampling, analysis/identification, and Q&A. Activities that can be chosen are: water quality; sampling and identification of marine life; identifying and discussion of exotics/nuisance species; taking the opportunity to look for and observe larger marine mammals, reptiles and fish; examining locations where living shorelines have been installed and comparing to other areas without; detailed look at the biology and behavior of sea scallops; a closer look at the critters that live on the habitat (epiphytes); trying your hand at fishing in the habitats to see who lives there; dissection of a squid or octopus; and looking for and discussing plastic and other pollution impacts in the habitat and the implications to the larger ecosystem. The focus will be for participants to be able to describe the major physical, biological and ecological features of each habitat visited during the field trip and discuss their solutions to man’s impacts. The discussion and salient points taught will be based on the grade level of the class. In most cases, one habitat will be all that can be visited in a trip. Multiple trips through the year can be arranged to cover all of the habitats.