6th Grade Students Examine Estuarine Ecology Up Close

Middle School took the 6th grade to a new environment they were unfamiliar with, that is until they breached the shores of the nursery off the coast of the Indian River Lagoon and got their feet wet! As a special award for earning the most live school points the first semester, the entire grade was invited to go on a field trip to the Environmental Learning Center in Vero Beach Florida.

The students have the pleasure of previously being educated in their science classes about what a lagoon estuary is, and how brackish waters parentheses a mixture of salt and freshwater) creates an environment for a wide biodiversity of macro and microorganisms. The Indian River Lagoon is home to over 6,000 manatees and over 300 bottlenose dolphins as well as more species of plants and animals than any other North American estuary.

While at the learning center, students went canoeing through mangroves, seining off the shallow waters in the nursery where they used a net to gently scrape the benthic region at the lowest level of the body of water to collect marine organisms such as shrimp and other fish. Students discovered a collection of organisms that inhabit the estuary, meaning that some of them prefer fresh and some of them prefer salt water, all within the same space.