The Florida Keys Trip
(A Virtual Tour)

New Feature! Click on the mp3 player to the left to hear over 150 sound files from the 2007 Florida Keys Trip.

The Bus Ride Down & Back

Parents worry and worry about the long bus ride to Florida -- but as you can see, students LOVE it because they're with ALL their friends for hours on end.  What could be better?  Besides, they really DO sleep on the overnight trip.

We leave Winston-Salem around 2 pm on a Saturday afternoon in 2 or 3 buses, depending on the number of students in the class.  Dinner is at a rest stop along the Interstate.  A fresh set of drivers is picked up close to Jacksonville, Florida for the remainder of our trip south.  Around 6 am we roll into Homestead, Florida for breakfast before heading into the Everglades

Arriving at the Everglades early Sunday morning we stop at the Royal Palm Visitor's Center and hike out on the trails and boardwalks looking for alligators, anhingas, great white herons, and snapping turtles.  Early spring is breading season so we often see nests of anhingas with fluffy white babies jostling for room in nests.

Sunday afternoon after leaving the Everglades and lunch in Homestead we head down the Keys highway towards Sea Camp on Big Pine Key.  On Marathon Key we'll stop for about an hour to cool off in the water at Sombrero Beach.

Two or our labs at Sea Camp involve taking flattop boats out to the coral patch reefs.  Everyone wears a Coast Guard approved snorkeling vest to help provide flotation.  Mask, fins, and snorkel round out the equipment while we hunt for sergeant majors, barracuda, spiny lobsters, angel fish, and a myriad of other tropical fish species.

The shark pond is always a favorite with students!  First we learn all about sharks, their habits, and their habitats.  Then we don snorkeling gear (no flippers -- it stirs up the water), take a kick board to keep us on the surface, and launch out onto the waters of the shark pond in hopes that we will spot some of the sharks lurking on the bottom. (Actually, these are nurse sharks -- they don't eat 7th graders, only small crustaceans!)

This lab involves taking one of our buses north some five miles along the Florida Keys highway to Bahia Honda Key where a magnificent state park is located.  Featured here are fossilized coral beds that form small tide pools.  It's a totally different ecosystem than ones we will have seen at the coral patch reefs.

Each night at Sea Camp we have an additional lab.  For this one we put on wading shoes, take flashlights and collecting buckets, and head out into the shallow low tide waters around Sea Camp to see what we can find.  After collecting specimens for about an hour we head back to share our finds.

Plankton Lab

Another night lab at Sea Camp is called the Plankton Lab.  Since it is at night and we're going out on the water, everyone must wear bright red Coast Guard regulation 'bricks' -- rigid styrofoam life vests.  The boat moves slowly dragging a v-shaped net behind it with a bottle attached at the end.  This bottle collects plankton, microscopic animals that form the basis of the ocean food chain.  After "towing" fo plankton we take our bottle back to the lab and examine its contents under special stereoscopic microscopes.

"Cassiopeia" is really just the Latin name for the 'upside-down' jellyfish.  First we wade across to Horseshoe Island to collect our specimens.  Then, dividing into groups of two, we add stresses to the jellyfish environment and count the pulses (respiration) of the jellyfish.  No, we don't harm them!  After the lab we put the jellyfish back into their native shallow water environment.

The last stop on our Florida Keys trip is Sea World in Orlando, Florida.  For safety reasons we stop here to allow our bus drivers significant down time before heading back to Winston-Salem.  For students this is a chance to unwind, take a ride down splash mountain at Atlantis, go on the roller coaster, see some larger marine specimens like the endangered Florida manatee, catch the ever-popular Shamu show, and just plain relax and have a good time after a week of intensive science labs at Sea Camp

 1. Introduction
 2. On the Bus
 3. Everglades
 4. Sombrero Beach
 5. Sea Camp
 6. Bahia Honda
 7. Cassiopeia Lab
 8. Shark Lab
 9. Snorkeling Trips
 10. Plankton Lab
 11. Algae Lab
 12. Nightwade
 13. Sea World

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