There's a Marine Biologist in my Classroom

Our marine educators have carefully designed this session to provide students with a rich educational experience and a deeper understanding of the role of apex predators in food webs and how sharks use their "sharky" senses to locate and ambush prey. Students will learn how different types of sharks have adaptations, providing advantages for hunting specific prey types in different marine environments. Our staff designed two creative, fun and engaging "out of their seat" experiential activities to incorporate the cognitive, emotional and physical aspects of learning about sharks as apex predators. FUN, FUN, FUN!

The Marine Education Center staff delivers preserved shark specimens to the classroom, along with all the supplies required to have your choice of a dissection, demonstration, or a hands-on dissection experience for groups of four to five students per specimen. Maximum 30 students to classroom. Students will work with their shark to learn about external and internal anatomy and senses.
Get in there...and get your gloves dirty!

Sharks get a bad wrap, but they are important members of the marine food web. These creatures are under pressure because people see them as a threat; humans in turn seek to diminish their populations, as well as use them in unethical means such as for exotic trade, selling just the fin for shark fin soup. This all adds up to species vulnerability. Our marine educators engage participants in learning about different types of sharks and the interdependent relationships between their species and other marine animals in the watery world. The education specialists have created a curriculum that includes engaging the class in fun exercises to teach and reinforce the principals of sustainability and the threat of extinction for sharks. Long live the sharks!

Very little is known about the life of a whale shark in the world's ocean. Our staff, working closely with our marine scientists, take the current research and tagging data from our university whale shark studies and bring them to your classroom. Students will learn about the different technologies utilized for tagging these sharks and recording how whale sharks move from one place in the ocean to another. Students will graph research information from specific whale shark individuals and form their own hypotheses about whale shark behavior.
You be the scientist!

There are forty-four species of both oceanic and freshwater dolphins around the globe! Students will dive into a world of fun while learning all about these cetaceans and their exceptional uniqueness to their individual part of the world, as well as which species lives in our own backyard. The Atlantic Bottlenose dolphin is the most common dolphin species in the Northern Gulf. Our educators will not only lecture on multiple species types, but also on photo identification data collection particularly with the bottlenose!

Learn how dolphins are exclusively modified to fit their various aquatic environments. Students will have the opportunity to handle and examine a number of authentic dolphin artifacts to get up close and personal with what makes a dolphin a dolphin. Both internal and external anatomy will be discussed, as well as all of their amazing adaptations!

Dolphins can hear a frequency range ten times broader than a humans. Hold a dolphin skull and study where the melon used to emit sound waves used for echolocation. As an apex predator, this isn’t the dolphin’s only mind-blowing adaptation! Marine educators will supply all materials needed to show students first hand just how dolphins are capable of echolocation, and other extraordinary sensory acts.

Dolphins are highly intelligent and curious creatures. This lesson will help students plunge even deeper into the actions and cognitive capacity of these species. Explore social group types, daily dolphin behaviors, and communication skills shared across all cetacean species. Receive hands-on experience with scientific equipment used to record dolphin conduct, while participating in a behavior-matching activity. Come join our pod!