Who knew marine biology could be so much fun?
Zoe McDonald, 10, looks at a juvenile starfish in the teaching lab area at the Pritzker Marine Biology Research Center during an open house at New College of Florida in Sarasota.
Buy Photo STAFF PHOTOS / THOMAS BENDER
By LESLEY DWYER
Correspondent
Saturday, May 26, 2012 at 9:20 p.m.
SARASOTA - Students, alumni and the public attended an open house Saturday at the Pritzker Marine Lab at New College. The event, tailored to families with children, included a bounce-house, scavenger hunt and lots of hands-on activities.
Children made necklaces out of shells and pressed sharks' teeth into clay to see what a fossil would look like.
They were also given Q-tips to swab their faces. The swabs were then put under a microscope to identify skin cells and mites. "It's one of the grosser things we do; however, children love it," said Madelein Verbeek, a marine biology major.
All ages were impressed by the brightly colored, spotted and striped fish. Almost every wall in the lab is filled with aquariums, some holding up to 600 gallons of water.
The water is taken from the bay and returned only after being filtered through a marshland that was created by one of the students as a thesis project. "We put the water back in cleaner than it was when it was taken out," Verbeek said.
The bay plays a large role in education. Many of the fish in the tanks are caught by students.
The college is expanding its educational opportunities by adding a thatched, open-air classroom and lagoon.
The outdoor classroom will be an authentic chickee built by the Seminole tribe.
"Some people would call them tiki huts, but they're not," lab director Sandra Gilchrist said. "They are built in a certain way to resist rain."
Classes in the chickee will commence in the fall.
Herald Tribune
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