Meet the Captain and Boat; the Apalachee Cat

When you think of Tallahassee, we hope you have a centering vision of the St. Marks Lighthouse and our miles of incredible shorelines and productive waters that are a short distance to our south. If you have not visited here, I hope you do not have a vision of the stately white domed beaches of St. George Island to our northwest nor a vision of the serene Tampa Beaches to our south. We are neither; however our area is more uniquely beautiful in our own way. We are the Big Bend, which is a low impact tidal zone and our location affords us one of the most uniquely productive inshore estuarine areas of this area of the Coast; however, you have to experience it via boat. We actually have no 'beaches' in this area. However, the trade off is that we have no shortage of intertidal estuarine zones and seagrass beds which are incredibly productive areas for our inshore and offshore fisheries.

Our personal goal is to enhance and increase the Estuarine and Marine Conservation Issues of our local areas by addressing Educational initiatives for our local communities. We endeavor to pursue 'Hands-On/Minds-On' Experience Curriculums that are consistent with and supportive of the Florida Sunshine State Standards; however, you have to do experience this via boat.

These efforts are supportive of the Elementary, Secondary and High School educational initiatives of our community and we will endeavor for these to be used to nurture in-depth understanding and appreciation of our local resources for our children, adolescents and young adults.

Support for our Colleges/Universities, State Agencies and Non-Profit Agencies to encourage independent research such as obtaining water quality data, assisting with tagging sharks or through sample collection or instrument deployment is actively being supported and available for learning partnerships with these institutions.

Education, Conservation, Sustainability and Relevancy are all interconnected; to truly learn and appreciate these incredible resources is to effect a life-long educated citizenry that will respect and protect our valued resources for coming generations.

Our goal in 2008 has been to initiate a Local Shark Conservational Program for our waters, we are highly encouraged at this progress made to date. We have recently also recently supported sampling our local Gulf waters for Harmful Algal Blooms (HAB) for the Red Tide Study. We are looking into obtaining additional equipment to teach children about the various aspects of surface water chemistry.

Upon reviewing our 2008 initiatives, we are pleased to present the Environmental Education initiative of 2009.

If you would kindly spend a few minutes with the selective links presented below, this will introduce you to the importance of our ecological niche in this estuarine and marine system.