Abstract
Aquatic Care Team (ACT): Empowering Students to Take Action The Navarre Beach Marine Science Station (NBMSS), a Santa Rosa County District School, is dedicated to educating students in the classroom, through research, and community outreach. The NBMSS has received a grant from NOAA to monitor the water quality of the Santa Rosa Sound. NBMSS sits along Santa Rosa Sound connected to the Pensacola Bay Watershed, a system impaired by pollutants and disturbance. Future water quality restorations will need baseline data to compare post-implementation monitoring to measure success, however, few data are available on water quality in the Navarre area. To fill this gap, Aquatic Care Team (ACT) students measure environmental variables of water quality to create a long-term dataset for this region in the Gulf Coast Ocean Observation Systems (GCOOS) database. ACT students who “learn, do, and teach” are more likely to retain and apply information than through learning alone; ACT provides the background knowledge to make informed decisions, suggest solutions, and communicate issues to local partner stakeholders and policy makers leading to watershed preservation in Santa Rosa County. ACT students participate in field data collections throughout the year at multiple sampling sites in the Santa Rosa Sound and conduct basic laboratory analyses at NBMSS. Collected water samples are sent to the University of West Florida (UWF) for advanced nutrient analysis. The project is funded by the NOAA Gulf of Mexico Bay Watershed Education and Training (Gulf B-WET) Program.
