Florida Oceanographic Society’s Coastal Center: MUCH More than an Aquarium
My daughter is about to be a fourth-year Marine Science major at Eckerd college in St. Petersburg on the Gulf-of-Mexico side of the Florida panhandle. Earlier this year, she was offered one of two summer research internships at the Florida Oceanographic Society's Coastal Center in Stuart (near Port Saint Lucie), on the Atlantic-ocean side of the Florida panhandle. In late June, her father, 12-year-old brother, and I drove down to see her temporary stomping grounds.
We checked into an Air B&B on Nettles Island, in what I can only describe as the largest, nicest, and most crowded trailer park we’d ever seen. The entire tiny Indian-River island was covered in trailers, mobile homes, RV’s and even traditional houses, with communal amenities including two pools with hot tubs; tennis, volleyball, and basketball courts; mini-golf, bocci, horseshoe and shuffleboard; a fitness center, library, ceramic kiln, billiards, ping-pong… It seemed if they couldn’t have an 18-hole golf course, they were gonna have *everything* else.
My daughter, who was living 30 minutes away in Port St. Lucie, stayed with us for the next few days, as we toured her workplace and surrounding beaches during the day and determinedly played just about every game available to us in the evenings. For once, my husband and I saw the sense of “snowbird” retirees moving to a mobile home park in Florida, particularly if they have grandchildren.
That said, I’m not sure I could deal with the hypcrocrisy if I owned one of the wall to wall homes that cover the entire island with impervious surface - talk about a stormwater runoff nightmare. Then again, it’s probably a drop in the bucket compared to the pollution and waste that now enter our oceans every day, most notable through or past the coastlines of the Florida peninsula. To make matters worse, I didn’t see a single retention pond to collect the nutrient rich stormwater - the stormwater runs off the roofs and roads of this densely populated island straight into that otherwise drops immediately into the ocean, bypassing filtration by soil and plants. Nearby Jensen Beach and Stuart have surprisingly beautiful beaches, despite their dense populations and continuous unsustainable shoreline development. At the very least, these things illustrated, front and center, the reasons behind the Florida Oceanographic Society and similar organizations: to preserve the health and, therefore, life of our planet.
Similar to Costa Rica, the human density only amplifies the abundant wildlife that live in the area. Ibises, pelicans, herons, sandlings, terns - so many species of sea birds can be seen at every water source. And I don’t think there was a single sunny sidewalk along which we didn’t see a reptile, most often curly-tailed lizards and orange-striped, neck-flaring agame’s who, though impressive in their miniature dinosaur statures, are unfortunately also invasive. This, too, makes for a great vacation.
Our tour of the Florida Oceanographic Society’s Coastal Center began with sewing sea-grass strands into small burlap mats. Though we could get in as our daughter’s guests, the place offers free entry in exchange for volunteer participants who create sea-grass or oyster-shell mats, and we were down for the experience. Once enough mats are created, staff will implant them along the Indian River Lagoon in an undewater landscaping project to stabilize the shoreline while feeding manatees and growing water-filtering oysters.
The manatees’ source of sea-grass, the only thing they eat, has become so low that it is threatening their numbers; and baby oysters called “spat” grow specifically on oyster shells. Oysters are well-known for their water-filtering power - in fact, they have made the Great Lakes in the Northern United States so clean that it now threatens the ecosystem there (!). Participating in the Florida Oceanographic Society’s efforts in a hands-on way begins your visit to the facility, itself, in a most wonderful frame of mind.
You enter the Ocean Ecocenter building along a long boardwalk that surrounds an inland lagoon laden with a variety of marine life, many of which have been rescued and cannot survive in the wild alone. There are game-fish feeding and sea-turtle programs on different areas of the boardwalk each day, but you don’t have to participate in them to see the sting rays, sea turtles, nurse sharks, triggerfish, tarpons, snook, spadefish, sheepshead, black and red drum, and many other game fish gliding like magical shadows beside you as you walk along the boardwalk. Inside the center are wonderful (and wonderfully doable) informative exhibits about the ecosystem you are standing in and the animals and plants that inhabit it.
When you walk out the center on the other side, you enter an interactive area for children of all ages, including hands-on educational games and sealife petting tanks that house sting rays, horseshoe crabs, sea urchins, sea cucumbers, sea snails, hermit crabs - best sealife touch tank I’ve ever seen in action.
Each day at 10:30 and 1:30, a limited number of tickets are distributed that enable you to feed the young sting rays. You are given a long, fresh piece of dead fish to hold between your fingers while placing your hand flat on the bottom of the shallow aquarium. Within moments, a small sting ray glides right up, mouth-side down, and nibbles it from your fingers like a cow. More magic.
When you get hot, you can return to the Ocean Ecocenter and head upstairs to The Ocean Deck - a vast platform, really - where the aerial view of the lagoon you walked past when entering only adds to the biological magic you’d witnessed while walking alongside it.
As if this weren’t enough for the day, the Florida Oceanographic Society’s Coastal Center also has Nature trails encompassing over 50 acres of barrier island ecosystem. You can peruse these alone or accompanied by an educated volunteer who knows the nooks and crannies of the mangroves and hammocks you will encounter as you make your way down to the Indian River Lagoon.
You can even take a mid-day break by simply walking across the street to public Stuart Beach and its accompanying, very tasty and affordable Seaside Cafe.
The Florida Oceanographic Society’s Coastal Center is open from 10 AM to 4 PM. Take note that most of the staff you will encounter are volunteers, which means they love the place and its mission so much they’ll work there just because they want to. Now that’s an endorsement!
Click below for the short video I compiled highlighting our very full day there (we literally stayed from open ‘til close).
The Florida Oceanographic Society’s Coastal Center is open 10 AM - 4 PM.
The Nature trails are open 10 - 3.
890 NE Ocean Blvd, Stuart, FL 34996
Adults: $16 Children (3-12): $8 Children ages 2 and under: FREE
Members: FREE Active and Retired Military: FREE
