It was a great first day of working in the Keys! The day began with a lecture on Cnidarians and Ctenophores, taught by our habitat leader, Joie. After the lecture, the students broke out into their habitat groups and set off for a day of excursions. Each group went to two different habitat locations today, consisting of the mangroves, rocky coast, and grassflats. While some habitats were accessed by the van on land, most of the kids got to enjoy a boat ride on the open sea. We heard that for some, the boat ride was their favorite part of the day!

When they returned from the excursions, the groups got to work on classifying the specimens that they collected and recording the information into their lab books. One of the students said, after a couple hours of classifying, “This is actually really fun! I didn’t think it would be, but it is!”

After dinner, we had a Bible session by the seaside where Michael began his series for the week, “Is the Bible Full of Errors and Contradictions?” and tonight’s topic was on why there appears to be a contradiction between the four Gospels on how many times the rooster crowed when Peter denied Jesus. We learned that Jesus was not talking of a literal rooster but rather, He was talking about the time of night. So, this “error” is not valid.

We ended the evening with the start of our volleyball tournament and some more classifying. The students all seem to be getting along great and forming some great friendships and team building skills. We are looking forward to another fun day tomorrow where the students will get to go out to the coral reef!

Fun Fact We Learned: The stinger of a jellyfish is called a nematocyst and the cell it sits in is called the cnidocyte.