Your Support
Help Us Preserve and Protect Florida's Coasts
Your gift to Florida Sea Grant strengthens our mission and directly supports activities to preserve and sustain the precious ocean and coastal resources of Florida.
Learn more about our funds below and discover how your dollars can directly impact our students, our citizen scientists, and our programming.
Students
Dr. Havens was the director of the Florida Sea Grant program when he passed unexpectedly on April 26, 2019. His area of expertise included the response of lakes and estuaries to natural and human-caused impacts such as nutrient enrichment, drought, climate variability and hurricanes. Your gift to this endowment in his memory will support students at Florida Sea Grant affiliated institutions in the areas of limnology, coastal and estuarine water quality, and harmful algal blooms.
Extension and Outreach
The extension and outreach programs conducted by Florida Sea Grant include two primary types of activities, those that involve the collection of data and information on key habitats and/or species, and those with a focus on key programs for fishermen, boaters and the general public. Examples of each are shown below.
Our participatory science programs rigorously train volunteers to collect data for monitoing environmental quality/resources, controlling invasive species and cleaning coastal habitats. The programs vary regionally and seasonally but all programs produce and share standardized data reports with scientists, managing agencies and the public. Contributions to this funds are used to purchase testing equipment ($120/kit for Eyes on Sea Grass), travel costs (including boat time), equipment rental (e.g., dive gear), and supplies for recording the data.
Extension agents run a variety of programs, from educating home owners through the Bite Sized Science program to teaching marine contractors how to build living shorelines with sustainable materials. There is always a need to support low-income participants, especially in youth programs, and fund an agents travel in support of onsite presentations or trainings. Your gift would supplement, for example, activities for the following programs.
Programming
Florida Sea Grant conducts research, education and outreach programs with external support but needs of our diverse and growing stakeholder base exceed our current capacities. Supplemental gifts can allow us to fund immediate and urgent issues – both big and small. Examples below would upscale current efforts but we have the opportunity to launch broader initiatives; please contact the director if you have a particular idea and passion.
Faculty Contact
To fund a specific cause and to learn more about how you can support Florida Sea Grant, please contact our director, Dr. Sherry Larkin (phone: (352) 392-5870; email: slarkin@ufl.edu).
