Florida Sea Grant Sponge Restoration
I joined the Florida Sea Grant Sponge Restoration Project in January of 2018 as a volunteer research assistant in the Behringer Marine Research Lab at the University of Florida. The project's goal was to observe the changes to ecological biodiversity under several different conditions of sponge growth. This project was established after a major die-off of sponges in the 1990s due to algal blooms. The video below explains the project in more detail.
My job while working on this project was to sort through treatment samples preserved in ethanol and extract freshwater organisms ranging in size from amphipods to small crabs. Once the specimens were sorted, I was responsible for keying them out down to the species level. I spent about 5 months on this project until it was completed in June of 2018.
