Halmos College Hosts 6th Annual OSTEM Summer Camp

This past June, the Halmos College welcomed 18 students from South Broward High School’s Ocean STEM summer camp to the Oceanographic Campus. These students worked with Halmos faculty and graduate students to understand the life cycle of hard corals, how to maintain corals in an aquaculture setting, mapping corals on the ocean floor, identifying soft corals in the lab, and working with a 3D scanner.

As well as their time at the Oceanographic Campus, these students visited the Marine Environmental Education Center to meet “Captain” and learn about sea turtles. At the Fort Lauderdale/Davie campus, they met with faculty and staff to learn about environmental sampling and identifying what they found.

The week culminated with a day-long shark tagging trip sponsored in part by the Marine Industries Association of South Florida. Unfortunately, even after a hard day of laying out bait and pulling in the drum lines, we were unable to catch a shark.

The OSTEM camp is an innovative summer program designed to allow students to explore careers in the marine field and do research investigations centered on marine and aquatic environments.