Thomas Albert usually fishes the north side of Estero Bay in Lee County.
"So, it's neat to see what's down here because we don't usually go down south."
Thomas is a student with the Vester Marine Science Summer Camp hosted by The Water School at Florida Gulf Coast University, held during the second week of July.
Thomas said it's his favorite camp, so far.
"I think one of my favorite camps that I've done this summer. It's like a really exciting camp because we get to do things, that, like real marine biologists dor," he said.
"Vester Marine Science Summer Camp is a summer camp to get local middle schoolers out onto the water," said Nicholas Culligan, a post-doctoral research assistant at The Water School. "And while these middle schoolers are from Lee County, Collier County and Charlotte County, they're getting out into an environment that, although they may live in the area, they may not be excessively familiar with. So we try to get them out on the water and more familiar with the, water quality issues with the creatures they might see out there and why this area is important for us to preserve for the future."
The summer camp has hands-on activities including lab work, as well as field work.
"I think my favorite day was either today or yesterday," said Thomas. "So like yesterday we did marine geology. We put, like, this big, metal pipe down in the ground (underwater) and we got, like, layers of the sediment. And we could see, hurricanes and stuff like that."
The sediment pulls were done at the Vester Field Station on Little Hickory Island in Bonita Springs. It's a research facility for The Water School, and an easy "base of operations for coastal and watershed habitats," according to the FGCU website.
On the day the students were in Estero Bay, they were motored out by boat to do their field work.
"We went to the seagrass flats in Estero Bay, which is an estuary," said Culligan. "It's a very important nursery ground for all sorts of game fish, commercial fish species, invertebrates and stuff like that."
Culligan explained the importance of the nursery ground in relation to Kimberly's Reef, eight miles out into the Gulf.
"Both the sandbars and the seagrass beds are really important for all of these really commercially and recreationally important species to get their juvenile phases up and running. So, when we see people catching giant snapper and giant sheepshead and stuff like that out on reefs, those fish didn't spawn out there. What they do is they're born and raised in the estuaries, like in a Estero Bay," he said.
The task for the day was to count fish and other invertebrates caught in seine nets in two different habitats, a sand bar and a seagrass flat to compare the biodiversity at each site.
Middle-schooler Annalena Goodridge, or Ady, was attending marine science summer camp for her second year.
"I love it, it's awesome. I love all the fish and seeing all the different species of everything. I just love being on the water," she said.
Ady said she hopes to be a marine biologist when she is older. She easily described the process of netting the fish.
"So we take the seine and it has the two poles on either side with the net in between. And it has, like, weights on the bottom and buoys on the top, so it lifts things. And then you hold it and walk as far out and as long as you can. And then you come and meet so all the animals and stuff are in the middle. And you got to get the net to make sure they don't fly out on top. And you collect them and put them into buckets and then, like, observe and count that stuff."
Thomas recounted what he saw, "We got, like, fish and shrimp. And we got a crab. We got two seahorses and a bunch of different stuff."
He said its not what he usually sees when out on the water. "It's kind of fun to see what you can pull off the bottom, because, like, you can't really see, like, the water is kind of murky. And so it's interesting to see what's down there."
While counting fish is fun for the students, the number of fish can be an indicator of the health of the seagrass beds, mangroves and the bay water.
"Seagrasses are pretty resilient species," said Culligan. "There's several that we have in the bay. We have shoal grass, we have turtle grass. And typically over time they're able to survive small stresses. So, things like freshwater pulses after major hurricanes or major summer storms. Sometimes in the dry season, we have major saltwater intrusions into the bay."
Culligan said that the sea grasses can recover from the natural stressors. He worries more about the human stressors.
"The biggest thing that I see with seagrass itself are human caused anthropogenic issues. So, boaters going too fast over seagrass beds, running aground and just digging holes into it. And that's it's rough to see, but it happens a lot. Seagrass doesn't recover from that very easily."
Culligan also said that pollutants in the water can effect sea grass.
"With fertilizer runoff from the Caloosahatchee or from any of the rivers around, algae ends up in the water column which uses up oxygen a lot faster than the seagrass. And so they grow fast."
He said an algal bloom shades the seagrass and could cause it to die or at least cause patches to grow smaller and more sparse. Culligan also worried about too much stress all at once.
"So they're okay and can handle that for a short period of time. But over time, with repeated stressors, we start to see them die off a little bit. And that's not great because not only they are food source for certain invertebrates and then other small prey species, they actually form a habitat for these small fish and invertebrates to live in."
That's why summer camps and other outreach is so important, he said.
"We actually work with the Collier County public school system, and the Lee County public school system to get teenagers, high schoolers and their teachers out here," he said. "We also work with the Conservancy of Southwest Florida, and all sorts of nonprofits, to get the local citizens out onto the water."
"We're really trying to provide that outreach so that they can see, 'hey, this is the issue that actually affects me, that actually affects the environment I live in, that actually affects what I like to do for fun' and so once they make that connection," he said. "Just trying to make sure that they see the ocean affects them and that they affect the ocean."
Dispatches from Kimberly's Reef are part of a WGCU documentary project about the reef due out in 2026. The Kimberly's Reef documentary project is generously and partially funded by Bodil and George Gellman.