Florida Day 6

28/02/19

“Ding” Darling Nature Reserve was next on the list over on Sanibel Island. This refuge has over 6,400 acres of mangrove forests, submerged seagrass beds, cordgrass marshes, and West Indian hardwood hammocks. Approx. 2,800 acres of the refuge are designated by Congress as a Federal Wilderness Area.

We were given a talk about the history of “Ding” Darling and about how Jay Norwood Darling blocked the sale of the land of the Reserve, convincing President Truman to create what was Sanibel National Wildlife Refuge in 1945.

Afterwards we went beach combing and seine netting with some high school children. It was good to see what sorts of things young people get to do for education. The shells we collected from beach combing were then used to create a taxonomy list. For the seine netting we were looking at what species and the abundance of the species were in the sea.

We then went on a walk around the reserve and had a car tour where we saw lots of different species, some of which we hadn’t seen so far on the trip:
Buttonwood
Florida Mayten
Roseate Spoonbill