At
South Broward High School, Marine Magnet students are offered a variety of
marine related clubs and extra curricular activities. The most common and
popular one is Shark Club. This club gives student the opportunity to get face
to face with creatures that they would not have the opportunity to otherwise and
learn, hands on, what shark research is really like. Not only do the kids get to
catch the sharks, they tag them and take a muscle biopsy which is then grought
to the University of Miami for further testing.
The South Florida Student Shark Program (SFSSP) is a program being implemented
with South Broward High School students through trips with students from
University of Miami. The program consists of five main activities: students
going out into the South Florida watershed to study the behaviors, ecology and
population dynamics of Floridian shark species; students teaching other students
about the ecology and history of the South Florida watershed and the shark
species found there; students providing volunteer hours to various parks in the
South Florida watershed; students presenting at schools and community meetings
to foster an increased shark awareness; and students presenting at a scientific
conferences and publishing their work in refereed journals to disseminate the
scientific results of the program. With the help of UM, South Broward students
are being taught the importance of research and how to get the knowledge they
have gained out to the public.