Shark class continues while funds are raised to rebuild remote island lab

There are not many classes that allow students to live beachside, wander tidal pools just outside of their lecture hall, take home their own dissected shark skull and crew an offshore research survey. Biology of Sharks and Rays, offered jointly by the University of Florida and Florida State University, is the exception. The course name is innocuous compared to the two-week, four-credit hours that it entails. It pushes learning beyond the classroom and into the field, where students don’t just study sharks but handle them.

Enrollment is currently open, and for the 12 or so students who snag a spot, this summer is sure to be a memorable one.

“If you’re deeply curious and reasonably adventurous, I think you might really enjoy this course,” said Gavin Naylor, director of the Florida Program for Shark Research at the Florida Museum of Natural History. Naylor teaches the class every year alongside Dean Grubbs, associate director of research at Florida State University’s Coastal and Marine Laboratory.

In the past, students in the shark class split their time equally between FSU’s marine lab in St. Teresa and UF’s off-grid lab on Seahorse Key, one of the 13 barrier islands that make up the Cedar Keys National Wildlife Refuge. UF has leased 3 acres of the unpopulated island as home to its Seahorse Key Marine Lab since the 1950s.

Unfortunately, after avoiding serious damage by Hurricane Idalia in 2023, the lab on Seahorse Key was hit by Hurricane Helene a year later. The storm delivered 84 mph wind gusts and a 10-foot storm surge, the highest in the recorded history of the island and others nearby, collectively called Cedar Key. Floodwaters lifted the laboratory off its footers, and the building, which was constructed in the 1950s, could not be salvaged.

Field courses on the island have been put on pause while UF raises the funds to rebuild. To date, the university has raised over $150,000 to construct a new lab space, with additional support from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The new structure will come equipped with solar panels and an updated drinking water system.

Shark class transforms sea into classroom

Despite the loss of the laboratory on Seahorse Key, the shark course took place as scheduled last year, with the only difference being that it was based entirely out of the FSU Coastal and Marine Lab.

Getting students to experience field work continues to be an integral aspect of the course. The class members spend their first day on dry land learning how to safely and efficiently conduct a shark survey, but once in the water, the real skill is a willingness to lend a hand.

The clock starts ticking the moment the bright orange buoy splashes into the water. With the 600-foot-long gill net set, the students only have an hour to run a longline before circling back to haul the net in. The team members work quickly, slicing Spanish mackerel into bait, threading the chunks of flesh onto sharp c-shaped hooks and clipping them one by one to the main line as it stretches out for nearly half a mile behind the churning boat.

When 60 minutes are up, it’s time to reel in the sharks. After deftly freeing the catch from the net or removing the hook, Grubbs secures the head. On larger sharks, a student jumps in to secure the tail and help him carry the shark to the measuring trough along the edge of the boat. Holding it against the Sharpie-marked ruler, one crew member calls out the species, length, maturity and overall condition of the fish, while another hovers nearby with a clipboard to record the data.

Sometimes the shark is tagged, a tissue sample is taken or blood is drawn, depending on research needs. The entire process is seamless, often taking as little as 30 seconds, before the fish is released back into the water.

Occasionally, the crew hooks a large tiger shark or bull shark. Rather than bringing the unhappy guest aboard, the researchers guide the animal to the stern, where they can safely assess it before — with the combined strength of two or three students — they push the 500- to 600-pound animal back out into the water.

“The first thing the students realize is that some of the sharks are quite large, and we have to drag them over the back of the boat. Seeing an organism that large on television is very different than seeing an organism that large when you’re on the boat. Its mouth is a foot across, and it’s grumpy,” Naylor said.

Students benefit by seeing the sharks up close, and until recently, they’ve also contributed valuable data to the Gulf of Mexico Shark Pupping and Nursery (GulfSPAN) survey operated by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. National funding for the survey was discontinued in 2025, but for 16 years prior, Grubbs and his team set out gill nets and longlines every month year-round and recorded what they caught. Though the fate of the survey is in limbo, students will continue to learn how to run the survey and develop essential skills and knowledge for assessing marine biodiversity.

“It’s very fast-paced work. You have to be completely locked in when you’re doing something like this because you’ve got to be meticulous when you’re getting the data,” said Felipe Quintana, a UF marine science major. “But it was so much fun. I’m just really excited for all these opportunities and to get as much out of [this experience] as I can.”

Naylor and Grubbs, along with some of their graduate students, rotate lecture duty. Naylor focuses on evolutionary biology, while Grubbs, an ecologist, ties his material to conservation and management.

“It is really cool to be working with our two professors, who are world-renowned researchers,” said Ally Adamo, a doctoral candidate at UF’s College of Veterinary Medicine. “It's such an honor to learn from the best in the field.”

Students spend most mornings as they would in any other course, taking notes and preparing for the looming final exam. They also have access to an extensive collection of shark specimens, including deep-sea species like goblin sharks and frilled sharks, which are so rarely caught that even many shark biologists have never had the opportunity to handle them.

In the evenings, the students dissect their own specimens, some of which are added to the collection for future classes to learn from. In the process, they can see the product of millions of years of evolutionary history right in front of them.

“It underscores that these sharks and rays are very different from bony fish. They originated in the Paleozoic era, some 400 million years ago. They make dinosaurs look like puppies. They’re so much older than any of the other vertebrates in terms of the lineage,” Naylor said.

Seahorse Key inspires students and science

Students will continue to benefit from the shark class, though they miss some of the unique experiences that come with a stay on UF’s Seahorse Key.

“Seahorse Key is a particularly biodiverse part of the Florida coastline. There is no end of sharks in the area, and some of them are fairly large,” Naylor said. “Whenever we've been there, we've always seen something that’s a little bit unusual.”

Fishing surveys in the area regularly give students the rare opportunity to see juvenile hammerhead and blacktip sharks, along with large bull, tiger and nurse sharks that are less common near the FSU site.

Even Grubbs, who one might think has seen it all after working in the region for decades, has been known to be surprised by what they catch. In 2023, the class was surveying when the line pulled taut, as it often does with a nurse shark or other large species. But what they reeled up turned out to be a 13-foot-long sawfish, the farthest north the species has been tagged in over 30 years.

Sea creatures aside, one of the most striking things about Seahorse Key is its wild nature.

“We bring them all down to Seahorse Key and take them out there in a boat. There’s no air conditioning. There’s no lecture theater. There are no sheets, and they live in the lighthouse with bunk beds and sleeping bags,” Naylor said.

And while the students may sympathize with the seven castaways of “Gilligan’s Island,” it is all part of the island’s charm. Built in 1854, the site’s iconic lighthouse is the oldest on Florida’s west coast. Once a beacon for the safe passage of boats, today it primarily serves as lodging for school groups and visiting scientists. For those willing to brave the biting mosquitoes, a path inland leads to a small cemetery with about a dozen headstones marking the final resting place of lighthouse keepers, local fishermen and Civil War soldiers.

The hill where the lighthouse sits today is 52 feet above the sea, reportedly the highest point along the Gulf from Florida to Texas. Seahorse Key is an ancient sand dune that was connected to the coast as recently as 5,000 years ago, when sea levels rose to surround it. The unique biogeography makes the island just as interesting to study as the sharks in the waters around it.

“There are relic species on Seahorse Key that would never be able to disperse out there by swimming between the mainland and the island. They have been out there since the time it formed,” said Coleman Sheehy, collection manager of herpetology at the Florida Museum of Natural History and previous associate director of the Seahorse Key Marine Laboratory.

For several years, Sheehy taught Island Biology, one of the many field courses that have taken place partly or entirely on Seahorse Key. The lab has offered visiting scientists a place to conduct various types of research, including archaeological investigations of shell middens left by the island’s earliest inhabitants. Beyond university programs, the lab also served as a space for K-12 students and curious members of the public to visit and learn about the island. That broad reach is what makes the loss of the laboratory even more striking.

“It was shocking to walk out there on the dock and just see empty space where the lab once stood,” Sheehy said. “After 20 years of conducting lectures and research there, seeing it gone was very surreal.”

But the area is no stranger to weathering storms and rebuilding. Mike Allen, current director of Seahorse Key Marine Lab, has a plan to reopen Seahorse Key’s doors to continue the site’s long legacy.

“We want to re-create a lab that allows people to come here and work, but also be hurricane-resilient,” Allen said. They plan to build a pole barn-style building with screens that keep mosquitoes at bay but can also be removed in case of impending storms. They will also replace the propane-powered generators with solar panels.

“We’ve had alumni that came here in the ‘60s who I still hear from, and I can tell you just what an impact it’s had on people's lives,” Allen said. “A lot of the kids that have come here have never been on a boat, have never been in this environment. But they come here and spend multiple nights out here in the lighthouse, and it’s just an amazing experience.”

That sense of immersion shapes more than just coursework. During the shark course, it defines the entire experience. From lectures to lab work and boat trips, the course is rigorous, but the free time between class activities—when students are exploring the shoreline, playing cards and swapping stories—can prove just as important. In the evenings, the instructors cook dinner for the hungry crew, and while sitting around a dining table with heaping bowls of spaghetti or the now-famous “Joe’s Gumbo,” the students begin to come out of their shells.

“It sometimes tests some people’s boundaries, to be all of a sudden thrown into this group living situation, like some reality TV show,” Grubbs said. “The first couple of days students are generally pretty shy. But by the end, it’s a raucous bunch, and they’re acting like they’ve been on a team forever.”