 Bioblitz: Teens4oceans visited "The BioBlitz" in Biscayne National Park. They ran an educational booth and taught school students about the T4O organization and played fish taxonomy games with them. Cleick on the image to the left to see the gallery!A BioBlitz is a 24-hour event in which teams of volunteer scientists, families, students, teachers, and other community members work together to find and identify as many species of plants, animals, microbes, fungi, and other organisms as possible. A BioBlitz gives adults, kids, and teens the opportunity to join biologists in the field and participate in bona fide research expeditions. It's a fun and exciting way to learn about the biological diversity of local parks and to better understand how to protect them. National Geographic is helping conduct a BioBlitz in a different national park each year during the decade leading up to the U.S. National Park Service Centennial in 2016. In 2010, Biscayne National Park near Miami, Florida was the first ever marine bioblitz. Volunteers at the 2009 Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore BioBlitz turned up more than 1,200 species (download a PDF list here) compared with more than 1,700 in the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area in 2008 and more than 650 in Washington, D.C.’s Rock Creek Park in 2007. |