Coastal Corner

By Lisa D. Mickey Seeing is believing and adult students in Marine Discovery Center’s Marine Habitat Restoration class got that opportunity recently when they traveled to the Florida Keys for field studies. Offered by MDC for the third year as a special topics class...

Our mission at Marine Discovery Center is to protect and restore Florida's coastal ecosystems, which are home to an incredible diversity of wildlife - including sea turtles! While turtles are often seen popping their heads up for a breath offshore or even in the...

By Lisa D. Mickey It’s hard to wrap your brain around one million pounds of oyster shells. But for Marine Discovery Center’s Shuck & Share Oyster Recycling program, it’s even harder to think of those shells going into the county landfill rather than into the...

By Lisa D. MickeyThe gourds are up! And now, the Southeast Volusia Audubon Society (SEVAS) chapter is ready for the purple martins to move in. As part of its Purple Martin Project, SEVAS held the third annual “Gourd Raising” ceremony adjacent to the bird garden on ...

Marine Discovery Center has proudly participated in a community composting program for a number of years and hopes more local residents will become aware of our program during International Composting Awareness Week! The goal of the national and international...

By Lisa D. MickeyIt's only taken about eight years, but a pair of ospreys appear to be settling in on the osprey nesting platform that was installed at MDC during spring 2015.  Our Conservation Science Coordinator, Tess Sailor-Tynes, snapped this photo last week...

By Lisa D. Mickey Conservation is always a central focus at Marine Discovery Center, and one of the ways the center helps local residents understand and get involved is through hands-on experience.​Tess Sailor-Tynes, MDC’s Conservation Science Coordinator, has been...

By Lisa D. Mickey Youngsters in the Marine Discovery Center’s summer camp program spent 10 weeks exploring the coastal ecosystem, but they also took a keen interest this summer in learning how to minimize their human impact. That’s because prior to the start of camp,...

By Lisa D. Mickey Think of Florida and the Southeast United States and a picture of Spanish moss draped through the boughs of stately live oak trees likely comes to mind. Hanging like hundreds of fibrous gray curtains from tree limbs, Spanish moss (Tillandsia...

By Lisa D. MickeyIt’s common to spot mistletoe growing in the tops of trees at this time of year throughout Central Florida and the Southeast. If you spy a large green plant clump growing amid the boughs of deciduous trees (trees that lose their leaves during the...

By Lisa D. MickeyDuring the holiday season here in Florida, you might be tempted to deck the halls with the beautiful red berries from a plant often called “Florida Holly” or the “Christmasberry tree.” But take heed: the plant that bears these bright red berries, the...

By Lisa D. Mickey Birds have a way of sending you back to your field guide, especially when winter migrants start soaring into Florida, landing on the pond behind your house and making you wonder exactly which bird you are seeing out your back door. That has been the...

By Lisa D. Mickey Independence Day is a festive time. It’s a mid-year summer month when Americans celebrate our freedom. As a child, I enjoyed 4th of July fireworks, particularly over baseball stadiums after games when the pops, fizzles and booms echoed off the...

By Lisa D. Mickey The spring of 2020 may forever be remembered as a season of fear and change when the Corona-19 virus roared across the globe in pandemic fashion and impacted many lives along the way. Businesses and schools closed their doors around the world, which...

By Lisa D. Mickey Just as it’s an annual rite of spring for the wading birds to begin displaying their breeding plumage on the rookery islands here in New Smyrna Beach, another annual occurrence is a task designed to benefit these amazing creatures. That task has...

by Lisa D. Mickey The Marine Discovery Center got a little surprise from a burrowing reptile after it had started construction this spring. Executive director Chad Truxall was walking the center’s campus in early April and noticed a hole in the base of what will be...