On Friday, Sept. 19, 2025, Central Florida Aquatic Preserve (CFAP) helped facilitate a water conservation outreach event for Latino Heritage Week at Wekiva Island. CFAP hosted a group of high school students from Alianza Americas. The students participated in an Eco Paddle to Wekiva Springs State Park. Then, they learned how to measure water quality with CFAP’s datasonde.

Tampa Bay Aquatic Preserve staff worked with University of South Florida hydrologists to set up water quality monitoring instruments on a piling in Bishop Harbor (Terra Ceia Aquatic Preserve). This datasonde station will provide ongoing water quality for one of the least-developed areas of Tampa Bay.  Such data can be valuable when compared with similar data from other, more urbanized, locations in the same watershed.

Lara Bracci, land-based sources of pollution coordinator for the Coral Reef Conservation Program, and Kylie Morgan, coral protection project coordinator for the Coral Protection and Restoration Program, assisted the Biscayne Bay Aquatic Preserves team in swapping data sondes in the bay. They snorkeled to clean the equipment and exchanged the sondes.