Giving people an appreciation for the diversity of life in the sea and a desire to protect it is Gulf Specimen’s primary mission. We do so by using our touch tanks, graphic exhibits and conducting field trips to provide a unique “hands-on” experience enabling students to touch, smell, and hear the odd and interesting creatures of the Gulf, and develop an awareness and desire to protect the fragile life in the sea. To help maintain this facility, we supply schools and research laboratories with a wide variety of living marine life from the Gulf.
Our exhibits are never the same twice. The marine biological supply operation that supports the laboratory provides a constant flow of animals coming through the lab. A wide variety of invertebrates, fishes and algae are routinely collected by local fishermen and shipped to schools and research laboratories, hence no aquarium or standard marine laboratory with static exhibits can compete with it. At any given time, between one and two hundred species are present. Visitors are allowed to pick up and touch many of the animals, including starfish, sea pansies, sand dollars, whelks, clams, etc.
