A group of students and educators from Palm Springs Community Middle School spent a day onboard R/V ANGARI during a Coastal Ocean Explorers: Sharks expedition with scientists from Florida International University studying sharks in Palm Beach County.
EXPEDITION DETAILS
November 4, 2025
Palm Beach County, FL
Victoria Goldner
Sue-Lin Lam
William Sample
Lacy Smith
Davon Strickland
All sharks were fished for, caught, studied and released for research purposes under Florida permits held by Florida International University scientists.
The 2025 Fall semester finished with a Coastal Ocean Explorers: Sharks expedition involving students and educators from Palm Springs Community Middle School! This group of students are part of the STEM program at Palm Springs and had the opportunity to spend a day participating in shark research with scientists from Florida International University’s College of Arts, Sciences and Education (FIU). Students and educators were taught the ins and outs of drumlines, a specialized fishing gear used for shark research onboard R/V ANGARI, as well as how to build and deploy a baited remote underwater video system (BRUVS).
The expedition began with the team deploying their BRUVS in a corner of the Lake Worth Lagoon. While the BRUVS sat underwater, the group sharpened their marine species identification skills by reviewing BRUVS footage from previous expeditions onboard R/V ANGARI and from the Global FinPrint database! After an hour of underwater filming, the team hauled the BRUVS back to the surface and headed out to begin deploying drumlines.
The students were divided into teams, each responsible for building, baiting and deploying their own drumlines. Every group brought positive energy and teamwork to each buoy toss, and cheered on their teammates as they deployed a record amount of 28 drumlines! Due to changing tides throughout the day, the team decided to deploy a second BRUVS in the afternoon closer to the drumline site. Although no sharks were caught on drumlines or on camera, the students and educators learned a lot and gained significant hands-on experience in the different research methods used to study sharks in Palm Beach County.
The FIU science team taught students about the importance of zeros in a dataset and hypothesized with students about how passing hurricanes and weather patterns may be shifting the movement and behavior of sharks in the area. COE: Sharks Lead Scientist Will Sample also modeled how scientists process blood samples using a centrifuge and homemade fake blood made from corn syrup. This gave students the opportunity to see how plasma and red blood cells separate from each other after being spun in the centrifuge, and how scientists can use these samples to evaluate different characteristics of individual sharks. It was a great day on the water with these future scientists!
This expedition was made possible with funding from the Palm Beach International Boat Show Gives Back grant program.
CHIEF SCIENTIST
Will Sample is a Ph.D. candidate in the Marine Community and Behavioral Ecology Lab at Florida International University. His current research uses both long-term historical datasets and newer methods, such as high-resolution accelerometry, to study the movement and behavioral ecology of juvenile bull sharks. He specifically focuses on the way these sharks may be transporting nutrients across habitat boundaries, how they may be optimizing their movements to save energy and what the long-term implications of different behaviors they specialize in may be. Will’s research in the Florida Everglades studying the ways sharks move through this crucial ecosystem is important for conservation and informing habitat restoration and management efforts. Will earned a B.S. in Liberal Arts and Sciences from Florida Atlantic University in 2018 and has lived all throughout Florida for most of his life, from Jacksonville to Jupiter to the Keys. He is passionate about community outreach and education, particularly regarding Florida’s natural habitats, and currently serves as lead scientist for ANGARI’s Palm Beach County based Coastal Ocean Explorers: Sharks program aboard R/V ANGARI.
