Clearwater Beach

Clearwater Beach

The parking area before the beach

Weather: 87 degrees, Beautiful weather.

Clearwater beach has been popular for years among tourists, and we had the firsthand experience to see things that most don’t pay attention to everyday. We met at the parking lot on Avalon Street before heading between the dunes and down the beach to see what we can see that’s different that other locations we have seen. The main objective of this field trip was to see beach dunes first hand and to learn about beach profiles.

While walking through to dunes, we had the opportunity to see a gopher tortoise. Also, sea oats and some yellow flowers which are called sea sunflowers. 

When we got to an empty part of the beach, we split up into groups, in those groups we measured how the beach drops off in 3 meter increments into the water till we got to about 33 feet. We took samples of the sand as we went feather into the water, and we determined that it changes colors and has more shells the deeper into the water we went.  For the second part of the field trip, we went on a walk to see how different things live on the beach. Also, what different plants there are and how they manage to stay alive. It’s amazing to see how a plant can branch out, through sand and not be seen unless it’s undug and shown.

After a couple hours of learning about the beach and sand dunes, we walked down the beach and collected trash that we could find. It amazing the amount of things that were able to be located. I am glad that I was able to help clean up the environment and hopefully save some animals from being injured.