Christmas time means lots of things to different people, but to us it means it’s FISHMAS! And this year we celebrated in style at the Christmas in Cortez Festival put on by our friends at the Florida Maritime Museum!
Read more: Christmas in Cortez Festival 2025Set in the heart of historic Cortez the festival was full of Christmas cheer, local agencies, and lots of environmental fun! Our table was set up next to beautiful local mangroves, which was a beautiful backdrop to our theme: crabs!
Naturally we had to bring some buddies for the fun so our hermit crabs took a trip to Cortez along with our stone crab to teach our local and far off friends the importance of detritivores to our local ecosystem! And of course to show everyone crabs are nothing to fear, just to respect!
While of course the crabs were a hit, we also had coloring sheets of local species! Lenny the Light Up Bonnethead and Peli the Christmas Pelican were a stand out for our local visitors and especially for kids to color! We also brought back a classic crafting favorite the shrinky-dink! Both of these were such big hits for the kids and parents too! And we loved getting to spread Christmas and Ocean cheer with these crafts!
One of the other amazing parts of this event was seeing the excitement and wonder on kids faces when they see things like oyster shells, our little crabs, even seeing the sea purslane that covered the ground behind our table! Events like these help to keep kids excited about nature and the world around them, instead of just on their iPads and phones.
I am so happy to continue to be a part of amazing events like these and hope to keep being invited to share my love of the ocean and all things in it!
