The Bailey-Matthews National Shell Museum & Aquarium continues its 2025 summer-fall lecture series with What Can Oysters Tell Us About the Restoration of the Everglades? on Thursday, September 18, 2025, at 5:30pm.
The online lecture, led by Stephen Geiger, Ph.D., Florida Fish & Wildlife Conservation Commission, will be offered live via Zoom and is free for registrants.
The talk will introduce the biology of oysters and environmental conditions that allow them to thrive and will explain why oysters are particularly good indicator water quality. Dr. Geiger will also outline some of the threats to oysters and provide an overview of some of the changes that scientists have observed in oyster populations in the Florida Everglades, and how those relate to progress being made in Everglades restoration.
Dr. Geiger is a Research Scientist studying Molluscan Fisheries/Marine Fisheries Biology at the Fish & Wildlife Research Institute of the Florida Fish & Wildlife Conservation Commission. His decades of research in Florida have explored oyster and bay scallop restoration and monitoring, gastropod abundance and distribution, and beach renourishment, among other subjects.
The final online lecture of the 2025 summer-fall lecture series will take place on Thursday, October 16, 2025, at 5:30pm: Gulf Seafood: Sustaining Wildlife and Our Way of Life by John Fallon, Audubon Nature Institute.
Support for the lecture series is from the Sam and Francis Bailey Clean Water Education Center at the Bailey-Matthews National Shell Museum & Aquarium, and the Glenn W. Bailey Foundation.
Although free of charge, pre-registration for lectures is required. To register please visit ShellMuseum.org/learn-and-experience/lectures.
About the Museum: The Bailey-Matthews National Shell Museum & Aquarium is a natural history museum and aquarium, and the only museum in the United States devoted primarily to shells and mollusks. Its mission is to use exceptional collections, aquariums, programs, experiences, and science to be the nation’s leading museum in the conservation, preservation, interpretation, and celebration of shells, the mollusks that create them, and their ecosystems. For more information, please visit ShellMuseum.org or call (239) 395-2233.
