At Gulf Specimen Marine Laboratory, you get a better sense of the enormous diversity of life on earth. Unlike most large public aquaria that emphasize porpoises and big fishes, we focus on sea horses, and hermit carbs, emerald-eyed spiny box fish, red and white spotted calico crabs--all endless living treasures of the North Florida Wilderness Coast.

Water bubbles and flows in a swirl that sustains our unique collections of the bizarre and the beautiful. Seahorses hide in the seaweed, their black and bronze heads dusted with gold flecks. Starfish glide effortlessly over the sand and sometimes an octopus will come out of its burrow. Red hermit crabs with bright blue eyes carry waving sea anemones on their shells.

Together with animals that look like plants and plants unlike any on land, they challenge our concepts of what it means to be an animal, what it means to be alive.

Gulf Specimen Marine Lab is a non-profit, tax-exempt organization. Becoming a member and lending financial support enables us to improve our seawater systems, aquaria and vessels. This helps us bring healthier, better adapted marine animals into your laboratory and classrooms.

GSML's Activities Include:

• The operation of a 30,000 gallon aquarium in Panacea, Florida. Our displays emphasize life's diversity and the beauty and interdependence of the area's marine ecosystems, including salt marshes, beaches, seagrass meadows and limestone bottoms. Unlike most aquariums whose displays are organized around a few large animals, we emphasize the myriad of animals most people have never seen up close--corals, sponges, starfish, hermit crabs and more that children can safely handle. And there are sharks, sea turtles, grouper, lobster and other bigger species as well.
  
  
• Marine biological education for regional schools serving thousands of students every year.
  
  
• In-house research has contributed to new understanding of nerve cells using electric rays and new medical treatments using horseshoe crabs. We are the sea turtle rehabilitation facility for the Florida Panhandle. We have done aquaculture of local lobsters for food and of mysid shrimp for pollution control and developed new markets for jellyfish--an Asian seafood delicacy.
  
  
• Support of higher education and scientific research through the supply of live marine fish and invertebrates to universities and colleges throughout the U.S. and Canada.& Since 1963, we have provided hundreds of different institutions with marine life and many scientific publications have been based on our specimens. Our animals have flown on the space shuttle, contributed a new anticancer drug, bryostatin, been used in pollution abatement programs and been the basis for many basic research projects.
  

ANNUAL MEMBERSHIP AND DONATION CATEGORIES Individual and family members receive free admission, our quarterly newsletter, The Sea Brings Forth, and may join in the annual coastal field trip, Exploring the Wilderness Coast, led by naturalists Jack or Anne Rudloe. Patron, life and corporate members will also receive the following: Annual sponsors' trawling expedition and seafood dinner. A permanent listing on the prominently displayed Board of Sponsors of the GSML grounds. For donations of $5,000 and above, one of the large aquariums will be permanently named for the donor or person of their choice. An autographed copy of Jack Rudloe's book, The Wilderness Coast.

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GULF SPECIMEN MARINE LAB • PO BOX 237 • PANACEA, FL 32346 USA • (850) 984-5297 • FAX (850) 984-5233

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