Estuary Horror Story Comic by Justin Jimenez

I teach a class at FGCU called "Marine Systems." It's a basic oceanography course targeted at non-science majors who need to take some kind of science to meet the requirements for graduation. We get a lot of young and sometimes "less-motivated" students, so I have to try real hard to get them jazzed up about the curriculum. I'm not always successful, but one thing that worked well the other day was to have them write or a draw a horror story taking place in an estuary. I had just lectured about all the dangers of estuaries- sticky mud, razor sharp oysters, deadly predators, germs and parasites, etc. -and it seems that the students took the lesson to heart.