Florida Sea Grant provides curricula and essential training that helps seafood processors and importers (in and beyond Florida) meet federal food-safety regulations.
Workforce Training
Developing Florida's Coastal & Marine Workforce
From resource managers to seafood specialists to science educators, the future of Florida’s Blue Economy and a healthy coastal environment depends on a highly educated and trained workforce.
Marine contractors work to install concrete domes that form the basis of an oyster reef. Credit: Larry Beggs, Reef Innovations Inc.
Florida Sea Grant works to create a diverse workforce trained in marine science, technology, engineering, mathematics, law and policy. Training programs and education materials help build an environmentally literate workforce that understands and utilizes best available science to make informed decisions.
In addition to providing trainings on skills needed to sustain and create jobs and businesses, programs are designed to generate benefits in support of our mission, including protecting public health from ensuring seafood is safe to eat, fostering resource conservation, improving coastal habitats, and protecting shorelines. Programs also seek to foster participatory decision making and community planning processes with respect to resource management and hazard resilience.
Workforce Training
Programs
& Initiatives
Florida Sea Grant has developed a diverse set of rigorous trainings to address the workforce needs of our industry and agency partners. These trainings ensure that employees have the skills they need to protect the safety of our domestic seafood supply, guarantee that recreational angling is sustainable, shore up our coastline so communities are sustainably resilient, and build capacity to evaluate environmental changes within the context of community and resource management. Skills gained are either required or support “environmentally friendly” or Blue Economy distinctions that often are more highly valued.
The Florida Friendly Fishing Guide certification recognizes saltwater and freshwater fishing guides who are committed to preserving the future of Florida’s fisheries through sustainable boating and fishing techniques. The program helps guides provide a richer fishing experience for their clients through their angling expertise and environmental stewardship.
Florida Sea Grant’s extension agents teach and train Natural Resources Leadership Institute (NRLI) fellows. Joy Hazell, FSG’s State Specialized Extension Agent, is also the program’s Project Team Member.
This training develops skills contractors need to design, permit, implement, monitor, and maintain living shorelines. The next course will be available in 2023 in locations throughout the state.
Florida Sea Grant offers career development opportunities to promote greater collaboration, synergy, and sharing of knowledge among organizations that manage and promote the sustainability of the Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean fisheries.
Florida Sea Grant Extension Agents facilitate proper mangrove trimming practices and compliance with the Mangrove Trimming and Preservation Act. Continuing education units (CEU’s) are available. Click to access the English-language and Spanish-language video playlist.
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What Is
NRLI?
Training Natural Resource Professionals & Diversifying Opportunities
Florida Sea Grant is a key player in UF/IFAS’s Natural Resources Leadership Institute (NRLI), a conflict management training program for natural resource professionals in the state of Florida.
Workforce Training
Impacts
From 2021
103
P-12 Educators
Trained
100
HACCP-Certified
PARTICIPANTS Trained
>700
GIS-Certified
PARTICIPANTS Trained
