Florida SouthWestern State College (FSW) is a pipeline for students from diverse backgrounds. FSW Oceanography Professor Michael Sauer, Ph.D., has been volunteering at the SCCF Marine Lab since 2016. Sauer was awarded an FSW Academic Research Council (ARC) grant to purchase a microscope and plankton net to mentor students in phytoplankton ecology. He will be collecting samples from the Sanibel Causeway bimonthly and training students how to count and identify key characteristics of different phytoplankton species. He will also be using the Marine Lab’s FlowCam instrument to compare its count and identification of the number of phytoplankton compared to traditional microscopic methods. The goal for this grant is to produce a guide to common San Carlos Bay/Gulf of Mexico phytoplankton. The samples will be compared and added to ongoing phytoplankton ecology research occurring at the Marine Lab.