ABOUT FLOATING SEA AQUATICS

FSA has the vision to be a beacon of artistic endeavors for the Jacksonville Florida Community and beyond.  We will continue to offer weekly free classes to the community as we strengthen our relationships with the artistic community in Jacksonville, FL and beyond.   As we educate our guests to explore and appreciate the wonders around them, we hope to inspire them to take action to better appreciate, respect the diversity among people as well as protect the environment through their active conservation, education and rescue. The vision to have an artistic touch tank, Braille around the store, tactile art with braille and auditory descriptions, and ASL interpreters for all people to join in all the events can only be reached with community support which is the vision to grow and strengthen. The vision is to have a reciprocating relationship with businesses and individuals to help our community and the world.  The members of FSA’s art club are also encouraged, appreciated and promoted to continually grow in their gifted crafts as they also serve the community of up-and-coming aspiring artists.  FSA RECS is artists are our volunteers, and are not limited to one area of “art.”  We speak of the proverbial art where it is in everything and everywhere.  

RECS envisions a united community that is fully inclusive that respects, welcomes. includes and appreciates all diversity.  We have a vision to offer more free tickets to events, free entry fees to art contests, provide art supplies to those with lower income who may not have been able to participate and thus have been neglected in the art community, educational art classes, rescue animals, get to have educational classes, get therapy, have meals and so much more.  RECS vision is to not leave anyone wanting to be an artist behind.  Our vision is to encourage and provide a safe place for all people to learn together as they tap into their inner artist. The vision is to provide a safe free educational and inclusive space in which all people can come and learn to grow together as they enjoy all art, especially in the areas of RECS. 

We believe the world and environment is full of art such as the Fibonacci Sequence. We believe through conservation and education efforts we can help individuals grow in their passion for our environment, animals, one another and social responsibilities to get involved and stay involved in helping our community, country and world in the most informed and best way possible.  As our world is rapidly changing, we believe we have to stay up to date with the pending issues that affect people, animals, and the environment as well as to be the helping hands they need to strengthen our world.  

Full Inclusive Exhibits

FSA has collaborated with FSA RECS, Inc. to bring the world something so new and innovative where Rescue, Education, Conservation and Service (RECS) is not just a motto but is a reality accomplished in many ways in your local aquatic store.  

FSA and & FSA RECS believes it’s essential to ensure that we offer space to the blind, visually impaired and all others with and without ranging exceptionalities.  

Our laws have provided equal opportunity guides and civil rights protections to those with disabilities for accessibility while also prohibiting discrimination.  However, there is nothing that makes a business provide a place of learning, fun, entertainment and inclusion to many who have more moderate to severe exceptionalities, including the blind and visually impaired.  

Often time business owners have signs for parents to tell their child not to touch things and to be supervised.  For the parent and/or guardian of a child who is blind, letting they roam free is unthinkable.  

What if there is a business that tells parents, “It’s ok to let your child touch things and learn.  It’s ok to let your child who is blind and/or visually impaired to walk the ‘yellow-brick road” of autonomy and “see” the exhibits in their own way.”  

Did you know that many of the museums that do have tactile art for the blind and visually impaired limit their accessibility to certain days and times those days?  They have sessions and special events.  We applaud those efforts and will also have special events and classes for those with special needs.  We just don’t want to limit their ability to enjoy the store within the confines of those time and date boundaries.  We will have a place they can com to and be able to enjoy just like their peers without varying exceptionalities that limit their sight or other senses.  

FSA & FSA Recs will and is getting rid of time limitations of those who are blind and visually impaired by making exhibits accessible to them at any time for them just as exhibits are available for those with sight.  

FSA and FSA RECS have the goal of creating and having audio guides and audio descriptive displays with varying tactile options to help the blind, visually impaired and anyone with other sensory needs be able to “see” and enjoy the business in their own way just like those without exceptionalities.  

“Do Not Touch” is a common statement within the confines of a business store, museum etc.…  We welcome all and encourage them to, “Come and See.  Touch.” We want to enhance experiences through sight, touch, sound, smell and taste.  YES!  We also have a cafe’!

We will offer tactile, anything that is designed to be perceived by touch.  When we perceive something, we understand it, this is usually done through sight.  For someone who is blind or visually impaired to obtain the same information that people who are sighted, they require tactile representations which includes but is certainly not limited to Braille.  We will have Braille.  We also will have a tactile system whereby an object can be identified through touch.  

Touch and auditory senses are often more developed and sensitive those who are blind or visually impaired than those who are sighted.  They can ‘see’ through their fingertips through their heightened recognition of objects through echoes and touch.
If this is how they can ‘see’, though their visual sense is disabled, we have made it our duty to make a place where they can enjoy and learn just like those who are sighted.  

Lastly, no one wants to be held on to or guided all of the time.  People thrive to have autonomy, freedom from external control or influence, and a quality of life.  WE will have a path at FSA just for that!  Our road of autonomy will be called the ‘Yellow Brick Road”, unless we find a sponsor and they have a better more suitable name.   

It is a textured ground surface that will have indicators to start the path, stop and touch to the left or right and at what height, where the path ends, in a safe and effective way where they can independently navigate and enjoy the surrounding area and ‘see’ exhibits.  These tactile plates, also known as Detectable Warning Plates, will be connected so they have full autonomy.  At first, they may need assistance but eventually that can be scaffolded, and they will one day be able to walk and see’ as they want with total freedom.  This road will be their own done at their own pace and all by themselves.  It will be an accomplishment and learning adventure each time they travel.  There will always be new and exciting changes on their road just like there are in the store.  

There will be other tactile exhibits with accompanied auditory guides and audio descriptive displays off the yellow brick road just like there are varying displays of fish, coral, reptiles, art, educational materials, and more all around the store for those who are not visually impaired to enjoy.

In the café there will be special food made into shapes that are fun for learning and delicious to eat.   WE have all different types of waffles ranging from fish to mermaids to cars and a smiling sun.   

The entire experience at the aquatic store will be geared towards full inclusion, accessibility, rescue, education, conservation and service.  

We will have special classes like reptile shows, FSA RECS’s Very Special Arts program and more.  Right now, FSA offers a free art class with two separate hour-long sessions every Saturday.  The goal is to have a class specifically tailored to those with moderate to severe exceptionalities while also providing an ASL interpreter in the other class for those who are auditorily impaired or deaf.

So. Now it is your turn to Come & See what we are about and what we are looking for sponsors to help us accomplish these goals to serve even more!!  

Truly FSA is far more than your average aquatic store.  FSA RECS, our nonprofit, is designed to help in the area of rescue, education, conservation and providing services.  Will you help us help and ‘change the world?’

Our plan is to place tactile art, with braille and audio descriptions around the store.  Some of this can be fully educational (such as learning the shape of a clown fish with various designs and comparing/contrasting it to other saltwater fish such as the fire fish, watchman goby, shrimp, and how it is the only ne who has a symbiotic protective relationship with the anemone that it only can host etc.…), there can be Lifecyle of the pollen taken by an endangered butterfly or bee and how it is dropped, in the soil, germinates, becomes a flower to pollinate etc.…, the metamorphoses of the frog etc.… The sky is the limit to what tactile and auditory exhibits we can place.  That’s the easy and fun part…  Our artists are ready to get to work.  We need sponsors to help us progress with our vision and mission, to make the world a better, brighter, more accessible place for those with exceptionalities.