Coast Day kicks off today at University of Delaware campus in Lewes

LEWES, Del. -  Coast Day kicked off today in Lewes for the 48th year. 

Coast Day takes place every year at the University of Delaware campus in Lewes and Chris Petrone who works for the university said this event is a chance for the community to come out and engage. 

"It's good for people to get that glimpse under the hood of what happens on this campus," Petrone said. "It is important to people who live here to try and understand how to be better stewards of the environment."

One local Jim Gellen said he comes to Coast Day every year. 

"We come rain or shine, it's always been a great experience," Gillin said. "It's just wonderful to learn new things and see what the new science brings."

Coast Day is a place where little ones can see sharks up close, living or preserved for research. Kids can learn about the place they live or do arts and crafts like making crab headbands or creating microbes.

Another local Brianna Gainey said her kids are very hands on and the event today was fun for them. 

"My kids wanted to come today and that's where they do their best learning when they're personally invested," Gainey said. "My kids spend all summer at the beach picking up horseshoe crabs and now they're learning more about horseshoe crab anatomy and lifecycle stuff and it's cool that they have more of a depth to those experiences now."

Coast Day is about the community., the children learning by sight or by touch what science is. Organizers said its about the adults learning something new.

"Once people graduate from high school or college, they don't see much science beyond local weather," Petrone said, "The real meaning of this is to engage in the science and understand that they do have an impact on their environment."

"At this event they had booths that you can come and look at a poster and have a really good adult discussion about issues that are going on but it's nice to have a little bit of both for adults and kids," Gainey said.