NaGISA is an acronym which stands for Natural Geography In Shore Areas and is a baseline study of the macrofauna and meiofauna from the shoreline to a depth of twenty meters off the shore. It is real world Ph.D. level science being conducted by the students of Niceville High School (NHS) in partnership with research scientists from leading international universities and marine research organizations. What makes the NHS NaGISA program so unique is that high school students are performing graduate level research.

The program was first brought to Niceville by one of its teachers, Richard Hernandez. It was his encounter with Dr. Yoshihisa Shirayama, the principal NaGISA researcher at Kyoto University that led to NHS becoming the first high school involved in this international scientific research program. The success this endeavor enjoyed has opened the door for high schools all over the world to participate in the NaGISA program. NHS students and faculty have traveled across the world to teach other high schools how to become functional members of the project.

The first expansion trip occurred after the school attended the First NaGISA World Conference in Kobe, Japan. There they met Dr. Edward Kimani, a researcher from the Kenya Marine and Fisheries Research Institute who was interested, and wished for NHS to teach the protocol to students from the Kizimkazi Dimbani School in Zanzibar, Tanzania. That success led to another expansion at The Academy of Environmental Science at Crystal River, Florida. In April 2009, the NHS NaGISA team traveled to Crete, Greece, to expand the NaGISA project to the Heraklion School of the Arts with the help of the Hellenic Center for Marine Research. At the end of that month, a small team was invited to the National Ocean Science Bowl to make a presentation on the NaGISA project and pique interest in other American coastal high schools. The following month, a team of thirty students and faculty traveled to the University of Florida to receive further instruction and training on DNA bar-coding from Dr. Gustav Paulay, the curator of the Florida State Museum of Natural History. That December, the NHS team went to Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, to expand the NaGISA project to the Sharm el-Sheikh College. The goal of these trips was to establish new collection sites in significant places around the world. If not for the support of the local community and other benefactors, including the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, these trips would not have been possible.

The NHS NaGISA team has simple objectives: provide the most extensive and highest quality marine science experience possible, give students an opportunity to learn management and motivational skills -- this is a student-run organization -- and expose them to a wide variety of cultures while making exceptionally positive and professional impressions on members of the international science community and on other high school students everywhere.

The most significant positive impact on the students is the extraordinary opportunities offered to them as a result of being a part of this project. Being involved in this project, students can put into practice skills they have acquired in the classroom by conducting collections in the field to exacting standards and use advanced analysis equipment in the laboratory to provide data which will be used by environmental researchers from around the world. Students are able to work with world-renown scientists and experience, first hand, international cultures. These students represent the best part of the American education system and demonstrate this to both students and faculty wherever they go.