In 1967, he was offered a job as the Coordinator of Marine Sciences for the Orange County Department of Education in Santa Ana, California. There, he developed the Floating Laboratory Program, a federally funded project that drew thousands of people to learn hands-on marine science. Twenty school districts took part in the program in its first year of operation, and in 3 years, 32,000 students and their teachers had gone to sea with the Floating Lab. The program later expanded to include extended classes for college students, such as a weekend study session on Catalina Island and short cruises through the Channel Islands.