Dr. Cindy Lewis, Director of Keys Marine Laboratory, joined Good Morning Keys on KeysTalk 96.9/102.5FM this morning to talk about what’s been going on in the lab.
What is the mission of Keys Marine Lab?
Dr. Lewis said, “The Keys Marine Lab has been there as a full service Marine Lab for about 35 years, and we are under the Florida Institute of Oceanography Consortium of Marine Science institutions in the state, and we are at the University of South Florida, and we offer opportunities for education and research at the college level to come in and experience the amazing habitats here in the Florida Keys. I want to give a shout out to my neighbors, Tony and Tracy. They were boating in very shallow waters around Long Key and found one of those mooring balls, those white balls with a blue stripe bottom that the sanctuary has out at different areas to assist with mooring and popular dive sites. It had obviously been broken off. They found it, brought it to the lab, and we were able to contact the buoy team, they were very grateful to have the buoy and picked it up, and they will be repairing the line that was broken and putting it back out where it belongs. So we’ll have access to it for safely mooring boats on these popular dive sites. All of these mooring balls are out there, and there are identifications on them, and there are there is a phone number that you can reach the buoy team. If you find one of these buoys, they’re very, very happy to have it back. They’re expensive to have to buy all the new rope and the new buoy just before they even can put it out there. So it’s really good to return them if you find them floating, and also to learn how to tie up to them correctly, so that you’re not ripping them out of the bottom like so often happens. That yellow line with the loop on it, you don’t want to be attaching that to the cleat on your boat. That puts too much stress on these buoys. You really need to create a bridle with your bow line so that you can loop through it and tie it off. So give yourself a little bit more scope while you’re out there enjoying the environment.”
The seawater wall system is also important to Keys Marine Lab.
Dr. Lewis said, “It certainly is a partnership or collaboration with all of the restoration people here in the Florida Keys and the marine sanctuary. We’re supporting that project. We have what’s called a land based seawater system producing reef quality water, and all of our restoration people use it to produce more corals to out plant. We’re taking advantage of a little bit of a lull in our schedule. Students are beginning to go back to school, and professors are getting ready to teach, so there’s not much activity at the lab. It gives my team a chance to continue construction on a new system that we’re building that will add 20 more big tables for coral restoration and coral rescue. This was actually supported by the state of Florida Department of Environmental Protection, DEP, and it’s in collaboration with Monroe County that we got this funding to construct this additional seawater system.”
Are the state and federal cutbacks affecting Keys Marine Lab?
Dr. Lewis said, “We’re not seeing direct impacts from these cutbacks. However, a lot of our restoration partners and research partners, let’s not just stop at restoration, but all of people accessing Keys Marine Lab, we’ve seen a reduction, or they’ve had to cancel classes because of lack of funding, or cancel a research trip, and our restoration partners are struggling to fill their deliverables, their responsibilities for out planting because a lot of their funds have been cut. So we’re trying everything we can to support them so they can more easily contribute as they’re supposed to be doing.”
How is the restoration and out planting going?
Dr. Lewis said, “There was a huge setback in 2023 with that massive breaching event and a lot of our partners, lost a lot of the corals. Not only did they physically lose them, they died because of the heat, but they were also not allowed to out plant until the waters got cooler again. This summer has not so far been hot enough to cause them to stop out planting. They’re continuing to out plant so they’re trying to get back on board. One of the aspects of using our seawater system all winter, all of our partners, and we’ve got four or five different restoration partners that use us, they were able to actually continue fragmenting and cutting up corals and getting them on these little pucks ready for out planting while the winds are blowing and we’ve got four to six foot seas out there, they can’t be in the water, so they can more efficiently use their time on land. They produced over 25,000 fragments of coral to take out to the reef this summer, which is pretty incredible.”
For more information, click here: https://www.fio.usf.edu/keys-marine-lab/