Dr. Cindy Lewis, Director of Keys Marine Laboratory, joined Good Morning Keys on Keys Talk 96.9/102.5FM this morning to talk about what’s going on at the lab.
The lab performs research and supports college level education at the only tropical marine ecosystem in the continental United States.
A search for a full time executive director for the Florida Institute of Oceanography is also underway. Their acting director was appointed a little over a month ago.
Dr. Lewis said, “Dr. David Naar and he’s actually assistant dean at the University of South Florida’s College of Marine Science. So he’s well versed in oceanography and marine ecology and that sort of thing, as well as the inner workings of the university. We do have a search for a full time Executive Director, but he expects to be with us for the next six months or so, and having just been appointed a little over a month ago, he came right down literally within a week of his appointment to visit Keys Marine Lab on the same day that we had our State Representative Jim Mooney at the lab. So they got to meet and talk about the plans for KML. It was a great interaction.”
What topics were covered in the meeting with Representative Jim Mooney?
Dr. Lewis said, “Every year, FIO, our Florida Institute of Oceanography, our parent organization, hosts an Oceans Day at the Capitol in Tallahassee. This year it will be February 18, and Jim has graciously agreed to help us along the path of introducing us on the floor of the House, that we will be there hosting an event in the south lawn of the Capitol, for all of our FIO members, of which there are 33 different members in our consortium. So we talked about that and our engagement with Jim. He’s always been a fantastic supporter of marine and ecosystems and conservation in the Florida Keys. The other big topic certainly is our plans to our plans to rebuild KML into a new a new facility, and that’s going to require some funding. So he’s going to help us with an appropriations request for the beginning phases of planning, basically a program manager and architectural and engineered plans to make the first phase of the project, which would be expanding our dorm facilities, make that shovel ready when we get the funding for that. So there was a lot of interaction between Dr. Naar and Jim on what’s the best step forward for that?”
How long has the facility been here in the Keys?
Dr. Lewis said, “Well, some of the buildings date back to the 1950s when it was originally a small fishing camp and it was a bait shop and marina and post office and two of the buildings are old buildings that we’re holding together, and they’ve been through lots of storms, and they’re still standing. Then we sort of evolved through after it was that Marine Marina, that it was, SeaWorld took over, and it was open to the public, and it was a tourist attraction where people could come and see these marine animals. But Marine Lab also used it as a collection point to feed to their Orlando facilities, and it began to evolve. So there was a meandering stream of seawater pools and essentially a river through the middle of the property that could hold all these different animals and that sort of began the shark research that was being done. So when Marine Lab closed their doors to the public, but it became the shark Institute while they were still doing marine research, but on sharks. Then it was purchased by the state as conservation land, and it became the Keys Marine Lab in 1992.”
There are researchers that come from all over the country and the world to KML to do their research.
Dr. Lewis said, “Probably 80% of our groups are from within the state of Florida. We are a state of Florida institution, so at least 80% of our groups any year are from within the state, whether they’re universities, colleges, other agencies here within the state, but we are pretty far flung all over the country. I think 41 different states over the years have utilized KML, as well as something like 26 different countries have come to us. We recently had, last January, a group from Australia doing shark research at Keys Marine Lab. So they found us very convenient to be able to hold small sharks and do their research and then be able to release them when they were done. So they were very, very appreciative of our facility. We’ve had an interesting group here in the last month or so. They’re a new group for us, coming from the Georgia Southern University, and we were out for a week back in Florida Bay with them taking water samples in a grid all across Florida Bay, took them three or four days of sampling out there, and they’ll be doing this quarterly for the next year to look at water quality back in Florida Bay and begin to assess some of the water flow rates through the bay. So that was kind of interesting to watch them do that research.”
How can people find out more about Keys Marine Lab?
Dr. Lewis said, “We do have a website. There’s an opportunity to donate to the different projects that we do, including coral restoration, as well as our new building fund, and also follow us on Facebook and Instagram. We’ve had some interesting posts going on lately. With all the interesting stuff we’re doing, we’re involved with new documentary film that’s going to be coming out probably next year. I’m one of the characters in the film that they’re following. It’s on coral restoration, but it’s the story behind the story of the people who are doing the coral restoration and following them through some of their activities and research, especially since the 2023 bleaching event, and the impacts that that has had on everybody’s lives. So that’ll be coming up. Follow us on Facebook. You’ll see all about that stuff.”
For more information, click here: https://www.fio.usf.edu/keys-marine-lab/