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.
Ocean Day is coming up in February in Tallahassee.
Lewis said, “As KML is part of FIO, one of its, major assets, and so we will be in the Capitol on February 18, and we will be sponsoring the Oceans Day event there on the south plaza at the Capitol. Co sponsoring it with Mote Marine Lab and Ocean Alliance. But FIO actually puts on the event on the Capitol, on the plaza, and we will be having a fish fry from noon until two right there, and come and see the different exhibits. The fish fry is actually sponsored by Florida International University, so they are helping us put on this event. We have several other sponsors that have stepped up this year and helped to contribute. Port of Tampa is another one, the St Pete innovation district. Stanley Yacht is also a sponsor. Open Water, it’s canned water rather than plastic water bottles, and they have donated over $2,000 worth of canned water that we will be offering for drinks at the the capital in an effort to promote no plastic water bottles.”
What message are they hoping to take to the legislators?
Lewis said, “The whole thing is Florida’s Blue Ocean economy is so essential to the entire state, with tourism and everything else, but also the blue ocean workforce. FIO is composed of 34 different members in the consortium. So many of those members will actually be there with displays, interactive tables, and people to talk about the work that they’re doing at each one of their organizations. We’ve got 22 exhibitors that will be spread around the Capitol, the south lawn there, and they’ll be talking about all their ocean advocacy and innovation that they’re doing to promote the ocean economy and the blue workforce.”
What are some of the kinds of research that go on at Keys Marine Lab?
Lewis said, “Our education groups are sort of a third of all of the groups that are on site. Different professors from different universities throughout the state of Florida and beyond come to KML to give their students an experience of the marine and the ocean environment. Just had a group from Wisconsin here for two weeks, and they’re kind of a repeat frequent flyer this way, I think this was their third year that they’ve been coming down to KML with their students, and the experience that these students had, seeing the ocean, some of them for the first time, being able to snorkel and learn about the environment. So the education side of it, we’re developing the scientists and the policy makers for the future that care about our oceans. We also do research. And research is everything from there’s shark research, or people come to KML to do different shark sensory research. We’ve had a group as far away as from Australia come to KML to do some of their work, in collaboration with a researcher here in Florida, sawfish and the spinning fish work. We have people come down working on that on a regular basis, doing seasonal sampling and as well as a lot of other other systems and stuff. It’s not just focused on any one particular area of research, grad students come spend the summer working on their specific graduation graduate studies project. And then the other thing we do is coral restoration, and we’re kind of a hub. We provide our temperature controlled seawater systems, and with this cold water, our heaters are going to make sure that the water stays warm enough for the coral during these couple days where it’s little cold for them. So we have to deal with that too.”
There are also construction and capital projects going on at KML.
Lewis said, “The small project is we are working on adding a fourth seawater system to complement and expand the land based capacity so that we’re ready to respond to any sort of an emergency that requires holding animals, coral or other on site to protect them, but we’re also looking to the buildings that we have. Many of the buildings are 75 years old, and a lot of our basic infrastructure is at ground level. That is very sensitive to not only rising water levels, but certainly storms and storm surge and that sort of thing. So we’re hoping to build new buildings, replace these old buildings with brand new buildings that are elevated and storm hardened, so we can continue to offer these services to the education, research and restoration community.
The annual open house will be held on March 7.
Lewis said, “It’s from one to three, and everybody’s welcome to come and visit the lab. We’ll have many of our restoration and conservation partners there so you can interact with them and see all of the really amazing work that’s being done here in the Keys.”
For more information, click here: https://www.fio.usf.edu/keys-marine-lab/