Cindy Lewis, director of the Keys Marine Laboratory, joined Good Morning Keys on Keys Talk 96.9/102.5FM this morning to talk about the lab.
Keys Marine Lab is a marine field station that services education, research and coral restoration throughout the state of Florida, as well as the country and even internationally.
Lewis said, “We’ve been there for 35 years. We were delighted to have a surprise check from the Key Colony Beach Fishing and Boating Club. They made a donation to continue to support coral restoration at KML, so those funds can go to our coral restoration partners to help them out with supplies and whatever we need. And we were wonderfully grateful and very surprised to see a second check. Thank you so much.”
Cory Schwisow, director of Emergency Management for Monroe County and senior planner Joshe Baer visited the lab recently.
Lewis said it was “the first time that they’d ever had boots on the ground at KML. Obviously, with the impending hurricane season and everybody’s thinking emergency management, we were showing them the facility with consideration for how Keys Marine Lab can help support Monroe County in an emergency situation with resources and that sort of thing. So Cory was very interested to see the facility, see what we had, as far as potential temporary dorm space for first responders, first coming into the Keys after an event, but also an area to lay down supplies and that sort of thing. So we’re looking at developing a relationship, a formal relationship, so that we can support the county in any way we can in an emergency event.”
Josh Greer also visited the lab recently.
Lewis said, “Josh Greer is with the Yamaha Rightwater sustainability team. Yamaha is very interested in developing sponsorship with different people. Now we’ve got vessels at KML that are all powered by Yamaha engines. So Josh was very interested. But Rightwater sustainability team focuses on education, research, restoration, environmental conservation, invasive species. The relationship with KML really checked all those boxes for the Rightwater team, and they would like to work with us in the future as a sponsor.”
There are also upgrades to infrastructure going on at the lab as well.
Lewis said, “That may mean expanding our vessel fleet, and also going back to emergency management, certainly the new building and the new dormitory would also be storm hardened to support any sort of emergency. So we’re really trying to reach out and make those connections with people. We are the southernmost campus, if you will, for the University of South Florida, as a Marine Field Station affiliated with USF. But many groups besides USF use us. We had a group in from the University of Florida. They spent a week as a marine ecology group. This is a returning group. They come kind of this time every year, bring a class. So we did have an opportunity to get them out on the water before the winds picked up. The class had a wonderful time with us. So it was really good to have them. We have a shark group on site doing shark research, and they’re from New College up in the Sarasota area, and so they’re down, actually, for the month, doing some shark research toxicity studies. They’re in the process of putting everything together, but they’ll be with us for the full month, and we’re also looking forward to the harmful algal bloom team from Florida Gulf Coast. They come down seasonally to sample for different algae, specifically the algae that produces ciguatera toxin. It’s usually an indicator. They’re looking for concentrations. The concentration of algae is the same, stable, less, more. It gives them an indication of what could be potential problems down the road. So they come down four times a year. But they’ve also been very involved with that sampling and additional sampling in regards to the spinning fish syndrome that we’ve been seeing for the last couple of years. So they’ve been partnering with all those people doing that.”
Do the winds hamper the ability for research at the lab?
Lewis said, “Sometimes it does. Sometimes we have the ability to tuck them in, get them out on the water so they can explore the environment and maybe in the leeward side of the islands, depending on the directions of the wind. In the case of our coral restoration partners, they’re obviously not out on the water, out planting corals. So instead, they’re on shore, fragmenting corals and mounting them on pucks and getting them ready to take out to their nurseries, so they can spend good time efficiently using our seawater systems, but using our land based facility to do that when they can’t be on the water. So we’ve actually been pretty busy. This is actually our really busy season. The classes are winding down. People are finishing their classroom work and everything, and they’re coming to the Keys now to do their field work. So we’ve got a pretty busy schedule for the next couple of months.”
For more information, click here: https://www.fio.usf.edu/keys-marine-lab/