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 in the lab.
There are some new signs at the lab.
Lewis said, “We have four different temperature-controlled seawater systems, and we finally got some new signage up. These are big four by eight foot signs that are up in the arches of each of the systems, designating with what the systems are, but more importantly, acknowledging the funding sources that helped us construct those buildings, the seawater systems. One of the systems, our very first one was funding from Florida Fish and Wildlife, and then we leveraged that funding with National Science Foundation, NSF, to finish the build out of that system, followed on the heels by System Number Two, that was funded by Florida Fish and Wildlife. System number three was funded by the National Science Foundation, and System Four was funded by the Department of Environmental Protection here in Florida.”
Some corals will be coming into the lab soon.
Lewis said, “We’re expecting in the next couple of days some corals to begin to be brought into our systems and health for the summer, get them out of the hot water on the reef, and some of these are more susceptible corals, and certainly are more fragile corals. So our partners at Reef Renewal will be bringing corals in and distributing them to other facilities, as well as KML for safekeeping for the summer. Waters are warming up, and the Florida Keys are on a bleach watch right now.”
Have there been any predictions for the summer?
Lewis said, “That’s a loaded question. 2023 was the most severe bleaching event we’ve ever seen in the Keys and the Caribbean, and it was a worldwide event, and we are on the similar trajectory this year that we followed in 2023 as far as our early warm waters and everything else, so we’re trying, everybody, all of the restoration partners are trying to be proactive and be prepared, and I think we’re better prepared than we were for 2023. Anytime KML goes out on the water with any of our research or education groups, we’re always looking at the reef, and we will actually submit reports to the Coral Bleaching Coral Bleach Watch, and a report of no bleaching or no paling is still a data point that needs to be reported, because they follow that, so we try to do our part anytime we’re out on the water with our various research and education programs.”
Summer time does not slow down in the lab.
Lewis said, “We have a group, actually, right now from FAU. They’re repeat customers that have come back every year, they’re working on sponge restoration, and this is the time of year when sponges are spawning, they’re specifically targeting species that are found in Florida Bay, and they’re partnering with FWC on this project, and they’re doing sponge spawning, which occurs around the full moon in June, July, and August, so they’re back again with us and looking forward to rearing some baby sponges in the lab. The sponge harvesting is highly regulated, but there have been so many other impacts on the sponge population, including algae blooms, not just red tide, but other algae blooms as well, that can kill the sponges. They just basically get clogged up and die. So, there’s other impacts on the sponge populations. Certainly, in Florida Bay, as well as out on the reef, which is a whole different population of sponges out there, and one of our partners with iCare, they have a portion of their project is actually doing sponge restoration out on the reef with those specific species.”
There have been a lot of students at the lab this year.
Lewis said, “We’ve been really busy this year. It’s definitely one of our busier years in the, in the last five years, we have more than 800 people that come through our doors every year, but a more interesting number that I’ve started really paying attention to is the number of days each of those 800 people are on site with us, and over the course of a year it’s about 3,500 people days on site at KML. That’s a lot of us. We do have a building fund campaign that is very much alive and well. We’ve had several very generous donors that have contributed to that fund, and if you go to our website, you can find a QR code that’ll take you directly to our donation page. We’re hoping to continue that project, and looking for other state and federal sources of funding, as well as private donations. Back to the 1950s, our two main buildings are that vintage. They’ve seen many different iterations, from a little tiny fishing camp and boat marina all the way through when SeaWorld actually owned the property before it became Keys Marine Lab. It started out a little bit of everything, but it was tourist based. It was an opportunity for tourists to come in and tour the facility and see animals, but it was an opportunity for SeaWorld actually to do collections of different animals, bring them to the lab or to the to the facility, and then transport them to Orlando, but while the animals were there at the facility, the public was actually able to use it, and over the years it became these big wandering seawater lagoons that went through the property, it piqued the interest of shark research, actually, and they began to see these lagoons as a place where they could do some controlled experiments, early experiments back in the 1980s and 1990s on sharks, so they sort of morphed into Shark World, and before Sea World sold it.”
For more information on Keys Marine Lab, click here: https://www.fio.usf.edu/keys-marine-lab/