Dr. Cindy Lewis, Director of the Keys Marine Laboratory, joined Good Morning Keys on KeysTalk 96.9/102.5FM this morning to talk about what’s happening at the lab.
What does the Keys Marine Lab do?
Dr. Lewis said, “We do education and research at the college level, so researchers and college professors bring their classes down, but we also have temperature controlled seawater systems, and that has become a big focus of coral restoration at our lab in recent years.”
Elkhorn coral in large numbers have come to the Marine Lab recently.
Dr. Lewis said, “This was kind of an exciting, happy story. Elkhorn corals are incredibly endangered. They are on the endangered species list, and their parent colonies were taken from the Keys over the last several years and preserved up at Florida Aquarium in Tampa and their facility in Apollo Beach. They were they were saved up there, rescued and preserved up there, and then they bred them and these were particularly resilient parent colonies that came from the Keys, and they produced babies in 2022 and 2023, so they’ve been cared for over the last several years by Florida Aquarium, and they were ready to come down to the Keys, so they transported them down to Keys Marine Lab a couple weeks ago. It entailed 17 coolers of corals packed carefully in racks and sea water and then driven in a big box truck down and meeting all of the restoration partners at Keys Marine Lab at seven o’clock at night. That was a whole day process to get these corals down here.”
What will happen to the corals?
Dr. Lewis said, “The ultimate goal for these babies is to once again go back out to our reefs as part of the Mission Iconic Reefs program that NOAA has been spearheading, these seven iconic reefs that they are focusing on doing extensive coral restoration at those sites, so these corals will be returned to those sites. The partners that were involved, Mote Marine Lab met them in the parking lot and took their coolers of coral to their facility so that they could do their out planting. Coral Restoration Foundation was there, Reef Renewal was there, as well as SOAR, another organization that took some corals, so these nearly 1,100 baby corals that have been carefully cared for, and they sort of stopped over at KML and got acclimated and recovered from their journey. They didn’t seem to be any of the worse for wear, but they basically spent the night at Keys Marine Lab in our sea water tables, and then the next day, each of these partners took their corals to their offshore nursery and so divers had to attach them to the nursery trees out in the water where they’ll again, they sort of have a room with an ocean view as they’re waiting to be actually secured and planted out on the reef at the designated sites.”
This will make a difference to help restore the reef.
Dr. Lewis said, “We’re really hoping that, because they came from particularly tough parents, that maybe some of these offspring are also particularly tough to acclimate and to be able to survive in our warmer conditions, the conditions we have on the reef right now. So all of the different practitioners will be monitoring these corals over the next couple of years to see how they do and while they’re doing all that, just remember that everybody up at Florida Aquarium, they bred corals in 2024 and so they’ve been caring for babies from them, and they’re going to breed corals again this year during the coral spawning season. So they’ll be caring for coral, so each year they’ll be bringing more corals down to be out planted. So it’s sort of a pipeline, if you will, of returning corals to the reef.”
Has there been any news of Sargassum for this year?
Dr. Lewis said, “I’m hearing that it’s out there and that it seems to be a good growing season for Sargassum out in the ocean, and it’s really going to depend on ocean currents and wind and weather, whether it ends up on our beaches, so everybody’s just kind of watching it. The water temperatures out on the reef are slowly climbing, and everybody is watching it very carefully, and all of our coral restoration partners are collectively watching it and making plans as far as what they’ll do when the water temperatures reach a certain point where they may need to bring some corals in to protect them, or they may need to take some corals into deeper water to protect them for a few months during the summer. So everybody’s watching right now and waiting, but we’re prepared.”
How long are students at KML?
Dr. Lewis said, “It’s a very individual thing. We have a professor, actually, who has a class from Atlanta, Georgia, visiting us this week, and they’re going out on boat trips and learning about the ecosystems around the Middle Keys. So they’re here for the week, and then we’ll have other classes throughout the summer, as professors are maybe teaching the class at their home universities, but they want to come down to KML and actually get their students, get their feet in the water and get them wet, and get them out there and seeing what’s out there in the water. So that’s on a sort of a revolving door basis, as well as summertime is big time for our researchers to come down. They’re not teaching classes, maybe in the summertime. They don’t have a summer session, so it’s time for them to do their research. So we’ve got several researchers that will be in and out of KML, out on boat trips all summer.”
For more information, click here: https://www.fio.usf.edu/keys-marine-lab/