Everyone says it the same thing: The Florida Keys are a special place. But what does that really mean? Weekends in the Florida Keys are spent on the boat, collecting crab traps, floating at the sandbar, bathing in the warm sunshine. During the week life isn’t much different; sunset paddles, coconut shrimp, and happy hour drinks overlooking …
Another highlight of my US-UK Fulbright year in the US was visiting Savannah, GA to give an invited talk at the Department of Biology at Georgia Southern University. I spoke about my work on the impact of deoxygenation on corals and the experiments I conducted at the Smithsonian Martine Station in Florida to investigate how low …
Each summer in Akumal, Mexico, with the CORALIUM Laboratory of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), Coral Conservation Society, and Secore International we conduct coral spawning dives, collect coral gametes, and produce larvae for research and conservation efforts. Our team of divers and citizen scientists from Akumal Dive Center dive night after night around the last full moon of the …
AMLC conference 2023, St Kitts
In 2022, I completed a 6-week University of Glasgow -Smithsonian institute knowledge exchange research visit at the Smithsonian Marine Station, Fort Pierce [https://naturalhistory.si.edu/research/smithsonian-marine-station], where I learned how to set up and maintain their 24-tank mesocosm system to run experiments on ocean deoxygenation. The system has 24 individual closed system tanks, each one with independent control …
Coral reefs are built over thousands of years by scleractinian corals which calcify calcium carbonate skeletons. Calcification can be measured through different methods, but one of the least invasive methods is through measuring the chemistry of the water surrounding a calcifying organism or community to detect changes in alkalinity. Calcification in seawater can be detected …
Attending Reef Futures 2022 was a unique experience; not only as the first in-person meeting after the pandemic, but also due to one the strongest hurricanes of recent years hitting Florida and causing travel chaos and devastation. The talks and conversations about the coastal protection value of coral reefs, and the impacts of climate change …
Measuring the metabolism of coral reefs and other ecosystems can give insight into the function and interactive processes taking place. These processes form the basis for carbon cycling in coral reefs. Organic carbon production is achieved via photosynthesis and respiration, while inorganic carbon is locked into the reef matrix through the process of calcification in …