Marine Education

Boaters know the value of healthy oceans better than almost anyone. Whether your interest is fishing or cruising, no one wants to do it in unhealthy water. Get schooled and brush up on some basic marine education.

September is when schools get back in session, but it’s also a time along the Southeast Coast to learn more about marine education.

Florida Oceanographic Society

A nonprofit organization with the mission to inspire environmental stewardship of Florida’s coastal areas through education, research, and advocacy, the Florida Oceanographic Society offers educational programs to the public. Its 57-acre marine life nature center on Hutchinson Island in Stuart, Florida, between the Indian River and the Atlantic Ocean, conducts research and restoration programs for the improvement of the regional coastal ecosystems. Presentations educate the public on environmental issues, such as protecting coastal ecosystems and marine life.

Learn more: floridaocean.org

Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute

Founded in 1971 as a premier marine research facility in Fort Pierce, Florida, Harbor Branch is part of Florida Atlantic University. The mission of its team of scientists, engineers, students, staff, and volunteers is to use ocean science to help create a better world. Harbor Branch-FAU’s Ocean Discovery Visitors Center offers a variety of educational opportunities along with a lecture series that enables the community to learn about the marine environment and the important research conducted by the institute.

Learn more: fau.edu/hboi

Smithsonian Marine Station

As part of the Smithsonian’s Natural History Museum, the Marine Station, also located in Fort Pierce, Florida, is a research facility focusing on the marine ecosystems unique to Florida’s offshore waters and the Indian River Lagoon. The facility’s programs study the biodiversity, life histories, and ecology of marine organisms in the lagoon and oceanic waters of Florida’s Treasure Coast. On the third Thursday of each month, the center opens its doors to the public to share its current research projects. The center also holds public lectures throughout the winter where scientists present their work.

Learn more: si.edu/research/smithsonian-marine-station

Mote Marine Laboratory at Florida Keys History & Discovery Center

*Research and environmental stewardship are two tenets of Mote Marine Laboratory.*

Mote Marine Laboratory comprises scientists and explorers acting as stewards of the ocean. They are driven by research and education to create a better environment for generations to come. Their belief is: “The answers are in the ocean, and together we will find them.” The Mote Laboratory field station at the Florida Keys Discovery Center in Islamorada, Florida, provides a beautiful and educational view of the unique coral reef ecosystem of the Florida Keys and the challenges it faces.

Learn more: mote.org/locations/details/florida-keys-history-discovery-center

The University of North Carolina, Institute of Marine Sciences: UNC-IMS operates a research facility in Morehead City, North Carolina. The Institute’s mission is to serve the
public by conducting cutting-edge research, training young scientists, and providing expertise to governmental agencies and industry. Each Thursday during the school year, a
notable marine scientist will present a lecture on their current research project.

For a seminar calendar: contact Kerry Irish at: irishk@email.unc.edu or ims.unc.edu/events

By Bob Arrington, Southern Boating September 2019

What is stony coral tissue loss disease?

And more important, how do we stop it?

In September 2014, researchers noticed that certain stony corals along the Florida Reef Tract weren’t doing so well. The Florida Reef Tract stretches approximately 360 miles in an arc along the Florida Keys and southeastern Florida. It’s currently the world’s third largest reef.

In Miami-Dade County, of Virginia Key, corals were showing “small circular or irregular patches of white, exposed skeleton devoid of tissue,” explains Dr. Andy Bruckner, research coordinator for Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary. From there, the tissue would slough off, leaving the stark white skeleton exposed until algae colonized it. The disease, he explains, “radiates across the colony and outward.”

Click the image to watch the sad progression of stony coral tissue disease along Florida’s East Coast.

And spread outward it did—the stony coral tissue loss disease has since been found in the Lower Florida Keys.

This spells trouble for the reefs, and for the creatures and people who depend on them. The reefs of the Florida Keys provide food and recreational opportunities for residents and vacationers alike, and they can protect coastal communities since they serve as a buffer for hurricanes and other storms.

Worldwide, coral reefs support approximately 25 percent of all known marine species. Reefs provide homes for more than 4,000 species of fish, 700 species of coral, and thousands of other plants and animals.

The architects of coral reefs are hard corals. Unlike soft corals, hard corals have stony skeletons made out of limestone that are produced by coral polyps. When polyps die, their skeletons are left behind and used as foundations for new polyps. An actual coral branch or mound is composed of layer upon layer of skeletons covered by a thin layer of living polyps.

Scientists believe the disease is likely caused by a bacterial infection carried by currents, but little else is known.

As Joanna Walczak, southeast regional administrator at the Florida Department of Environmental Protection puts it, “this is an all hands on deck situation, requiring an unprecedented effort and response.”

Partners from universities, nonprofits, and government agencies have joined the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary and the Florida Department of Environmental Protection to understand the disease and how it can be stopped.

What can we do?

To stop the spread of contamination from one dive site to another, experts have a few recommendations for divers/snorkelers and swimmers.

Dos

Inspect dive gear equipment and remove any debris between each dive
ALWAYS Sanitize non-sensitive gear with a bleach solution
For sensitive gear, wash with copious amounts of fresh water
Move from “healthiest” site to “dirtiest” site
Always decontaminate regulators, gauges and computers
Use a reef-healthy sunscreen

Don’ts

Never leave any debris on dive/snorkel gear
Don’t move from a diseased site to a healthy site
Don’t dispose of disinfectant or waste into the ocean or a storm drain

“This collaborative response effort is vitally important,” says Sarah Fangman, Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary superintendent. “The broad knowledge provided by all our partners working together has resulted in the development of a variety of interventions.” Together, these partners hope to develop an effective treatment.

Learn more what scientists are doing to learn about stony coral tissue loss.

–Erin

Are Acidifying Oceans Slowing Coral Disease?

Blackout Black Band

Could acidifying oceans actually slow down coral disease?

Coral reefs face intensifying struggles as greenhouse gases warm and acidify the ocean, but new research suggests a potential silver lining: Some coral diseases might also dwindle amid environmental change. A controlled lab study led by Mote Marine Laboratory and published in the journal

A controlled lab study led by Mote Marine Laboratory and published in the journal PLOS ONE revealed that black band disease was less deadly to mountainous star coral (Orbicella faveolata) as water acidiﬁed, or decreased in pH. Scientists from Mote and the University of South Carolina, and students from the University of Rhode Island, University of New Hampshire, University of Hawaii, and Unity College in Maine conducted the research with funding from the Dart Foundation and the Protect Our Reefs grants program supported by sales of the Protect Our Reefs specialty license plate. Student contributions were backed by the National Science Foundation (NSF) Research Experiences for Undergraduates program and Mote College Internship Scholarships.

Scientists from Mote and the University of South Carolina, and students from the University of Rhode Island, University of New Hampshire, University of Hawaii, and Unity College in Maine conducted the research with funding from the Dart Foundation and the Protect Our Reefs grants program supported by sales of the Protect Our Reefs specialty license plate. Student contributions were backed by the National Science Foundation (NSF) Research Experiences for Undergraduates program and Mote College Internship Scholarships.

The ocean’s pH is decreasing through the process of ocean acidiﬁ cation (OA) driven by excess carbon dioxide, the same greenhouse gas that’s triggering temperature increases worldwide. OA may weaken or dissolve corals’ hard skeletons and bring on other changes in multiple marine species. Warming water stresses corals, causing them to lose the vital algae in their tissues. Coral diseases, another major threat, may worsen in stressed corals, but few studies have examined how these conditions could change amid low pH levels expected with OA.

The new study is the ﬁrst to examine how low pH water affects black band—a fast-progressing, often deadly, worldwide coral disease affecting at least 42 coral species in the Caribbean. Black band, a variable group of multiple bacteria species, forms a dark circle that spreads across a coral and kills it. Under attack is mountainous star coral, a major contributor to the reef system of the Florida Keys and listed as threatened under the U.S. Endangered Species Act.

“Mountainous star coral only grows a couple of millimeters a year, and black band can kill a 100-year-old coral within weeks,” said Dr. Erinn Muller, lead author and manager of Mote’s Coral Health and Disease Research Program.

At a very small scale, black band produces a lower pH environment than its surroundings—localized acidiﬁ cation. “In the lab, we thought that exposing an infected coral to acidiﬁ ed water would accelerate the virulence of this disease, but to our surprise, the opposite happened,” Muller said.

During 2013 lab work at Mote’s Summerland Key campus, the researchers inoculated 32 mountainous star coral fragments with black band disease. Some were placed in tanks with temperature and pH similar to present-day ocean water, while others were put into tanks with elevated temperature, lowered pH or both. They used year-2100 projections from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Fifth Assessment Report.

“These experimental studies in the lab are extremely important; they give us a glimpse into the potential future for our reefs,” said Mote’s Ocean Acidiﬁ cation Research Program manager Dr. Emily Hall, who oversees research in Mote’s Ocean Acidiﬁcation Flow-through Experimental Raceway Unit on Summerland Key, which was established due to an NSF grant. “With ocean acidiﬁcation, not every organism is affected the same way. It’s important for managers of marine protected areas to know how the impacts might vary.”

The researchers carefully monitored the water conditions and photographed and measured the coverage of black band for 16 days. By then, some coral fragments had perished completely from the disease. The team sampled black band bacteria and the corals’ natural resident bacteria—some of which contribute to the coral immune system—and sequenced their 16S rRNA gene, which helps classify bacteria into scientiﬁc categories. Their analysis revealed a surprise.

“Though warmer temperatures didn’t signiﬁcantly affect the progression of black band disease in this time period, the low pH treatment did—it slowed the progression rate of the disease by 25 percent,” Muller said. “It took us awhile to believe it.” Skeptical, Muller and her colleagues ran similar tests with other coral species apart from the mountainous star coral in the current study. The mountainous star coral showed the clearest trend, but data from other species suggested similar patterns.

How might acidiﬁcation slow down black band disease?
“Black band disease has a very distinct consortium of microbes, and it seems that lowered pH affected different microbes in different ways,” said study partner Dr. Kim Ritchie, associate professor at the University of South Carolina at Beaufort. “The abundance of one signiﬁ cant member of the consortium went down.” Speciﬁcally, acidiﬁed water reduced the abundance of Oscillatoriophycidae, a class of cyanobacteria that often dominates black band disease. These bacteria carry pigments that give the disease its distinct color. Though these bacteria live in the already-acidiﬁed environment of black band, past studies by others suggest that cyanobacteria can decline if the water becomes acidiﬁed beyond their tolerance limits.

“There were also shifts in the corals’ own microbial community, but none that explained the change in the disease. What happened in the black band itself, a reduction in the main contributor to the disease consortium was likely a better explanation,” Muller said. “One of our next steps is to study how low pH inﬂuences the very small scale conditions in the microenvironment of black band disease as the outside environment changes.”

By Hayley Rutger, Mote Marine Laboratory for Southern Boating August 2017

Protect Our Reef grants help tackle threats to reefs.

Scientists and educators from a variety of institutions across the country gathered at Florida Keys Community College in Key West, Florida, on April 28th to present the latest research on protective measures against a multitude of threats facing Florida’s coral reefs ranging from pollution to disease and bleaching caused by ocean acidification.
The University of North Florida, University of Miami, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Smithsonian Marine Station, Jacksonville University, Florida Atlantic University, and Northeastern University were represented at the meeting, as were Key West’s nonprofit organization Reef Relief and Sarasota, Florida-based Mote Marine Laboratory. What do they all have in common? Each are recipients of Protect Our Reef grants funded by sales of the “Protect Our Reefs” specialty license plates in Florida—a program introduced in 2004 that has raised more than $4 million for the preservation and restoration of Florida’s coral reefs.
Each grant ranges from $10,000-$30,000 according to David Vaughan, the executive director of Mote Marine’s tropical research laboratory in Summerland Key, Florida. He adds that nearly a third of a million dollars is awarded annually as part of the Protect Our Reefs program administered by Mote Marine. Grant recipients are required to submit an eight-page proposal detailing the principle objectives of the project, including the past experience and methods of the staff as well as how they plan to carry out the research. The proposal also highlights deliverables, a timeline and a detailed budget.
Some of the most interesting material presented, Vaughan adds, concerns black band disease, an affliction that can devastate entire coral colonies within months. It’s a problem that has vexed scientists for a long time, but researchers are finally getting closer to its root cause. Max Teplitski of the Smithsonian Marine Station and Sara Williams of Northeastern University both presented new findings about black band disease that they were able to discover thanks to grants afforded by Protect Our Reef. “We now have a better understanding that [black band] disease is not caused by one single microbe, virus or fungi, but it is a combination of over a dozen organisms working together,” says Vaughan. “Two of the organisms have to be present in order [for coral] to get the disease, but if any one of them is present, without any of the others, the corals don’t get the disease. Also, a certain bacteria and a certain blue-green algae has to be present.”
Vaughan adds that increased media coverage of coral bleaching in major media outlets is helping raise awareness of how weather and climate events such as El Niño and ocean acidification affect the planet’s vital yet precious reef systems. Much remains to be done, says Vaughan, but adds that Protect Our Reefs is a big step in the right direction. “It’s a shame that things like devastating conditions in the Pacific and Australia’s Great Barrier Reef is what it takes for people to understand how important coral reefs are to our oceans’ health,” he contends, referring to a mass-bleaching event discovered in March 2016 along some 600 miles of the Great Barrier Reef. “But people are understanding that bleaching is a condition that affects corals when the temperatures get too high. A decent amount of our Protect Our Reefs grants address bleaching, seeing that there are some genetic strains of corals that seem to tolerate those conditions better than others. So we’re able to better understand how we can hopefully live with [healthy] coral reef systems in the future, because it’s the habitat for all of our fish and the other beautiful things we like to view when we’re on and in the water.”

By Brian Hartz, Southern Boating Magazine July 2016