Over spring break, seven members of the Duke RESTORE Coral Team participated in their first-ever spring break field experience in South Florida, gaining hands-on coral restoration skills and educational opportunities.
Partnering with the Coral Restoration Foundation (CRF) in Key Largo, the group joined CRF members to conduct coral tree maintenance at the largest ocean-based coral nursery in the world, Tavernier Coral Tree Nursery, and the Carysfort Nursery. During these maintenance dives, students removed competitors and other stressors from the coral trees, such as algae and fire coral, which helped protect the vulnerable corals and support their growth.
The Original Coral Tree, a technology developed by CRF in 2011, allows coral fragments to be suspended from the tree’s branches using a microfilament line until they are large enough to be transported and attached to an existing reef. CRF also invented additional variations of coral trees, such as the Spiral Tree for certain non-acroporid species and the Mega Tree for larger adult non-acroporid corals.
Duke RESTORE’s coral team members then joined CRF to conduct reef surveys at Tavernier Reef as well as Carysfort Reef, which is a Sanctuary Preservation Area within the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary. The team also helped CRF identify the state of corals as healthy, diseased, bleached, or dead utilizing common coral monitoring techniques.
After diving with the CRF, the group visited Mote Marine Laboratory & Aquarium’s Key Largo coral nursery, the only land-based coral nursery in Key Largo, which is capable of housing 20,000 coral fragments. At the nursery, students learned about the lab’s pioneering microfragmentation technique for corals that accelerates coral growth. This process involves cutting colonies into smaller pieces with a specialized diamond-bladed saw, then mounting them on small ceramic pedestals to grow in the land-based nursery until they are ready to be outplanted.
For their final stop, the Coral Team visited the University of Miami’s Rosenstiel School of Marine, Atmospheric, and Earth Science. From the spawning lab to the land-based coral nursery facility, the team explored the Coral Reef Futures Lab’s cutting-edge coral laboratories and research initiatives.
Lilianna Gross, the Duke RESTORE Coral Team 1st Year Lead, reflects on this experience: “This trip marked a huge milestone for our team! Working alongside organizations like the Coral Restoration Foundation and visiting leading research labs gave our team direct exposure to the people and technologies shaping the future of coral restoration, and getting hands-on field experience together set the foundation for everything we hope to build moving forward.”
This transformative spring break trip provided Duke RESTORE Coral Team students a unique opportunity to connect in-class learning with real-world experiences, helping them better understand coral reef ecosystems, the urgent problems they face, and current restoration efforts in South Florida.
