Exploring Marine Ecosystems and Native Plants: Insights from Coral Reefs to Backyard Gardens
Last February, I wrote about CRF's Citizen Science program and now, almost a year later I had the chance to try out some citizen science and help monitor the coral out-planted by CRF. Our last dive over Christmas was to Pickles Reef - the southernmost location in the north cluster of sites listed on the… Continue reading Citizen Science with CRF
Five years after I first learned about CRF and their volunteer & dive programs, I was finally able to join them for a dive! The morning session was great - we learned about the economic and environmental cost of losing coral reefs as well as CRF restoration methods and techniques. There was a good deal… Continue reading Diving with The Coral Restoration Foundation (CRF)
I got my Padi Advanced Open Water certification over the weekend! Overall, it was a great experience! I feel more confident in the water and I finally have over 30 dives! I've been trying to hit that goal for a while now and it's exciting to finally be able to check that off the list ... now I just need to move to South Florida.... But the MOST exciting thing I want to share here is that we finally brought our underwater camera with us scuba diving.
Not long after I got certified to scuba dive, I learned about the Coral Restoration Foundation. CRF is a really exciting and amazing organization dedicated to "actively restoring coral reefs on a massive scale, educating others on the importance of our oceans, and using science to further coral research and coral reef monitoring techniques." While… Continue reading Citizen Science with Coral Restoration Foundation
I was deep in a research rabbit hole because I had read that there are some concerns around the idea of coral restoration through nurseries alone. The nurseries often rely on coral organism’s’ ability to reproduce through cloning. A single fragment off of a larger coral can be replanted where it will grow into a new coral individual that is genetically identical to the original coral. If a majority of coral is being raised in nurseries and out-planted from only a few genetic strains, coral populations lose genetic diversity causes all sorts of problems. All this had me wondering, how do coral reproduce?
Erica Lauer Vose 