Facilities

Land-Based Coral Nursery 

     
   The CRFL's Land-Based Coral Nursery is an outdoor coral aquaculture facility located in the University of Miami's Experimental Hatchery, just across the Rickenbacker Causeway from the Rosenstiel School of Marine, Atmosphere, and Earth Sciences. It was established due to a need for additional space to care for a growing number of coral colonies and propagated fragments. It has four distinct areas of operation, each containing various aquarium systems best suited for specific coral sizes dependent on whether they are fragments, colonies, or recently settled coral babies. The land-based coral nursery houses 4,281 coral fragments, and colonies of 19 different species! 

  Our shadehouse area is home to the recently installed larval development systems. It also serves as the rearing area for coral recruits (recently settled polyps) and also contains the nursery quarantine tanks as well. These tanks are more ideal for coral fragments, and small to medium sized colonies. Larger aquariums are preferred for the holding of large colonies and coral fragments. 

    During the 2023 marine heatwave that led to a massive bleaching event across Florida's reef tract, the Land-Based Coral Nursery was used to rescue and hold onto Acropora colonies from in-situ coral nurseries off of Miami's coast. The land-based nursery was a crucial resource for rescuing coral from record-breaking seawater temperatures. These coral spawned while they were being held at the land-based coral nursery and our team was able to collect the spawn for breeding in hopes of repopulating Florida's reefs and retaining genotypes.

Spawning Lab 

    The CRFL Spawning Lab is an indoor research space with three independent 200-gallon aquarium systems designed to induce coral reproduction in captivity via the recreation of environmental cues (solar, lunar, temperature). One of the aquariums contains Floridian reef building coral species such as Acropora cervicornis (Staghorn Coral) and Diploria labyrinthiformis (Grooved Brain Coral). Another of the spawning tanks contains only coral from the Cayman Islands, including Dendrogyra cylindrus or Pillar Coral. The third tank contains only coral collected from Honduras. The purpose of this lab is to stimulate and coordinate land-based spawning events in these tanks by recreating lighting cues that coral reproduction is dependent on.

     Water quality is monitored frequently via the testing of parameters such as temperature, salinity, calcium, alkalinity, magnesium, phosphate and other nutrient levels. The tank lights in the Spawning Lab are programmed by input of annual solar and lunar cycles, via a software that allows for creation and manipulation of seasonal schedules to mimic the intensity and wavelength of the sun and moonlight. Coral reproduce once a year via spawning, where egg and sperm gametes are released into the water column by each colony. This occurs at a different time for each coral species, yet corals of the same species are synchronised with the solar and lunar cycles and manage to coordinate spawning on the same night, at the same time, once per year! Due to the predictable nature of spawning events, coral scientists know when spawning should occur and can utilize this reproductive event to cross gametes of heat or disease resistant coral in hopes of breeding more coral with these genetic characteristics. 

Wet Lab 

    The Coral Reef Futures Lab's Wet Lab is an indoor laboratory where research by director Andrew Baker and his team first began. The Wet Lab can be found on University of Miami's Virginia Key campus, alongside other University of Miami coral labs.

 Inside, it contains 16 aquariums with ongoing research experiments regarding coral's stress resistance, thermal tolerance, symbiont composition, etc. Recently, the Wet Lab underwent a renovation beginning in Spring 2024, led by facilities manager Cameron McMath. This renovation allows for the use of a recirculating aquarium system, moving away from the prior method of "flow-through" operation.