This spring, Olivia successfully passed her thesis proposal seminar and paper. Her research focuses on understanding the impacts of multiple environmental stressors on coral reefs, specifically focusing on future ocean conditions. She will be studying how thermal stress and disease impact Montastraea cavernosa, commonly known as the Great Star Coral, in Southeast Florida. She will determine the bleaching threshold for this species, as well as monitor coral fragments’ responses to simultaneous thermal stress and stony coral tissue loss disease (SCTLD). She is excited to begin her experiments this summer. Her work will provide management recommendations to the Florida Department of Environmental Protection (FDEP). This research will also provide thermal tolerance data for boulder corals in this region, which has not yet been described.

Olivia also participated in the Florida Atlantic University 3 Minute Thesis (3MT) competition this spring, taking first place in her heat in the preliminary round. 3MT was started at the University of Queensland in 2008, when a drought caused Australian citizens to take 3 minute showers. The competition focuses on presenting one’s 20,000 word thesis in just 3 minutes or less. Participants must use language that a general audience can understand, hitting on the researcher’s methods, results, and broader significance. Olivia presented her proposed thesis research studying coral responses to thermal stress and disease. She was awarded the $1000 scholarship prize. Olivia is excited to continue her research and pursue more opportunities present her findings in the future!

We are excited to announce the publication of our lab’s new manuscript, titled “Assessment of Nutrient Amendments on Stony Coral Tissue Loss Disease in Southeast Florida.” This study utilized an in situ experimental design to simulate the effects of urban and agricultural runoff by applying fertilizer amendments to Montastraea cavernosa coral colonies affected by SCTLD. Our study revealed that nutrient amendments do not influence the progression or prevalence of SCTLD on M. cavernosa colonies or the reef  within Southeast Florida during the disease enzootic phase. The manuscript delves into the obstacles faced while conducting an in situ disease study and explores the unknown effects of environmental factors, specifically water quality, on the severity of SCTLD. 
 
This publication is particularly special as it marks Ashley Carreiro’s first first-author manuscript following the publication of her master’s thesis. We are proud of Ashley’s hard work and this significant accomplishment and milestone. This work would not have been possible without the collaboration with Brian Walker’s lab at NSU for field work support and Ian Combs at Mote in Summerland Key for 3D model processing. This research was also made possible through funding support through awards from the Florida Department of Environmental Protection and scholarships awarded to Ashley from the AAUS Foundation and PADI Foundation. We would like to thank our collaborators and we encourage you to give this paper a read!

We recently published the manuscript “Cryptic diversity of shallow and mesophotic Stephanocoenia intersepta corals across Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary." The study uncovered four distinct, cryptic genetic lineages and highlights the importance of including both mesophotic and shallow corals in population genetic assessments to better inform management, conservation, and restoration efforts within the Sanctuary. For an area that has recently experienced dramatic impacts to its coral ecosystems as a result of bleaching and disease, the prospect of mesophotic corals potentially reseeding or restoring shallow populations provides welcome hope. 

The work was featured on the September cover of Heredity, the official journal of the Genetics Society. This research comprises a chapter of Ryan Eckert's PhD dissertation and was supported by grants to Josh from NOAA Ocean Exploration and NOAA National Centers for Coastal Ocean Science (NCCOS). We thank all the participants of the 2019 FAU Harbor Branch CIOERT Florida Keys Expedition and the crew of R/V F.G. WALTON SMITH. 

Members of the FAU Harbor Branch Voss Lab and closed circuit rebreather Technical Dive Team, Joshua Voss, Ashley Carreiro, and Allison Klein, recently completed their first scientific expedition for the Mesophotic and Deep Benthic Communities (MDBC) restoration portfolio. The primary objective of the MDBC portfolio is to restore critical mesophotic and deep-water coral reef habitats impacted by the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. The work  encompasses restoration of affected coral habitats through coral propagation, mapping, habitat modeling/characterization, and comprehensive assessment to enhance our understanding of these largely unexplored ecosystems. This is an extremely collaborative effort involving multiple NOAA line offices, the Department of the Interior, several academic institutions, and other organizations.  The collective team brings together scientists and technical divers with several decades of experience in Gulf of Mexico coral reef research and management.

During the May 2024 cruise aboard the NOAA ship Nancy Foster, we worked alongside the fantastic ship crew and our colleagues from NOAA (Chief Scientist Chris Gardner, Dave Witting, Scott Mau, Amanda Bird, Michael Kent, Caroline Jahn), Moody Gardens (Jake Emmert and Chris Ledford), and URI (Carlos Prada and Sophia Melville), and dive medical officer Greg Barefoot. Together we were able to prioritize scientific tasks, optimize our operational success, and ensure stringent safety protocols throughout the eight-day expedition. Key accomplishments from this mission include the successful collection of octocoral and stony coral samples for population genetics, reproductive analyses, and ex situ husbandry, documenting growth on previously deployed settlement and octocoral propagation racks, and detailed mapping of the benthic habitats.

This tech diving cruise represents a crucial milestone in this multifaceted, multi-year project aimed at advancing scientific knowledge and conservation strategies to restore and preserve mesophotic coral ecosystems in the Gulf of Mexico. We look forward to continued collaboration and more successful cruises with this fantastic team!  

​Congratulations to master’s student Gabby Pantoni on her recent successful thesis defense and graduation from the FAU biology program!
 
Gabby successfully defended her master’s thesis this past spring. Her research focused on survival and growth analyses of corals outplanted as part the collaborative Restoration Team Trials study on two reefs within the northern portion of Florida’s Coral Reef tract. After two years of monitoring, she found that corals outplanted in both Palm Beach and St. Lucie Reef exhibited high survival and low incidence of Stony Coral Tissue Loss Disease (SCTLD). As a result, we can now recommend that restoration efforts using Montastraea cavernosa, Pseudodiploria clivosa, and Orbicella faveolata can continue in this region with little SCTLD impact. Following the successful results of this study, Gabby was awarded an Indian River Lagoon Graduate Research Fellowship to conduct an additional coral transplanting study to expand coral restoration on St. Lucie Reef. Using corals from an artificial tire reef in Ft. Lauderdale that were transplanted in February 2024, she plans to assess how initial coral outplant size impacts outplant growth and survival over time for three species: Montastraea cavernosa, Stephanocoenia intersepta, and Siderastrea siderea. Following graduation, Gabby has transitioned to a research technician role where she will continue her many contributions to the lab's research projects, including serving as the lead for the St. Lucie Reef transplant study.

Allie Klein was recently awarded the 2023 Zale Parry Scholarship through Academy of Underwater Arts and Sciences. Zale Parry began diving in 1951 and quickly became a role model and icon for women divers everywhere by setting a women’s depth record to 209 feet in 1954. Zale has been a pioneer in women diving, dive photography, dive equipment testing, and hyperbaric chamber operation. This scholarship is awarded to a graduate student whose research focus aligns with a diving field of study. The award included funds for Allie to travel to New Orleans this past November to attend the NOGI Gala where she accepted the award from Bonnie Toth (photographed), on behalf of Zale.
Allie is in the second year of her doctoral degree here at Harbor Branch where her dissertation research will investigate the sources and extent of climate tolerance in corals and if transplantation of resilient corals to nearby climate refugia is a viable conservation strategy. Allie’s dissertation research is part of a collaboration with the ToBo Lab and Coral Resilience Lab from the University of Hawaii’s Hawaii Institute of Marine Biology (HIMB) where the group aims to identify thermally resilient coral candidates best suited for large scale outplanting.
Earlier in 2023, Allie was also awarded second place for the American Academy of Underwater Sciences(AAUS) doctoral level scholarship and the Women Diver’s Hall of Fame Technical Dive Training Grant. Allie plans to use these scholarships to help fund her research as well as her advancement as a scientific diver. A portion of the funds has been allocated to the RNA extraction and sequencing for downstream gene expression analysis of thermally resilient corals. The remaining funds will go toward advanced technical dive training, as Allie becomes a key member of our Lab’s mesophotic dive team and help support Allie as she travels to academic conferences where she will share her dissertation work and the importance of dive related research.
 

​Josh, Ryan, and Ashley have just returned from another technical diving research expedition in the Cayman Islands aboard the Cayman Aggressor IV. This expedition, led by Dr. Gretchen Goodbody and supported by the Darwin Plus Initiative through the UK Department of Food, Environment, and Rural Affairs, was an exciting venture from start to finish. While the original plan was to collect data and samples from Pickle Bank, unforeseen weather challenges forced the team to adapt quickly and develop a backup plan for the week. 
 
The team shifted focus to collect samples and data from 12 Mile Bank using both technical open-circuit and closed-circuit rebreather divers. The Central Caribbean Marine Institute's (CCMI) open-circuit tech team collected water and sediment samples for eDNA analysis, while their rebreather team created photomosaics and conducted additional fish surveys with Josh's help to comprehensively characterize the bank’s ecosystem. These in-water data were complemented by bathymetric mapping data generated by the excellent team from the University of Delaware Coastal Sediments, Hydrodynamics, and Engineering Lab. 
 
Josh, Ryan, and Ashley focused their efforts principally on collecting coral samples to contribute to the lab’s ongoing population genetic connectivity studies. Our team successfully collected 35 samples of each target species: Montastraea cavernosa, Porites astreoides, and Stephanocoenia intersepta. Our intention was also to collect barrel sponge samples of the species, Xestospongia muta, but we were surprised to find this species absent from our dive locations on 12 Mile Bank. These samples were transported back to Harbor Branch, where our lab will work to extract, clean, amplify, and sequence them to further evaluate the genetic connectivity across the wider Caribbean and Tropical Western Atlantic. 
 
The success of this research expedition would not have been possible without the collaborative efforts of various organizations, including CCMI, the Cayman Islands Department of Environment, the Guy Harvey Ocean Foundation, and the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute. Working with a diverse scientific team was amazing, uniting experts with a common goal of advancing our understanding of these underwater ecosystems. The data and samples collected during this expedition will play a vital role in shaping future management guidelines for this bank.

We are immensely grateful for the opportunity to work and dive with our friends at CCMI. Our team looks forward returning to Grand Cayman and Little Cayman to collect additional samples for our genetic connectivity analyses in the coming months.

For highlights from the expedition, a curated photo album can be found at our Flickr!

The Voss Lab at FAU Harbor Branch recently returned once again to the Flower Garden Banks National Marine Sanctuary for our 14th expedition to date in the region. The primary goal of this mission was to complete the final technical diving cruise of the Connectivity of Coral Ecosystems in the Northwest Gulf of Mexico (CYCLE) project. Funded through the NOAA’s National Center for Coastal Ocean Science (NCCOS) and Ocean Exploration and Research (OER), CYCLE is a collaboration among Lehigh University, FAU Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute, Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History, Georgia Tech, NOAA Fisheries, and NOAA Sanctuaries. The overall goal of CYCLE is to investigate and elucidate the ecological connectivity of coral, sponge, and fish species among shallow and mesophotic coral ecosystems across FGBNMS, including banks in the recent sanctuary expansion areas. 

For the CYCLE project, our lab has focused on evaluating genetic connectivity among three stony coral species (Montastraea cavernosa, Stephanocoenia intersepta, and Orbicella faveolata) and the giant barrel sponge (Xestospongia muta) within FGBNMS and across the Tropical Western Atlantic. The data and information generated by our efforts is important for understanding how these foundational species spread and repopulate banks within the Sanctuary. Our findings will be used to help develop effective management strategies that conserve the vital coral reef and fisheries resources in the now expanded FGBNMS.  This study will also comprise a large portion of Ryan Eckert’s dissertation research and builds on previous efforts by our team (Sturm et al. in review, Studivan et al. 2018, Garavelli et al. 2018).

Over the course of 5 days at sea aboard the RV Manta, we collected 219 coral and sponge biopsy tissue samples from Geyer Bank, East Bank, and West Bank. DNA from these samples will be extracted, cleaned, amplified, tagged, and sequenced for detailed genetic connectivity analyses. In addition, as part of Erin Shilling’s dissertation research at Texas State University, 30 coral fragments were collected for analyses of immune system activity and future challenge experiments to determine if 3 coral species (M. cavernosa, Pseudodiploria strigosa, Porites astreoides) at FGBNMS are susceptible to Stony Coral Tissue Loss Disease.  

Our dive team included technical trimix closed-circuit rebreather (CCR) divers (Joshua Voss, Ryan Eckert, and Ashley Carreiro), air diluent CCR divers (Jake Emmert and Allison Klein), and open circuit nitrox divers (Gabby Pantoni, Haley Davis, Sydney Bell, and Erin Shilling). Malachy McCaffrey served as our dedicated sample processor and assisted in back deck operations. Our team safely completed 15 CCR dive rotations, including 9 with trimix to 160’-200’, and a total of 69 person dives.  

For 5 of the grad students/early career researchers aboard, this was their first opportunity to participate in an extended offshore research-focused expedition. FAU Harbor Branch master’s student Gabby Pantoni remarked “I was surprised by such high coral cover at East and West banks. Experiencing these healthy and dynamic reefs reinforced the importance of creating marine sanctuaries and gives me hope for the future of coral reef conservation and research.” Three members of the team were inspired during the mission to advance their technical diving skills. “This cruise made me even more excited to complete my trimix training so that I’ll be able to experience the mesophotic reefs in the Flower Gardens first-hand” said PhD student Allison Klein.

​As always, we owe special thanks to the crew of the RV Manta, to Jake Emmert at Moody Gardens for assisting us during the cruise and arranging diving gas delivery, and to Marissa Nuttall, Michelle Johnston, Kait Brogan, and G.P. Schmahl at FGBNMS for supporting and facilitating this research.  

Visit our Flickr to check out highlights from the cruise!

We are very proud to announce that both Sydney Bell and Haley Davis successfully defended their theses and graduated with their master's degrees from FAU's biology program this May! 

Sydney's research focused on coral genomic and algal symbiont analyses for the corals used in our collaborative Restoration Team Trials project.  As part of Florida’s largest coral restoration experiment to date, Sydney used high-resolution 2bRAD and ITS2 sequencing to genotype the corals and characterize their in algal symbiont communities. She found that neither host genetic lineages nor algal symbiont types significantly affected coral outplants' susceptibility Stony Coral Tissue Loss Disease (SCTLD) or survival, negating the hypothesis of SCTLD-resistant “super coral” lineages.  Coupled with the monitoring results of this project, we can now recommend that efforts to restore Montastraea cavernosa, Orbicella faveolata, and Pseudodiploria clivosa can move forward in south Florida with minimal risk of loss to SCTLD at this time. She recently was awarded a scholarship by the Women Divers Hall of Fame (WDHOF) to advance her diving and photography skills. After continuing her research in the Voss lab for the first half of the summer, Sydney will be off to pursue her PhD in Dr. Kate Quigley's lab at James Cook University in Australia.

​Haley's thesis research evaluated the hyposalinity tolerance thresholds of two prominent stony corals in Southeast Florida. In a series of experiments, she determined that Montastraea cavernosa have an LC50 of 19 PSU but can survive for at least 21 days at an intermediately stressful salinity of 25 PSU. Porites astreoides on the other hand demonstrated an LC50 of 19 PSU, but experienced mortality when exposed to 25 PSU for 17–18 days. Her results suggest that lower-volume, longer-duration releases of freshwater from reservoirs may help to preserve coral health in Southeast Florida. Haley received multiple awards for presenting her thesis research in FAU's 3 Minute Thesis competition. She was also awarded the Dritenbas Fellowship from Sunrise Rotary, an Indian River Lagoon Fellowship from the HBOI Foundation, and a WDHOF scholarship for advance dive training.  She has accepted an exciting new research associate position with our collaborator Dr. Gretchen Goodbody at the Central Caribbean Marine Institute in Cayman.

Congratulations Haley and Sydney! We look forward to many years of collaboration and wish you much success in your futures!

Keep up to date with Haley @Addi_venture and Sydney @motherofcorals on Twitter




   

Joshua Voss, Ryan Eckert, Lexie Sturm, and Ashley Carreiro had an engaging and stimulating week with colleagues at the recent 2023 Mesophotic Coral Ecosystems Gordon Research Conference in Ventura, California.  This conference brings together the world's leaders in mesophotic research for a week of exchanging ideas and pushing the limits of the field. Josh presented in the Connectivity session and served as the discussion leader for the Disturbances session as well. Ryan, Lexie, and Ashley gave oral presentations in the early career focused Gordon Research Symposium as well as poster presentations in broader GRC.  We are very proud to announce that Ryan was awarded Best Overall Student Presentation for the conference, receiving a beautiful Shearwater Teric dive computer in recognition of his achievement. 

We are incredibly grateful to all our colleagues for such an outstanding event, particularly conference chair Marc Slattery from Ole Miss, and vice-chairs Tyler Smith from University of the Virgin Islands, and Heather Spalding from College of Charleston.  Ryan was elected to co-chair the next Mesophotic GRS, and Josh will rotate into the roles of vice-chair and then chair over the next two Mesophotic GRC cycles along with friend and colleague Gretchen Goodbody at the Central Caribbean Marine Institute.