Coral Restoration Foundation

 Martin Andreas Moe, Jr. (aka Skip)

is now a young man in his early 70s and has spent virtually his entire adult life, like 50 years, working with the marine life of Florida waters. He has been a fishery biologist, an ichthyologist, a marine biologist, a pioneering marine fish aquaculturist, has authored numerous scientific and popular articles, and has written six books on marine and aquarium topics. His work and interests have included a basic work on the biology of the red grouper, spiny lobster reproduction, the breeding of clownfish, angelfish, and other marine fish, marine aquarium technology, and many other topics, arts, and skills associated with the study of marine life.
Wanting to once again live near the sea, Martin and his wife Barbara moved back to the Florida Keys in 1999. His intent was to build a bigger and better marine experimental hatchery laboratory and work on fish culture. Well, you know how "The best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry” and so it was. The decline of the coral reefs of the Keys was a very tragic and sad event and he wished that there was something that could be done about it.

Through work with the Sanctuary Advisory Council, he became reacquainted with an old friend, Ken Nedimyer, who was of like mind. During long discussions they found that they were heading in the same direction, but from different starting points. Ken, a thoughtful marine biologist with literally years of underwater experience collecting marine life for aquariums, and Martin, with years of experience in marine science and aquaculture soon honed in on the loss of the keystone herbivore, the long-spined sea urchin of the coral reefs, Diadema antillarum, as one of the major tipping points in the early days of coral reef decline. A great plague, unprecedented in marine history, had occurred in 1983 and affected only this species and destroyed 96 to 99 percent of all the billions of these urchins that lived on coral reefs from the reefs of the Caribbean all the way north to Bermuda. It was the Diadema that grazed algae from the reefs and maintained the clean rock substrates that allowed corals, Diadema and other invertebrates to settle and grow and maintained the ecological balance of a healthy coral reef.

Both of these marine biologists with different backgrounds but the same interests began to work together to explore what would happen if Diadema could be returned to the coral reefs of the Florida Keys. The result of this collaboration was a study funded in part by the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary (results available on the FKNMS website) and conducted by Ken and Martin with assistance from the National Underwater Research Center in 2001 to 2003. As was expected, the project demonstrated that the presence of Diadema in ecologically functional numbers reduced algae and enhanced coral growth on the experimental reefs whereas the control reefs continued to decline under increasing algae growth. Limited time and funding could not carry the project beyond this first year but the importance of Diadema to the recovery of Florida coral reefs was established.

Ken’s work with coral propagation and reestablishment of the principal reef building staghorn and elkhorn corals began during this project and the seeds for the development of the Coral Restoration Foundation were sown. Martin, on the other hand, put marine fish culture on the back burner and with some financial help from Mote Marine Laboratory, took on the task of developing the technology for the mass culture of Diadema so that large numbers of this keystone herbivore could be made available for coral reef restoration research and reestablishment projects. It is anticipated that blending of these two research initiatives, coral culture and restoration and Diadema culture and restoration will eventually result in the reestablishment of a healthy coral reef ecology that will give out coral reefs their best chance to survive the challenging years that lie ahead.

Thus Martin’s fish culture intentions gave way to the most interesting and difficult, and complex, culture project of his career. He soon discovered why, despite considerable effort over the last 30 years, this species had never been reared in mass culture. It took five years of great effort to finally develop the culture vessels and techniques that will allow for the mass culture of this species. Great advances have been made over this time; thousands of larvae can now be cultured for the 40 days of larval growth, brought through the time of settlement and metamorphosis, and into the early juvenile stage. The final step of development through the first days after metamorphosis has yet to be accomplished. This is the period when the early juvenile is forming the organs and structures that will allow it to feed and grow. The end is in sight, however, and hopefully soon the final steps of blending coral restoration with ecological restoration will be possible.