CITIZEN SCIENCE
& RESEARCH COLLABORATIONS
Help us determine the success of our mission
Observations you make on recreational scuba dives can help inform our techniques when you become a Coral Restoration Foundation™ Citizen Scientist.
Collaborations with graduate researchers extend the breadth of the data we collect. We welcome applications from potential new partners.
Using the fun, easy-to-use smartphone app, OkCoral, you can use your recreational dives on our restoration sites along the Florida Reef Tract to help us answer vital questions about the health and survivorship of our coral outplants.
This data will make a significant contribution to the success of our mission!
Your data will help us begin to answer things like “which reef habitat has greater coral survivorship?” or “are there differences in genotype performances?” and many other questions.
Coral Restoration Foundation™ Citizen Scientists can be snorkelers or divers.
All you need is a smartphone* and a way of recording data or taking pictures underwater!
CITIZEN SCIENCE
Our restoration sites are also beautiful recreational dive sites!
When you dive on our OkCoral!outplanting sites, you can easily collect and send us important data, when you become a Coral Restoration Foundation Citizen Scientist – all you need is a smartphone and our revolutionary new app,
We are currently working to fully-restore eight reef sites along the Florida Reef Tract.
PLAY THE GAME
OkCoral quickly brings you up to speed using three intuitive swipe-based games.
These games will train you to:
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Identify the differences between staghorn and elkhorn
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Spot the difference between living and dead corals
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Identify corals that have grown together and fused, and those that haven’t
You can see how easy and intuitive OkCoral is to use, by scrolling through the gallery below...
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READY TO GO!
Once you’ve passed all three games, you don’t need any more special training; you will be ready to head out and start gathering data for us!
SEND US DATA
OkCoral will teach you exactly how to find the data we need – the app guides you through the process, step-by-step.
This information you will send to us includes:
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Your name
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The reef name
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The mooring ball number
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The date
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Whether the corals are dead or alive and fused or not fused
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The corals’ cluster number and genotype ID
You can submit this data in the form of photos, by recording information on a slate, or even directly into the app if you have an underwater housing for your phone!
If you're sending pictures, OkCoral connects directly to your phone’s picture gallery and prompts you to submit the information that needs to accompany each one.
You then send it all to us through the OkCoral interface.
IT'S EASIER THAN IT SOUNDS!
Some of this might sound complicated, but it really isn’t.
The genotype and cluster numbers are included on the tags we attach to each coral cluster that we plant on the reefs. All you need to do is find them.
You can then enter this information directly to the app, or you can write it on a slate and enter it into OkCoral later. OR, you just can take a photo of the cluster and its tags, and send them to us through the app!
*OkCoral is currently only available for iOS devices. This is just the beginning, though, and we hope to bring out a version for Android very soon!
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GRADUATE RESEARCH PROJECTS
Collaborations with graduate and post-graduate students are mutually beneficial partnerships; our infrastructure supports their research, and in turn Coral Restoration Foundation™ gains valuable data and insight.
Our current graduate research collaborations are listed below.
Contact us if you would like to work with Coral Restoration Foundation™ on a research project.
Cody Bliss
Translocation of A. cervicornis to coral nurseries of differing geographic regions in south Florida
Cody is currently earning his graduate degree from NSU in Marine Biology and Coastal Zone Management. He is studying how coral fragments of staghorn coral grow in two geographically separated coral nurseries in southeast Florida. A reciprocal transport experiment was conducted using fragments from the NSU Coral Reef Restoration Assessment and Monitoring coral nursery located in Fort Lauderdale (Broward County) and CRF’s nursery in Tavernier (Monroe County). The primary objective of this on-going research is to determine if staghorn fragments derived from different geographic regions can survive at multiple locations on the reef tract. Measurements used in the experiment include growth rates and zooxanthellae densities (the single-celled algae that live inside coral tissues).
THE CORAL CHRONICLES
Follow our mission as it evolves, with news that comes straight from the heart of the
Coral Restoration Foundation™!