October 2022

Join us October 29th at Florida Keys Brewing Co. for the best Halloween party in Islamorada! We’re raising cash for corals with a raffle, costume contest, live music, and more! Come try your luck to win and have a beer to support I.CARE!

September 8th
Disturbance Response Monitoring
@ Key Dives

Each year, we contribute to Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission’s annual DRM survey database. These surveys are performed at randomly selected sites all throughout the Keys to document the health of our native corals, the spread of disease, bleaching, overgrowth, and the presence of important herbivores like long spined urchins. The I.CARE team surveyed all four of our restoration sites and had fun doing it!

September 11th
REEF’s Lionfish Derby
@ Postcard Inn and Marina

The I.CARE team had a great time sharing information about our outplanting dives and education programs with the teams from REEF’s lionfish derby!

We also loved sampling all of the delicious, sustainably sourced lionfish cooked up by the staff at Postcard!

September 18th
Trash Trek
@ Key Dives

I.CARE partner Key Dives hosts monthly Trash Trek dives, a triple tank expedition to remove marine debris from our local reefs. I.CARE representatives come out on all of Key Dives’ debris dives to ensure that no coral or sponges are brought up with the trashy treasures.

Stay tuned for updates on the development of Key Dives and I.CARE’s first annual Trash Derby, coming in May of 2023!

September 25th
Storm Strapping
@ Islamorada Reefs

We spent last week preparing for Hurricane Ian’s landfall and the winds he brought with him. With the help of our team of locals, we spent time securing any loose fragments with epoxy, zip-ties, and elbow grease! We’ll be checking in on all of our sites this Saturday to see how they weathered the storm.

Help us make a difference on our reefs.

DONATE NOW!

UPCOMING EVENTS

October Volunteer Maintenance and Monitoring:
Take your transplant experience deeper!

7th│@ Key Dives
14th│@ Islamorada Dive Center
21st│@ Key Dives
28th│@ Islamorada Dive Center

October Transplanting Schedule:
Come transplant corals with us!

8th│@ Key Dives
15th│@ Conch Republic Divers
16th│@ Key Dives
22nd | @ Key Dives

Join us to take part in restoring our local coral reefs!

Outplanting days are fun-filled with education, training and, of course, diving! The day begins at 8:30AM at Bud N’ Mary’s Marina in Islamorada with an educational presentation about corals followed by a hands-on mock demonstration that will prepare you for outplanting corals on the reef. That afternoon you will make two dives with our team to help us transplant coral, monitor and maintain the reef, and help remove snails and algae from our sites.

Local of the Month:

This month we’d like to give a huge thank you to the incredible, Karin Fuhrimann! Karin has always been extremely enthusiastic about restoring our reefs and keeping our corals healthy. Since her first I.CARE trip she has been diving with us almost every month, learning more about our corals and helping us maintain and monitor all our outplants. Thank you, Karin, for all your help these last few months, we can’t wait to see you again soon!

Every year as hurricane season draws to a middle, hundreds of scientists all along the Florida Reef Tract (FRT) head out to sea to spend hours hovering, masks inches from the bottom, above the ocean floor. We are doing this a) because it’s the sort of thing we find enjoyable and b) to monitor the health of the corals that make up our reefs.

The FRT runs over 300 miles from Martin County on the Atlantic coast to the Dry Tortugas in the Gulf of Mexico, forming the third largest barrier reef in the world and providing a slew of benefits, food, and protection for the humans and wildlife that reside on and near it. Unfortunately, these reefs are increasingly stressed by warming waters, coastal development, and water quality. Understanding what is happening to the natural reefs and corals is vital as we introduce new corals as part of our restoration efforts.

The Disturbance Response Monitoring (DRM) program was developed by the Florida Reef Resilience Program in response to increased stress and continued decline of corals on the FRT. A collaborative effort involving governmental agencies, universities, and non-profit organizations, the DRM program allows for wide inputs and transparency between organizations to best inform responses to coral threats.

DRM surveys are conducted from August to October each year, timed to capture the effects of bleaching as water temperatures hit their annual peak. Site selection is done by randomly sampling areas along the FRT that have been identified as suitable coral habitat.

At these sites, four 1×10 meter transects are laid out and stony corals are measured, assessed for bleaching, disease, and other conditions. Along two of the transects we record all corals found (around 50 species known to be present in Florida) while on the other two we just look for 10 species that are known to be highly susceptible to stony coral tissue loss disease (SCTLD).

If you have been out on Key Dives’ or Islamorada Dive Center’s boats in the past few weeks you may have seen us conducting these surveys with transect tapes, cameras, and clipboards dangling from our BCDs.

I.CARE began contributing to the DRM program in 2021, initially focusing on our four restoration sites. In our second year, we have branched out to opportunistically survey other popular dive sites in Islamorada.

Conducting these surveys contributes to the conservation community’s knowledge of the FRT as a whole and adds to our team’s reef savvy; by scouring the reef for the smallest coral colonies, you begin to notice more corals and reef inhabitants that you may overlook entirely on a normal dive.

For further information about the DRM program check out FWC’s website here: https://myfwc.com/research/habitat/coral/drm/.

And for some light post-storm reading you can find last year’s report here: https://ocean.floridamarine.org/FRRP/TrainingDocs/2021%20DRM%20Summer%20Quick%20Look%20Report.pdf

A very crabby hello to everyone who made it this far in the newsletter. Today, I am very excited to be writing some updates on our crab project!

To recap, I.CARE has partnered with Dr. Jason Spadaro and other scientists at Mote Marine Laboratory to collect and rear Caribbean King Crabs (Mithrax spinosissimus) in captivity. Our plan is to eventually introduce large numbers of these crabs to our outplanting sites to help take care of algae overgrowth that we have been seeing. Caribbean King Crabs are voracious herbivores, and it has been found that inflating their numbers on small patch reefs has a significant impact on algal cover.

This project began a little over a year ago, and in that time we have successfully collected, bred, and reared crabs to outplanting size. Today, I’m happy to say that we are moving forward with the permitting process to get these crabs onto our reefs! Mote’s scientists have been working directly with FWC to develop a protocol for checking each crab before transplanting them.

We expect these protocols to be finished by early next year, with the hope that we can begin crab transplants in March 2023.

Over the next month, we will survey the sites where we want to introduce the crabs. This will involve conducting night surveys of invertebrate abundance at each site, with a particular focus on the nocturnal Caribbean King Crab populations. It’s likely to be an active couple of months as we get this project on its feet. We will be back with more updates soon!

Best pinches,

Riley