Training the Next Generation of Reef Restoration Practitioners

Given the emerging and complex environmental issues facing Florida’s Coral Reef, there is a growing need for coral scientists and reef restoration practitioners. The future of coral reefs will require a community of well-rounded, highly trained scientists with a breadth of knowledge and practical skills to help understand, conserve, and restore them. This project aimed to address that by identifying, training, and deploying the next generation of reef restoration practitioners through the Southeast Florida Coral Reef Restoration Hub. The “Restoration Hub” is a consortium of partners and principal investigators across Florida that came together through Florida DEP funding in 2019 by combining research, education, and coral propagation and restoration activities into a coordinated restoration program for Miami-Dade and Broward Counties. To integrate our activities, we introduced a crosscutting restoration traineeship program where undergraduate and graduate students from the University of Miami (UM) completed internships hosted by the various Restoration Hub partners and worked collaboratively across institutions. While the specific project outcomes vary year-to-year, the final outcomes of the project are available immediately upon completion of the research to managers and practitioners and help guide and inform future restoration practices in Florida and elsewhere. This year’s Restoration Hub program included 7 different partners across 6 institutions; Diego Lirman’s Coral Restoration Lab at the UM, Andrew Baker’s Coral Reef Futures Lab at UM, Brian Walker’s GIS Spatial Ecology Lab at Nova Southeastern University, Margaret Miller with SECORE International, Shannon Jones with the Phillip and Patricia Frost Museum of Science, Josh Patterson’s Patterson Lab at the University of Florida, and Mark Ladd’s Coral Research and Assessment Lab at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. These partners and principal investigators supported a total of 6 undergraduate student interns; Joseph Curcio, Rebekka Koop, Madison Praxl, Stella Bilder, Massima Ponce, and Lily Moore as well as 10 graduate student interns; Cristina Lingvay, Alexandra Howard, Muxin Jiang, Joshua Yang, Alec Danko, Lily Bingham, Sierra Tompkins, Danielle Tengberg, Jacqueline Squires-Sperling, and Lucy Ehrenclou. The internships provided meaningful, real-world professional development opportunities for young scientists while simultaneously advancing coral research and active reef restoration through their independent projects and internship contributions. This traineeship program also helped strengthen and expand collaborations between leading institutions and organizations in the fields of coral conservation, research, and restoration through the Restoration Hub. To date, this program has trained >30 students that obtained Master of Professional Science (MPS) and Master of Science (MS) degrees and now hold jobs at local, state, and federal agencies focused on various aspects of reef restoration or continued their career as doctoral students. As members of each internship cohort get underway in their careers in coral conservation, management, and restoration, the positive impact of this program is amplified.