UNCW Interdepartmental Research Team Receives Nearly $1 Million Federal Sponge Research Grant uncw.edu - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from uncw.edu Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Lauren Olinger has spent more than two years researching several species of the most common sponges in the Caribbean that now thrive on the reef.
What she has discovered is that sponges with an abundance of microbes, or tiny living things too small to be seen by the unaided eye, “take up” significant amounts of compounds versus sponges that have a low abundance of microbes.
Lauren Olinger
“From the compounds that these species were taking up, a lot of them were organohalides, so that means that they had halogen in them,” Olinger said in a recent telephone interview. “It’s interesting that an animal could use something that’s halogenated. These compounds can be really toxic. They can also include contaminants so there’s some interesting consequences there and it might tell us something about what these compounds are being used for.”
When Hurricane Iris hit southern Belize in 2001, the country's magnificent corals were wrecked. But within 10 years, a radical restoration project brought the reef back to life.
When Hurricane Iris hit southern Belize in 2001, the country’s magnificent corals were wrecked. But within 10 years, a radical restoration project brought the reef back to life.W
With the caye split into two and corals smashed into rubble, the underwater world at Laughing Bird Caye National Park off the coast of Belize looked nothing like the vibrant and colourful place that had thrived with life before Hurricane Iris swept across it in 2001. The storm left the water murky and muddy, while rotting dead creatures washed ashore.
When Lisa Carne first visited the island in 1994, there were so many large, bright reddish-orange interlocking elkhorn corals that she could hardly swim through or around them. The reef was abundant in fish, corals, lobsters, crabs, sponges and sea turtles. But after the hurricane all of this was destroyed. With only a few surviving corals, the scene looked more like a graveyard.
Florida State University News
FSU grad student, alumna earn NOAA’s prestigious Knauss Marine Policy Fellowships
January 25, 2021 | 2:24 pm | SHARE:
Department of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Science doctoral candidate Renee Richardson and recent Department of Biological Science doctoral graduate Abbey Engleman have received the Knauss Fellowship.
Two Florida State University graduate students have received the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s 2021 John A. Knauss Marine Policy Fellowship.
The fellowship, part of the National Sea Grant College Program, has provided educational and professional experiences for graduate students interested in ocean, coastal and Great Lakes resources and policy decisions affecting these resources since 1979.