Author: The REEF Team
You can give the gift of healthy oceans by supporting REEF with a donation this winter. Your generosity helps us protect marine habitats and species, educate and inspire people of all ages, and safeguard marine biodiversity around the world. We’re so thankful to everyone who has already contributed to this winter’s campaign. We had an outpouring of support on GivingTuesday, but we still need to raise $44,200 in donations before the end of the year to be on track for the new year. If you haven’t yet made your gift, we hope you’ll consider donating today. Your year-end support helps launch us into the new year with momentum, and fuels our conservation work well into the future.
To show our gratitude, gifts of $250 or more this winter will receive a marine life print photographed by REEF Co-Founder Paul Humann. To honor Paul's memory, we’re continuing the tradition of sharing one of his marine life photographs as a special gift for our donors. This year's print is a Pajama Cardinalfish photographed in Indonesia.
Visit www.REEF.org/donate to make a gift today. Thank you for being part of the REEF community, and for ending the year with impact. We hope you have a wonderful holiday!
Author: Amy Lee, Communications Manager
We are thrilled to recognize Jane Bixby as our 2025 Volunteer of the Year! Jane joined REEF in 2008 and almost immediately started volunteering in the Key Largo office. Newly retired from the Miami Police Department, she quickly became an essential part of the team. She assisted with a variety of tasks, including processing REEF survey scan forms, fulfilling store orders, sorting incoming mail, and helping the office run smoothly. Her willingness to jump in to assist however she could set the tone for an amazing volunteer legacy that continues today.
Beyond offering daily support for our programs and operations, Jane finds great joy in preserving and sharing REEF’s history by compiling scrapbooks and carefully sorting through countless attic boxes to organize photos and other historical pieces. Her efforts ensure that REEF's story may be shared with future generations.
Jane's enthusiasm for REEF extends beyond the office. Over the years, she joined many dive trips with her dear friend, REEF Co-Founder Paul Humann. She has also participated in numerous REEF Field Survey Trips and had conducted more than 100 REEF surveys.
Jane is a treasured part of REEF's Key Largo volunteer team, working as a docent at the new Ocean Exploration Center and supporting local events like the monthly Fish & Friends seminar series, the holiday party, REEF Fest, and the Florida Keys Lionfish Derby & Arts Festival. Whether she is serving lionfish dip to event attendees or helping to ensure sure everything runs smoothly behind the scenes, Jane holds REEF close to her heart, and we're so thankful that she is part of REEF.
Please join us in celebrating Jane as our 2025 REEF Volunteer of the Year! Click here to see all past REEF Volunteers of the Year.
Author: Chesley Davis, Director of Learning and Engagement
With the recent opening of the Ocean Exploration Center at the REEF Campus in the Florida Keys, our in-person and virtual Explorers Education programming is seeing tremendous growth in the number and types of groups we can serve. As these programs grow, it’s important to keep our lessons aligned with current educational standards and emerging trends. To support our educators in curriculum design, REEF partners with our Education Advisory Panel (EAP), a group committed to bringing fresh ideas and thoughtful guidance to our programs.
The EAP includes 13 volunteer educators with diverse professional backgrounds, including library science specialists, K–12 teachers, and college professors. Panelists represent a wide geographic range, from Hawaii to New York City, and even Italy, but they share two things in common: a love of the ocean and a passion for education. Together, they strengthen REEF’s education programs by reviewing and providing feedback on the curricula we teach in person and online.
Panelists bring a wealth of experience. Many have used REEF Ocean Explorers programs in their own classrooms, incorporated citizen science into formal or informal learning, developed marine science curricula, or worked with group travel programs. Their insights help ensure the Ocean Explorers Program remains engaging, accurate, and inspiring, while also advancing citizen science participation.
Are you an educator interested in joining the EAP? As a panelist, you’ll collaborate closely with REEF’s education staff, stay up to date on our work, and help shape how we share it with learners of all ages. The EAP meets quarterly via virtual sessions and occasionally in person at conferences and events. Visit this page to learn more, and meet our panelists.
Author: Jill Kuehnert, Campus Director
Welcome to our quarterly REEF Campus update, featuring a seasonal snapshot of what’s happening at the Ocean Exploration Center and REEF Campus in Key Largo. As the year winds down, we're reflecting on the incredible impact the Ocean Exploration Center has made in its first year - welcoming new audiences, expanding programs, and deepening our connection to the community through this mission-driven space.
Since the Center opened in June, we have increased the number of public events held at the REEF Campus, including our weekly Ocean After Hours programs every Tuesday event. The Center has also served as a meeting space for other local organizations. It is also the new home of our long-running, free ocean seminar series, REEF Fish & Friends. This October marked another exciting milestone: For first time in its 10+year history, REEF Fest 2025 was hosted almost entirely at our Key Largo Campus!
REEF Fest is an annual celebration that brings together ocean enthusiasts for a weekend of learning, social events, outdoor adventures, and community. In previous years, REEF Fest was held at several locations throughout Key Largo. This year, the Campus provided the perfect backdrop for the event. The second floor of the Ocean Exploration Center was transformed into an engaging lecture hall for seminars, with plenty of seating for attendees. Meanwhile, the parking lot in front of the Center was the perfect space for people to gather, socialize, and grab a bite to eat from local food trucks onsite. In the mornings or between seminars, visitors could check out the Center's exhibits or enjoy the outdoors by exploring the Native Plants & Heritage Trail. We also partnered with several local operators for diving and snorkeling each morning so attendees could enjoy the amazing marine environments of the Keys.
We are thrilled that more than 200 people joined us at REEF Fest this year, from longtime volunteers to first-time visitors and neighbors. We are grateful to our sponsors, partners, and the Florida Keys community for helping make our first REEF Fest at the Ocean Exploration Center such a success.
If you attended, thank you for being part of this historic moment for REEF Fest. If you missed it, you can still enjoy the highlights. Check out the seminar recordings on YouTube, and you can view the event photo album here.
We look forward to welcoming everyone back to the Key Largo and the Ocean Exploration Center for future programs. Be sure to save the date for next year's REEF Fest: October 15-18, 2026!
Author: Amy Lee, Communications Manager
REEF members are the heart of our grassroots marine conservation programs. A diverse community of divers, snorkelers, and ocean enthusiasts support our mission to conserve marine environments worldwide.
This month we highlight Alison Stocker, a REEF member who lives aboard her sailboat, currently in the Mediterranean. She has conducted more than 175 REEF surveys while sailing around the world, in regions including the South Pacific (SOP), Central Indo-Pacific (CIP), Indian Ocean & Red Sea (IORS), and Eastern Atlantic and Mediterranean (EAM). We're thankful to call Alison a REEF member, and we can't wait to see where she surveys next!
When and how did you first volunteer with REEF or become a REEF member?
I first heard about REEF through a friend of a friend whom I met at a cruiser potluck gathering in Tonga one evening in September 2017. Up until then, I had been keeping a record of species of fish that were new to me as I saw them. REEF surveys seemed a perfect way of combining my passion for snorkeling and fish-finding while generating some useful citizen science data. I bought a small Olympus underwater point-and-shoot camera which helped me to identify unfamiliar fish and made the survey work much more effective. I recorded my first REEF survey in Fiji in July 2018.
My husband and I are “cruisers” who have been living aboard our 42-feet long sailboat for the last 18 years while very slowly making our way around the globe. We left Florida in 2008 and are now in the Mediterranean, having spent four years, including the pandemic, in Australia. Both of us were divers before moving aboard our boat "Tregoning” but we had no room for diving equipment, so we have snorkeled along our route through the tropics.
What is the most interesting thing you’ve learned doing a REEF fish survey?
As a retired plant ecology research scientist, I am an enthusiastic supporter of well-managed citizen science, and I am especially keen to contribute to global databases of organisms. While we have been moving around the world, it has been fascinating to document how the distributions of fish species show their evolutionary spread across oceans and seas. For example, crossing the Pacific from east to west, it was noticeable that the diversity of fish species was gradually increasing. On a smaller, more recent scale, it has been interesting to track the distribution of species from the Red Sea, including migrants such as the Dusky Rabbitfish, which have moved through the Suez Canal and are gradually dispersing north and east through the Mediterranean.
Do you dive or snorkel close to where you live?
My husband and I typically snorkel close to our boat, so yes, we almost always snorkel close to where we live, but that location keeps changing. We often choose where we are going to anchor based on the site’s snorkeling potential. In many places we can snorkel directly off Tregoning, in other places we take the inflatable dinghy to the best-looking spot. One aspect of this is that we rarely snorkel in places that are popular dive-sites. Many of my survey sites are new to the REEF database. The challenge for me is learning new groups of fish species as we move.
As might be expected, the best surveying has been on the coral reefs of the South Pacific, the Great Barrier Reef, Indonesia, the Maldives, and Red Sea. Sadly we were in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific, such as Mexico, Hawai’i, French Polynesia, and the Cook Islands, before I started conducting REEF surveys. Such surveys typically included more than 50 species and often exceeded 100 species. Spending most of the pandemic aboard a boat in Queensland, Australia, was spectacularly lucky for us as we were still able to visit the reefs during the winters. The Mediterranean has been somewhat less exciting. Although most of the water is pleasingly gin-clear, it is a low-productivity system with virtually no coral and limited diversity - more than 20 species has been a good survey.
What is your favorite fish or marine invertebrate?
I have only once seen a tasselled wobbegong which may be my favorite fish based on its name – it is so distinctly Australian. It was at one of our favorite atoll-anchorages, Lady Musgrave Reef, at the southern end of the Great Barrier Reef. Instead of being camouflaged against the coral, it stood out boldly against the white sand as it gently swam from one coral head to another. My husband points out that if I really wanted to pick the coolest name, it would surely be Hawaii's state fish, the humu humu nuku nuku apua'a (aka the Wedgetail Triggerfish), which we saw all through the Pacific, from Hawaii to Australia.
Author: Stacey Henderson, Field Survey Trips Program Manager
We're headed to the southern Caribbean island of Tobago next summer, and you're invited to join us! Tobago is home to some of the healthiest reefs in the Tropical Western Atlantic, and nutrient-rich waters carried from Venezuela’s Orinoco River fuel this region, drawing in an impressive diversity of fish.
REEF Field Survey Trips are eco-vacations led by marine life experts. Each trip features daily dives and fish ID classes for both beginners and experienced surveyors. To book your space on a REEF Trip, email trips@REEF.org. We hope to "sea" you underwater soon!
Check out some of our upcoming trips, including:
Jamaica: March 14-21, 2026 -- More information here.
Cayman Brac: April 4-11, 2026 -- More information here.
Fiji: April 18-28, 2026 -- More information here.
St. Eustatius: May 9-16, 2026 -- More information here.
Cuba: June 27-July 4, 2026 -- More information here.
Tubbataha, Philippines: June 28-July 8, 2026 -- More information here.
Bonaire: July 11-18, 2026 -- More information here.
Tobago: August 1-8, 2026 -- More information here.
Author: The REEF Team
Introducing our December Fish of the Month, the Decorated Warbonnet, Chirolophis decoratus!
Survey Regions: Decorated Warbonnets are found in the north Pacific, from Russia to Alaska and down the coast of California, part of REEF's PAC survey region. Click here to see a REEF database report for this species.
Size: They are typically between 4-10 inches and grow to a maximum size of 16 inches.
Identifying Features: Decorated Warbonnets have a brown to tan body with a mottled or barred pattern. They have a dark band extending under each eye and dark bars spanning their long dorsal fin. Their most distinctive feature is the presence of extremely large, bushy cirri between and in front of their eyes. They also have cirri on their first four dorsal fin spines.
Fun Facts: The Decorated Warbonnet is a member of the prickleback family. They live in rough, rocky areas filled with crevices and caves, and perch at the openings so they can dart away when threatened.
Thanks for reading, and stay tuned for our next Fish of the Month.
Photo by Janna Nichols.
