Over nearly three decades, REEF has welcomed more than 150 young adults to the REEF Campus to spend a semester immersed in marine conservation projects. This month, we highlight former Marine Conservation Intern Catie Alves. Read on to hear about Catie's time at REEF, and how her internship with REEF helped to shape her career.
When were you a REEF intern?
Summer and Fall 2013
The REEF Volunteer Fish Survey Project operates worldwide, and REEF members are located all over the globe, but our physical location - and our home since REEF was founded in 1990 - has always been in the Florida Keys. The REEF Campus in Key Largo is a visitor center and nature center, which includes the historic REEF Headquarters building, the Interpretive Center, and an outdoor oasis including a Native Plants Trail, butterfly garden, and covered picnic and gathering area.
This month-long GAFC event is sponsored by CoCo View Resort and hosted by Allison & Carlos Estape. Every July, divers and snorkelers worldwide join to learn about marine life and conduct fish surveys as a part of REEF's ongoing Volunteer Fish Survey Project. CoCo View Resort in Roatan, Honduras celebrates this event for the whole month of July to educate and encourage divers and snorkelers to become citizen scientists. The GAFC is a catalyst to introduce divers, snorkelers and the general public to volunteer in fish monitoring.
REEF Trips Program and Communications Manager
This year is off to an exciting (and jetsetting) start for the REEF team, as two of our staff recently traveled to Tasmania, the southernmost state in Australia, to present at various scientific conferences. First, REEF Co-Executive Director Christy Pattengill-Semmens, Ph.D., attended the International Temperate Reefs Symposium. Christy and her husband Dr. Brice Semmens, a frequent REEF scientific collaborator, both gave presentations at the conference, which hosted scientists from around the world who study kelp forests and rocky reefs.
As 2011 comes to an end, please consider a tax-deductable gift to REEF so that we can continue our cutting edge marine conservation programs. We rely on your
On December 14th, 2014, REEF staff and volunteers recorded the third successful pre-emptive removal of a non-native fish in south Florida coastal waters when they removed a mimic lemon peel surgeonfish (Acanthurus pyroferus) from waters under the Blue Heron Bridge in Palm Beach County.
Congratulations to Fred Hartner, who recently joined the Golden Hamlet Club! This distinguished group is made up of highly dedicated volunteers who have conducted 1,000 or more REEF surveys as part of the REEF Volunteer Fish Survey Project.
Since last week, our partners at the Cayman Islands Department of Environment have been busy in the field, conducting multiple dives each day on the Nassau Grouper spawning site on the west end of Little Cayman. Since 2002, this site has been the focus of our collaborative conservation effort, the Grouper Moon Project. The team has been performing visual assessments, collecting size estimates through stereo-video, and capturing images of individual fishes for our "Fish Faces" project, which uses artificial intelligence to measure population size.
