We are excited to share the world’s longest running underwater timelapse, starting May 1st 2023 and running 569 days through November 20th, 2024. This period covers summer 2023’s unprecedented coral bleaching event, and indeed multiple corals can be seen bleaching, but then recovering and growing through 2024.
Of greatest interest to us is the success and proliferation of the urban strain of staghorn coral (Acropora cervicornis aka ACER ‘ventura’) that not only did not bleach, but has grown swiftly. We look forward to continuing our scientific investigation into the mechanisms of their resilience, and hope to amplify this strain for the purpose of restoring Miami’s nearshore reefs.
Our ability to timelapse the growth of PortMiami’s urban corals highlights the scientific value of the Coral City Camera and its ability to document what was previously undocumented. After 5 years of near-continuous recording, and more than 210 species of fish cataloged, there is no underwater coral reef site anywhere in the world that has been as thoroughly recorded and archived.
We are proud to unveil the limited edition Reef x Coral Morphologic Homeys, a Coral Morph-inspired cushioned slipper that celebrates the warmth and color of the coral reef during the winter months, when ocean time is limited.
Available in blue / neon green in men’s and tan / white in unisex, every sale benefits the Coral City Foundation’s efforts to upkeep the Coral City Camera and support ongoing CCF restoration projects. A perfect slipper to kick back and tune in to the CCC, the Coral Morph Homeys redefine the concept of the home shoe while making a meaningful impact. Read more about the collaboration here.
A new scientific paper has been published in the research journal Frontiers in Remote Sensing titled ‘Automatic detection of unidentified fish sounds: a comparison of traditional deep learning with machine learning’ authored by Xavier Mouy et al, which analyzed week-long hydrophone recordings of the Coral City Camera site at PortMiami in order to detect fish sounds.
The researchers found that using a Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) enabled detection of fish sounds that both human analysts and traditional spectrogram data analysis otherwise could not detect. The CNN was trained using hydrophone recordings made in British Columbia, but proved accurate in the novel environment at PortMiami, even despite significant background noises from boats. The software developed for this study is open-source and available to other researchers.
Stay tuned in the coming months as we prepare to connect a hydrophone to the Coral City Camera and provide an audio channel to the YouTube livestream. If possible, we aim to incorporate real-time analysis of the underwater sounds to help monitor and track fish activity.
We are thrilled to team with O, Miami Poetry Festival for a month-long program of aquatic poetry with Coral City Couplets. This month (April, National Poetry Month), students across Miami-Dade County will tune in to watch underwater live streams from the Coral City Camera, then write original poems inspired by our unique subtropical marine life. Special Thanks to Miami educators Monica Asencio and Katie Ortiz, creators of the Coral City Couplets curriculum. Read the month’s poems via our Instagram or YouTube accounts.
The summer of 2023 will go down as the hottest in recorded history (thus far). Sadly, hot ocean water means coral bleaching, and Florida’s corals suffered tremendously this year. Fortunately the Coral City Camera was in position to create the world’s most comprehensive in-situ coral bleaching timelapses ever documented by human technology. Many attempts have been made to record a coral bleaching event, but to our knowledge, this is the most complete and longest running coral time lapse made underwater in a coral reef environment. The time lapse begins on May 1st, 2023 and you can see that the staghorn corals start growing and branching quickly. However, by mid-July water temperatures have reached the critical bleaching threshold of 87 degrees Fahrenheit (30.5C) and quickly turn white. The transplanted staghorns and elkhorn corals not only bleached, but they subsequently died. You can see how after turning white, they turn gray-brown as they are colonized by turf algae in August and September, and then they erode almost as quickly as they grew, expedited by the abundant parrotfish that graze this algae from the corals’ limestone skeletons.
Bleaching occurs when the metabolism of the golden-brown symbiotic algae that live in the coral tissue known as zooxanthellae goes into thermal overdrive. The algae’s production of photosynthetically-produced oxygen exceeds the limit the coral can safely handle inside its tissues, resulting in expulsion of the zooxanthellae (and its brown color) from its host. Because zooxanthellae normally provide a coral with photosynthetically-produced sugars, it begins to starve without these symbionts. Fast-growing corals like the endangered staghorn (Acropora cervicornis) and elkhorn (Acropora palmata) lack the energy stores that fleshier corals like brain corals have, and die from bleaching stress much more easily.
By the end of August 2023, all of the staghorn and elkhorn corals experimentally-transplanted by the University of Miami’s Rescue a Reef program succumbed to the excess heat and bleaching. These were corals that are native to cooler, cleaner waters offshore Miami, so it didn’t come as a complete surprise that they could not survive the urban reef environment around the CCC. However, a single strain of staghorn and elkhorn coral that are native to the Port did not bleach and continued growing happily despite water temps exceeding 90 degrees Fahrenheit (+32C). Not taking any chances, we brought fragments of these urban strains of stag and elkhorn coral into climate-controlled conditions at NOAA’s Atlantic Oceanographic Marine Lab in July. Once water temperatures cooled enough, these fragments were safely returned to the CURES (Coral Urban Research Experimental Site) nursery frame that sits about 20’ from the CCC.
Many corals like the mustard hill coral (Porites asteroides) did not fully recover from bleaching until December 2023. Most of the brain corals had recovered from bleaching by November 2023.
Amazingly, a significant number of corals native to PortMiami did not bleach, suggesting that they have a combination of genes and microbiomes that have enabled them to adapt to the Anthropogenic conditions along Miami’s urban coastline. The native urban corals that did bleach managed to survive for several months without any zooxanthellae to provide them with energy, before recovering new zooxanthellae in autumn when cooler water returned. It is possible that the higher levels of nutrients and plankton in the water helped provide these corals with additional energy captured as food.
These urban corals and the bleaching timelapses highlight the scientific value of the Coral City Camera and its ability to document what was previously undocumented. After 4 years of near-continuous recording, and more than 205 species of fish cataloged, there is no underwater coral reef site anywhere in the world that has been as thoroughly recorded and archived.
While corals throughout Florida and the Keys suffered tremendously in the summer of 2023, the stressful event also demonstrated that not all corals shared the same fates. Even within the same species, some corals did not bleach, bleached and recovered, or bleached and died. Studying the resilient strains of urban corals at PortMiami may illuminate how they’ve been able to adapt to marginal conditions and excessive heat. With global fossil fuel emissions continuing to rise unsustainably, we can expect even hotter summers in the years to come. Will corals be able to adapt naturally fast enough? Will scientists be able to accelerate the evolution of these corals to withstand hotter water temperatures? We are in an existential race against time, but we believe (now more than ever) that Miami’s urban corals will play an important role in finding out what makes a resilient coral ‘super’. The newly launched Coral City Foundation aims to build a land-based coral lab in 2024 to unlock these secrets and amplify their numbers.
Watch thefull Projections of a Coral City program above.
The sun has set on Projections of a Coral City, our largest installation to date, and we are thankful for everyone who made this monumental work possible. From the Knight Foundation’s continued support of our mission, to the collaborative spirit of the Arsht Center, to the hundreds of thousands of people who witnessed this installation: we are eternally grateful.
Projections of a Coral City was the 15-year culmination of our goal to create a new mythology for the city of Miami — one that tells the story of past, present, and future sea-level rise and fall and the ouroboros of architectural development — of the ancient coral reef tract’s calcium carbonate structures and its re-use millennia later in concrete skyscrapers of present day. We hope that Projections of a Coral City shed light on the sea-level rise projections referenced in the project’s title, and how the City’s buildings and infrastructure might be reclaimed by coral as an artificial reef should humanity not act to prevent and mitigate the effects of climate change, to which Miami is among the most vulnerable cities on Earth.
Special Thanks to the Knight Foundation, whose generous support made POACC possible; the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts, who graciously hosted the event; the dream team of creatives that helped us bring POACC to life; and Light Harvest / A3 Visual for the absolutely stunning projection display.
We are ecstatic to announce Projections of a Coral City, a large-scale projection-mapping installation to be presented on the exterior of the Knight Concert Hall nightly, 6PM-12AM, during Miami Art Week from Tuesday, November 29 through Saturday, December 3, 2022. Projections of a Coral City, featuring macroscopic images of corals native to Miami and from around the world, is a monumental artwork and the largest projection of corals ever presented globally. Projections of a Coral City is made possible through the support of the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.
Miami is a coral city. Built with marine limestone mined from the Everglades, its concrete skyline stands like corals colonizing the fossilized reef ridge on which the city was built. Miami and its maritime environment are inextricably connected geologically, historically, culturally and economically. Engaging residents and visitors with Miami’s coral reefs and waters connects them to the literal foundation of the city and to its future.
The corals featured in Projections of a Coral City were grown on flat tiles and 3D-printed scale models of the Knight Concert Hall over many years in our Miami laboratory, and subsequently photographed and enlarged to envelop the building’s southwest side. These aquacultured corals include the colorful, native Ricordea florida corallimorph. Corallimorphs are an understudied group of soft corals that scientists predict will proliferate in a world where oceans are acidified and stony corals can no longer calcify into reefs. Projections of a Coral City reimagines the Knight Concert Hall’s terraced form designed by architect César Pelli as an ever-morphing coral head and, as the sea-level rise projections referenced in the project’s title portend, suggests how the City’s buildings and infrastructure might be reclaimed by coral as an artificial reef should humanity not act to prevent and mitigate sea-level rise.
An ambient soundscape foreshadowing the City’s future by Coral Morphologic and Nick León will play in tandem with the projections on the Arsht Center’s Thomson Plaza for the Arts on Biscayne Boulevard.
Rescue a Reef explains what they hope to achieve in this exciting new chapter in Coral City:
‘One year ago, the Rescue a Reef team from the University of Miami outplanted colonies of staghorn coral (Acropora cervicornis) at the Coral City Camera to create a public-facing restoration site and better understand how corals adapt to urban environments. We were thrilled with their success! To expand on this small-scale experiment, we outplanted twenty-five colonies of elkhorn coral (Acropora palmata) at the CCC and will monitor their growth, productivity, and resilience over the next year! The new corals consisted of five different genotypes that were put through heat stress testing by UM and the Shedd Aquarium, and included some of the most successful in the face of rising temperatures. This experiment was designed to be a springboard for expanded research and explore novel ways to garden and restore corals in urban environments. Along with a greater understanding of our Coral City, we hope that having a public-facing coral restoration site will help communities make a stronger connection with corals and give them more incentives to fight to protect them!’
As reported in the Miami New Times, in June 2022, a combination of heavy rains and an ancient crumbling seawall in the process of reinforcement along Star Island’s southwest corner resulted in its collapse. The collapse was discovered by our colleagues at NOAA who arrived there by boat to study the nature and resilience of the urban corals in North Biscayne Bay. This is in addition to sites on the north and south side of the MacArthur Causeway and the east end of PortMiami near the Coral City Camera. Brain corals from these sites were analyzed and published ‘Molecular Mechanisms of Coral Persistence Within Highly Urbanized Locations in PortMiami’ in 2021, the first paper of its kind to offer an explanation for the success of these corals compared to their offshore counterparts.
Coral Morphologic first began exploring these urban habitats after documenting an unusual Acropora sp. inside Government Cut in 2009 which totally upended the idea of what an ‘ideal’ habitat was for these endangered stony corals. We subsequently started exploring areas deeper in North Biscayne Bay and found surprisingly robust populations of reef building corals. When a historic cold snap in January 2010 left them unphased (while the Florida Keys nearshore corals were all but wiped out), we began to suspect that the corals in these habitats were truly special, and scientifically valuable for research.
Colin first observed the Star Island seawall on Feb 14th 2013 when Gloria Estefan’s son Nayib asked him to document the marine life living along their riprap seawall (she was so happy to learn how healthy it was!). He was amazed by the life on these rocks, and how many more fish there were around them then on the neighboring seawall that lacked riprap. But upon closer inspection there were several very large Orbicella faveolata encrusted directly on it and multiple large brain corals at the base of it. This seawall at 40 Star Island Drive was likely the oldest seawall in Miami, possibly dating back to its development in the 1920s.
When the SCTLD (Stony Coral Tissue Loss Disease) outbreak took off in 2015 we observed that these urban corals seemed to be more resistant to it, and would often survive with partial mortality. With these anecdotal observations, Dr. Ian Enochs of NOAA reached out to us about setting up a formal investigation to see how these corals might differ from their offshore counterparts.
In early 2020 with the launch of the Coral City Camera, the CURES (Coral Urban Research Experimental Site) nursery was set up within view at the east end of Port Miami where research continues to this day (and now serves as an experimental research site for Rescue a Reef to ‘stress adapt’ their corals to help find more resilient strains that will be useful in the restoration of Miami’s nearshore reefs).
After NOAA and the University of Miami performed the rescue of the corals at 40 Star Island in July, they repatriated a number of them to an offshore ‘Spawning Hub’ on Rainbow Reef where they will be able to spawn with other members of their species and hopefully provide some other their resilient genetics and microbiome to the next generation. Fifteen colonies and fragments of corals were also brought to the Coral City Camera site at PortMiami where they were cemented down by UM scientists. Several weeks later, all these transplanted corals have survived and appear to be settling in nicely to their new urban coral community.
Update 11/2/22: Watch a follow-up feature on the seawall collapse and coral rescue with ABC WPLG Local 10 anchor / reporter Louis Aguirre:
On June 23rd, 2021 fifteen colonies of five different genotypes of endangered staghorn corals (Acropora cervicornis) were transplanted to the rubble zone in front of the Coral City Camera by Rescue a Reef, a citizen science program based at the University of Miami. The goal of this experiment was to try and identify stress-tolerant strains of staghorn corals to better inform Rescue a Reef of the strains best suited for near-shore habitats. We anticipated that not all the strains would survive (or perhaps none would survive), but given that this was a science experiment using clones, any mortality would be offset by the fact that dozens to hundreds of more clones exist in Rescue a Reefs offshore coral nurseries. The results greatly exceeded our best expectations!
As far as we are aware, this is the longest continuous in-situ growth timelapse of corals ever made!
This timelapse begins on June 28, 2021, just a few days after transplantation and replacing the CCC (which slightly altered the perspective). Over the course of the next several weeks, tissue die-off progressed rapidly across many of the colonies (Seen as bright white skeleton before being overgrown with brown algae). However, after a month of acclimation, the staghorn corals stabilized and adapted to their new Anthropogenic habitat despite water temperatures exceeding 90 (32C) in August and September (but no significant coral bleaching was observed!). Over the course of this time, the perspective shifts slowly as the Camera slowly subsides in the sediment and leans away from the rubble zone (due to the powerful currents in the area).
Ongoing research with University of Miami, NOAA, and Penn State University is now looking into the microbiomes of these staghorn corals to compare how they may have changed from their offshore clones. We observed on a night dive in September of 2021 while filming the ‘Coral City Fluorotour‘ that these staghorn corals were expressing fluorescent green proteins which is unusual for the species, and isn’t observed in their offshore counterparts. Unlocking the secrets of these urban-adapted ‘super corals’ is just the next step in understanding their remarkable resilience. Perhaps the site around PortMiami is ideal for evolutionarily assisting and stress-adapting corals before out-planting to the beleaguered nearshore reefs around Miami.
Just as the new coral growth is interesting to watch, equally interesting is to witness the erosion and disappearance of the dead staghorn branches of the colony closest to the Camera. This erosion occurs from the parrotfish whose powerful beak-like teeth can rasp the surface layer of algae while crunching the limestone skeleton (and then pooping sand). The club-tipped finger coral (Porites porites) in the lower right corner of the view is also interesting to observe over the year, as the parrotfish are fond of eating the healthy branch tips, rendering them very club-like in Coral City!
Playback speed is at 15 frames (days) per second (about one month per 2 seconds).
We are proud to present Coral City Flourotour, our first short film in 3 years, and our first in-ocean filming project using techniques developed in the CM lab / studio. Coral City Flourotour documents the highly fluorescent corals living near the Coral City Camera site at PortMiami.
These urban corals are not just survivors, but pioneers who have self-recruited to the boulder shoreline deployed to the Port in 2010. Some of the larger brain corals featured were previously transplanted from other urban habitats by Miami-Dade County DERM. Coral Morphologic has documented 27 of Florida’s 48 stony coral species living at this site, as well as more than 170 species of fish documented via the CCC.
Critically endangered staghorn corals (Acropora cervicornis) were transplanted to the site in June 2021 by University of Miami’s Rescue a Reef program. The fluorescence survey conducted in this film revealed they’ve activated fluorescent proteins which are not normally expressed in offshore waters. Scientists from UM and NOAA are now seeking to understand what changes these corals have undergone adapting to life in such an anthropogenically-altered environment, as it may have larger implications related to the restoration of Floridian and Caribbean reefs. Recently published research by NOAA has discovered the corals living in these urbanized environments have made important adaptations that enable them to thrive in Miami’s coastal waters.
Special Thanks to Bridge Initiative, Bas Fisher Invitational, PortMiami, Biscayne Bay Pilots, Miami-Dade County, NOAA AOML, Rescue a Reef
We kicked off the launch with a party at Pérez Art Museum on the Miami waterfront. Romulo Del Castillo provided the Miami jams following a panel discussion led by National Geographic explorer Alizé Carrère featuring Colin, NOAA scientist Dr. Ian Enochs, and Miami Beach’s environment & sustainability director Elizabeth Wheaton.
Update6/1/20: The CCC is now screening at the Miami International Airport as part of the Miami International Airport Moving Images (MIAmi) video installation series, located near gate J7:
Update 10/16/20: The CCC is now screening at the HistoryMiami Museum.
Join us Thursday, February 6th as we launch the Coral City Camera, our publicly accessible 360-degree livestream of a thriving, urban coral reef premiering at Pérez Art Museum Miami from a floating billboard in Biscayne Bay, produced by Bridge Initiative & Bas Fisher Invitational. Admission is free and open to the public as part of PAMM’s First Free Thursdays series.
In conjunction with the floating livestream, National Geographic Explorer Alizé Carrère will moderate a panel discussion featuring NOAA scientist Dr. Ian Enochs, Coral Morphologic’s Colin Foord, and Miami Beach’s environment & sustainability director Elizabeth Wheaton. The night continues on the terrace with a DJ set by Romulo Del Castillo. See you there, Miami!
For Design Miami 2019/, we debuted a preview of the Coral City Camera, a 360° live stream underwater camera located at our collaborative research site with NOAA’s AOML Coral Program. The CCC aims to supplement our urban coral research with real-time scientific data and offer a source of natural wonderment to the public, with the live stream officially going live in February 2020.
Over the past several years we’ve been working toward the installation of an underwater camera in Biscayne Bay as a component of our research into Miami’s coral ecosystems. Recently, with the support of Bas Fisher Invitational & Bridge Initiative under National Endowment for the Arts & Knight Foundation grants, we installed a 360° live stream underwater camera at our collaborative research site with NOAA’s AOML Coral Program. In addition to providing valuable scientific data, the live stream will be available free to the public as an educational tool and source of wonderment. The Coral City Camera live stream will be officially available to watch in February, with a preview at Design Miami/ December 3-8. Check out the video above to see how the camera was installed with View Into the Blue.
