Shop & Support event at vineyard vines to benefit Mote during Discovery Channel’s Shark Week

June 18, 2018 Hayley Rutger

vineyard vines and Mote Marine Laboratory invite you to save the ocean in style with a Shop and Support event from 12 p.m. to 4 p.m. on July 25. More than 21 store locations across the Florida and South Atlantic region will be donating 20 percent of their in-store proceeds on July 25 to Mote to support its mission to conduct today’s research for tomorrow’s oceans.

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Summer gets clammy: Shellfish restoration study under way

June 13, 2018 Hayley Rutger

Conservationists are ramping up clam-restoration efforts now in Sarasota Bay, Florida — locally the first of their kind — in partnership with Mote Marine Laboratory scientists who study how to fine-tune shellfish restoration methods to benefit the Bay.

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See a whale shark in the Gulf? Call Mote immediately!

June 7, 2018 mote

Mote Marine Laboratory received a report of five whale sharks — Earth’s largest fish species — about 40 miles off Anna Maria Island last weekend, and Mote scientists are asking members of the public to report new sightings off Florida’s Gulf Coast immediately.

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Coral disease ‘firebreak’ works in short term. Next goal: Making it last

May 16, 2018 Hayley Rutger

The progression of Caribbean yellow-band disease — a widespread killer of reef-building corals — can be significantly impeded by chiseling a “firebreak” around the diseased coral tissue, but more research is needed to maintain the firebreak long-term, reports a peer-reviewed research paper published this week in the journal PeerJ.

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Stormwater system can support snook, bass and more, says Sarasota study

December 13, 2017 Hayley Rutger

Dozens of fish species — including common snook and largemouth bass — use certain parts of the upper Phillippi Creek system, according to the first fish survey of this urbanized network of canals, retention ponds and wetlands in Sarasota County, Florida. The survey — led by Mote Marine Laboratory and funded by Sarasota Bay Estuary Program (SBEP) — found the highest numbers and diversity of fishes around upper creek areas mimicking natural habitat: curving canals or ponds with wetland vegetation and sections of slower-moving water. Less naturalistic canals, with shorelines straightened for optimum drainage, generally hosted fewer fish of fewer species.

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