RETURN TO 2020 ANNUAL REPORT INDEX

On this page:
Letter from the Chairman
Letter from the President & CEO


“FOR GENERATIONS, WE HAVE BEEN TAKING FROM THE SEA.

NOW, IT’S TIME TO START GIVING BACK.”

— WILLIAM R. MOTE, MOTE BENEFACTOR AND NAMESAKE


Letter from the Chairman

Mote Marine Laboratory cares deeply for the world’s oceans. We provide innovative research and science to impact the health, sustainability, and revitalization of all oceans. Caring for the oceans is a tall order and our job is to deliver the science.

Mote has over 40 Ph.D.-level scientists on staff. We conduct studies around the world specializing in the 150-mile-wide continental shelf waters in Florida’s coastal regions including estuaries where most of the action takes place that directly affects the quality of our lives. The wonderful fish we eat, the famous beaches with clean water and healthy animals, recreational fishing and fishing industries, a booming tourism industry—all benefit by Mote science. Think red tide mitigation, and coral reef restoration, and fish stock enhancement, environmentally friendly aquaculture, and sea turtle rehabilitation to name a few projects. There is also our biomedical research that is leading to cancer fighting treatments made from protein complexes isolated from sharks.

We are the largest independent nonprofit marine research laboratory focused on understanding the Gulf and Florida’s coasts. We are not tethered to the bureaucracy of government or academia. This independence gives us agility and quick response time, and is the appeal to scientists who choose to work on projects they care about most. Mote’s research budget has grown 50% in the last three years. This is outstanding performance in a time of consistently diminishing availability of funding. Our scientists have the scientific clout to compete for and bring in over half of Mote’s research funds. There are no contracts, no tenure, just independence and long hours... and this includes their leader, Dr. Michael Crosby. God bless them all.

Mote began with a single research program in a one-room laboratory with one scientist. Today marine science research at Mote is world-renowned and our scientific papers are heavily cited. We now have 67 years of accessible publications and data on file. Most importantly, Mote freely shares discoveries and findings with governments and scientists around the world. To share our science with everyone else, we have generated science and technology education programs for all people groups, including those with less access to opportunity, and we operate public outreach venues, including Mote Aquarium, one of the most popular aquariums in the US.

In the near future, our trustees, staff and volunteers look forward to the opening of a new, 110,000-square-foot, state-of-the-art facility—Mote Science Education Aquarium (Mote SEA). You must visit when it opens in 2024. Your continued support is vital to making it a reality and it will be a “WOW” that will make you proud.

Celebration plans are in place this year (2022) to commemorate what would have been the 100th birthday of our founding Director, Dr. Eugenie Clark. Dr. Clark gave Mote direction and inspiration, and Mote continues to follow her example. We care deeply for our oceans, develop science that has impact, and we share our results.

We invite you to join us in our mission. Thank you.

Maurice Cunniffe Chairman, Mote Marine Laboratory Board of Trustees

 


Letter from the President & CEO

Many will remember 2021 as a year when the world regained momentum following the onset of an unprecedented global pandemic. At Mote Marine Laboratory & Aquarium, our momentum never stopped—and in many ways, we surpassed our past impacts this year.

Our accomplishments would be exceptional by any standard outside of our own. For the Mote family, they’re exactly what we’ve come to expect—unmatched innovation in marine research, science education and public outreach.

Thanks to our incredible Mote family, 2021 was a year of firsts and celebrations:

In our ongoing efforts to expand coral restoration throughout the Florida Keys, we introduced the initial coral fragments to Mote’s newest facility—the first and only coral restoration nursery in Islamorada.

We restored more than 32,000 corals this year to Florida’s Coral Reef, the highest annual total in Mote’s 13 years of science-based restoration. That brings our cumulative total to more than 140,000 corals restored with science since 2008.

We assembled a team to conduct the first airborne drone surveys to monitor for critically ill manatees in the Indian River Lagoon, where manatees are facing a catastrophic loss of the seagrasses they eat.

Alongside the Governor and leaders of the Florida Legislature, we cut the ribbon on the new Florida Red Tide Mitigation & Technology Development Testing Facility at Mote Aquaculture Research Park. The best and best and brightest scientific and engineering minds from around the world are now utilizing 29,000 square feet of new research facilities to safely test the most promising red tide mitigation tools and technologies in large experimental systems that help us predict environmental effects.

Mote scientists developed the first protocol for measuring growth rates of live coral microfragments using structured-light 3D scanning—one of many innovations we published in over 90 peer-reviewed journals and publications this year.

Members of our research team also co-authored the first multi-year, peer-reviewed research paper on the large-scale movements of whitespotted eagle rays in U.S. waters.

Along with the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s (IUCN’s) World Commission on Protected Areas, Marine Connectivity Working Group (MCWG), Mote’s Marine Policy Institute co-authored the new Marine Connectivity Conservation “Rules of Thumb” for MPA and MPA Network Design—the first guidance from the MCWG for advancing connectivity conservation practices in marine environments.

Our Beach Conditions Reporting System (BCRS, visitbeaches.org) added 17 new shoreline monitoring sites this year for a total of 48, including its first two sites outside of Florida.

Mote welcomed its first batch of baby elkhorn corals from parent corals grown in our underwater breeding nursery established in 2020.

Mote’s International Coral Gene Bank, opened its doors and received its first living corals, bolstering Mote’s collection of approximately 2,000 genotypes, and representing the single largest collection of coral genetic diversity outside of Mother Nature herself.

Mote’s Sea Turtle Conservation & Research Program celebrated its 40th year of monitoring and field research, during which we documented our fourth highest number of local sea turtle nests. As of this year, Mote’s team has documented 133,954 sea turtle crawls on southwest Florida’s vital nesting beaches.

In some ways, our 66th year was no different from our first—when Dr. Eugenie (“Genie”) Clark opened Mote’s doors for the first time and began making discoveries that would change our understanding of ocean species. As we enter 2022—the 100th year of Genie’s story—we’re already nearing our next set of firsts and records. This year we will see Mote’s new Science Education Aquarium (SEA) begin rising from the ground and taking shape. In 2022 we will enter our 30th year of operations in the Florida Keys and will celebrate with an expansion into the Upper Keys that will formally extend Mote’s science-based coral reef restoration efforts throughout the entirety of Monroe County— from Key Largo to Key West. In addition, we will cut the ribbon on a brand new informal marine science education and outreach center on the world-famous Anna Maria City Pier.

The best way for Mote to outpace the growing challenges facing our oceans is to continually outpace ourselves. In that effort, we remain fueled by the same passion, partnerships and philanthropic investment that have powered our decades of paradigm-shifting marine science and have become the hallmark of our leadership worldwide. To that end, it is by your purposeful support and engagement that we continue to chart the course toward Oceans for All.

Dr. Michael P. Crosby, President & CEO


Top photo by: taviphoto / Adobe Stock