UNCW's Rising Impact on Coral Research
Photo: Jeff Janowski/UNCW
Marine biologist and filmmaker Erika Woolsey visited campus last Friday for a special screening of “National Geographic Live: Diving the Great Barrier Reef” in Kenan Auditorium. The immersive film highlighted the beauty of Australia’s iconic reef, showcasing the annual coral spawning as well as the urgent challenges it faces, including coral bleaching, disease and decline. These environmental issues have become an increasingly significant focus of research at UNCW in recent years.
Joseph Pawlik, distinguished professor in the Department of Biology and Marine Biology who has researched sponges on coral reefs for over 30 years, has witnessed firsthand the dramatic growth of coral research at the university. He credits this expansion to a collection of faculty across a variety of disciplines, each focusing on different aspects of coral ecosystems while at times collaborating with one another in the preservation and restoration of one of the world’s most vital marine organisms.
“The successful hires of these people have resulted in a ‘center of excellence’ in the study of reef-building corals,” Pawlik said. Despite UNCW’s distance from the natural habitats of these coral species, Pawlik explained that the university remains an ideal place to conduct laboratory-oriented research because of good lab systems in place to support living coral species under study.
The rapid growth of these labs is matched by the discoveries made over the past six years. Nicole Fogarty, whose focus is on coral reproduction and spawning, arrived on campus in 2019 after previously working with former UNCW professor Alina Szmant at the National Undersea Research Center (NURC) in Key Largo, Fla. NURC and its undersea research facility, Aquarius, were managed by the university in the late 1990s and early 2000s, long before the present level of coral projects were researched in Wilmington.
Upon her arrival, Fogarty petitioned for full use of a sparsely occupied 900-sq.-ft. building located at the Center for Marine Science to build out her Coral REEF Laboratory, now commonly called “SEAS,” or Coral Spawning and Experimentation of Anthropogenic Stressors facility. Containing multiple coral spawning tanks, coral nurseries, larval settlements and a 36-tank experimental system that can manipulate environmental parameters, as well as a system for creating their own seawater, the facility is one of a kind.
Fogarty and her team have been at the forefront of spawning coral in a lab setting and were first in the world to spawn certain species. With only a few facilities spawning Caribbean coral in captivity, the use of this technology for scientific research is still in its infancy.
“Our main goal is research and development. Using the scientific method, we conduct basic research to help inform restoration practitioners: how to optimize growth and survival of these species, such as the best light, food sources and substrate to settle the coral babies on,” Fogarty said. “Here at UNCW, with our experimental system, we can manipulate the pH, dissolved oxygen, light and temperature. No other spawning facility has those capabilities.”
It was announced in 2023 that two of the 14 projects that the Coral Research and Development Accelerator Platform (CORDAP) supported went to UNCW faculty to advance their coral reef research – a testament to the importance of their work and the progress made in recent years.
This followed a 2022 grant from the National Science Foundation that was awarded to Wendy Strangman and her team, which included Pawlik, to further their research on sea sponges and how they affect the health of coral reefs. Strangman is an associate professor in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, further showing the interdisciplinarity of the work on coral being done at UNCW.
Nearly $1.5 million of the CORDAP grant funds a multidisciplinary team using cutting-edge genetic engineering technology to identify and insert specific genes into corals in an attempt to make them more tolerant of rising water temperatures. The team combines Fogarty’s spawning and rearing expertise with Department of Biology and Marine Biology Assistant Professor Jake Warner’s newly pioneered techniques for genetically modifying marine organisms. The group also includes Department of History Associate Professor Nathan Crowe, whose background in the ethics of biotechnology will allow for risk assessments for the project and inform policymakers as they decide how to responsibly leverage the new technology.
The second award will fund the ongoing research of Assistant Professor Blake Ushijima, whose team is developing the first-ever probiotic treatments to protect against stony coral tissue loss disease. It's the only research of its kind in the United States.
“We’re one of the first people to be testing probiotics on reefs, so in terms of uniqueness, if you want to do coral probiotics in the U.S. you come here,” Ushijima said. “All of us are really focused on very specific parts of coral research, so there’s a lot to do. There’s not a lot of coral researchers here, but we’re doing a lot of coral research.” Ushijima also collaborates with labs at Nova Southeastern University as well as the Smithsonian, where he previously worked.
Ushijima says the number of students interested in marine biology is another factor in UNCW being an ideal place for this type of research. Fogarty’s lab alone has an army of around 20 students working in some capacity, including undergraduates, honors thesis students, graduate students and more.
“Our students want to be involved with marine projects and marine research. If they want to work in corals, it’s not just one lab – there are options,” Ushijima said. “If they want to work in coral physiology and reproduction, they can go to Fogarty’s lab. If they want to work with microbes, they can go to Ushijima’s lab. Or, in the case of one of our students, they can work on a project with both labs, looking at both coral reproduction and microbes.”
Originally from Hawaii, Ushijima’s passion for coral is deeply personal – a sentiment shared by his fellow researchers.
Ushijima: “I’ve personally seen reefs at home be destroyed, either by disease outbreaks or other anthropogenic factors like construction or building along the coast and causing runoffs, or dredging next to reefs, things like that.”
Pawlik: “Our passion is about what we are losing. Coral reef ecosystems are crashing all over the world.”
Fogarty: “Coral reefs are striking. They’re absolutely amazing! From the time I saw my first coral reef at a very young age, I fell in love and wanted to study them. Coral reproduction is something that most people will never see, and it truly is just an amazing phenomenon. Now what drives my passion is that I’ve been scuba diving for 35 years, and I think back and remember when the reefs were much better. That passion for wanting to try to restore them and save them is what keeps me going.”
To learn more about UNCW's research on coral conservation and restoration, visit the researchers' websites:
This article has the following tags: College of Science & Engineering Research & Innovation Area Innovation & Discovery