SUSiE Expeditions offers students a unique opportunity to join a live coral reef research expedition. Missions are 2-3 weeks aboard a 50’ sailing catamaran, with students commanding every aspect of the research, sailing and navigation.

Myself and co-founder, Jerah Coviello, celebrating SUSiE’s official recognition as a 501(c)3 registered Scientific Institute in 2014.

Myself and Dr. Mark Warner from University of Delaware demonstrate to students many of the current techniques used to study coral health and bleaching.

Students assemble a field laboratory and portable running seawater systems at the Exuma Cays Land and Sea Park. We teach them to execute a diversity of scientific techniques, from processing genetic samples of corals to measuring their physiology.

SUSiE students measure the ‘reflectance’ of live corals using a spectrometer. This technique, developed in my post-doctoral research laboratory, is the only non-destructive way to accurately measure coral bleaching.

A SUSiE student using a Diving PAM-fluorometer to measure the ‘health’ of coral fragments in SUSiE’s Fowl Cay coral nursery.

Each year, SUSiE students perform series of experimental trawls to estimate microplastic concentration in Exuma Sound. This complements microplastics / coral physiology experiments also performed during the expeditions.

Aboard SUSiE Expeditions 2015, we performed experiments to investigate the negative impact of microplastics on coral growth rates.

SUSiE alumni present results from our microplastics research at the American Society of Limnology and Oceanography Ocean Sciences meeting in New Orleans, LA, 2016.

In 2016, SUSiE designed an innovative experiment to utilize stable isotopes in the skeletal bands of coral cores to evaluate the role of sewage pollution in the historic decline of reefs within Elizabeth Harbour, Exuma, Bahamas.

Cores were drilled and removed from 9 colonies of the mountainous star coral (Orbicella faveolata) on reefs inside and outside the Harbour.

Student teams become proficient in assembling the pneumatic drill rig, drilling, and recovering long coral cores for stable isotope analyses

Students examine a core they collected. Cores are analyzed by colleague Dr. Dustin Kemp at the University of Alabama, Birmingham. Cores are CT-scanned to identify seasonal growth bands and evaluate historical growth. Skeletal samples are extracted from the bands and analyzed for stable nitrogen isotopes, to evaluate sewage pollution back through time, up to 30 years depending on core length.

To advance a new generation of ocean scientists and explorers.

Towards this mission, SUSiE Expeditions is 4 years, 5 expeditions, 6000+ nautical miles, 47 college alumni….and counting.