The Florida RESTORE Act Centers of Excellence Program (FLRACEP), hosted at the Florida Institute of Oceanography (FIO), recently finalized a new 10-year Strategic Plan to support a resilient Gulf environment and economy. The next decade of Centers of Excellence projects will focus on research that generates long-term understanding of the West Florida Shelf and connected systems to support improved and dynamic management.

“Implementation of the FLRACEP Strategic Plan will provide local, regional and state resource managers with new understanding critical for managing complex linked ecosystems, including the Florida Shelf and Florida’s coasts and estuaries,” said Holly Greening, FLRACEP Program Management Team member and former Director of the Tampa Bay Estuary Program.

The key to this objective is funding short- and long- term research that focuses on processes. The plan includes scoping for synthesis projects, science-driven technology development to support improved monitoring and management, and science to support coastal sustainability and restoration.

Julien Lartigue, FLRACEP Program Management Team member and NOAA RESTORE Science Program Director, said: “We are looking forward to coordinating with the FLRACEP on the execution of this new strategic plan, which highlights shared interests with our program and the other Centers of Excellence in the Gulf such as understanding connectivity within the Gulf ecosystem, co-production, and synthesizing existing datasets.”

A summary of the first ten years of research is available on the FLRACEP website: https://florida-restore-act-centers-of-excellence-program-fio-maps.hub.arcgis.com/

About the Florida RESTORE Act Centers of Excellence Program

Funding for the Centers of Excellence and FLRACEP comes from the Resources and Ecosystems Sustainability, Tourist Opportunities, and Revived Economies of the Gulf Coast States Act of 2012 (RESTORE Act), which established a Gulf Coast Restoration Trust Fund in the Treasury of the United States. Florida Institute of Oceanography is the Gulf Coast State Entity responsible for administering FLRACEP. The program establishes Centers of Excellence in the State of Florida to conduct through a competitive grants process. To date, $10 million has been awarded to 10 Florida institutions to establish Centers of Excellence.

About the Florida Institute of Oceanography

The Florida Institute of Oceanography consists of 32 members including state universities. Established by the Florida Board of Governors and hosted by the University of South Florida, FIO provides support and shares marine science resources between the state’s universities and private, non-profit marine research entities. FIO operates the R/V Weatherbird II, R/V Hogarth, R/V Western Flyer, and the Keys Marine Laboratory (KML) in Layton, Florida.

Awards made are to the following lead investigators:

• Dr. Cameron Ainsworth, University of South Florida (USF), will work with a stakeholder group to utilize a Gulf of Mexico ecosystem model to determine the efficacy and combined effects of the Florida Trustee Implementation Group’s (FL TIG) restoration projects and inform future work.
• Dr. Brad Rosenheim, USF, will lead a project to evaluate natural and restored Gulf coast mangroves to determine the resilience and success of restored systems on a decadal time scale, including measuring carbon capture, to improve future restoration practices by partners at Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission and TerraCarbon LLC.
• Dr. Jessica Graham, St. Andrew and St. Joseph Bays Estuary Program at Florida State University Panama City, will lead a team of researchers and practitioners to assess the success, economic impact, and ecosystem services provided by living shorelines in the Panhandle Region to assist in restoration target setting. These two to three-year projects will begin in the spring.

“Understanding the collective effects of completed environmental restoration projects in the Gulf of Mexico is critical in designing new restoration efforts. This research will address important questions such as: Have these projects collectively ‘moved the needle’ toward sustainable habitat restoration? What restoration techniques have been most successful?” said Holly Greening, FLRACEP Program Management Team member and former Director of the Tampa Bay Estuary Program.

To date the FLRACEP has awarded over $10 million in research funding to ten institutions around the state for Centers of Excellence focused on increasing knowledge of fish, marine wildlife, and ecosystem health and function along the Florida Gulf coast to provide fundamental information to ensure Gulf health and resilience.

About the Florida RESTORE Act Centers of Excellence Program

Funding for the Centers of Excellence and FLRACEP comes from the Resources and Ecosystems Sustainability, Tourist Opportunities, and Revived Economies of the Gulf Coast States Act of 2012 (RESTORE Act), which established a Gulf Coast Restoration Trust Fund in the Treasury of the United States. Florida Institute of Oceanography is the Gulf Coast State Entity responsible for administering FLRACEP. The program establishes Centers of Excellence in the State of Florida to conduct through a competitive grants process. To date, $10 million has been awarded to 10 Florida institutions to establish Centers of Excellence.

About the Florida Institute of Oceanography

The Florida Institute of Oceanography consists of 32 members including state universities. Established by the Florida Board of Governors and hosted by the University of South Florida, FIO provides support and shares marine science resources between the state’s universities and private, non-profit marine research entities. FIO operates the R/V Weatherbird II, R/V Hogarth and the Keys Marine Laboratory (KML) in Layton, Florida.

Dr. Chris Stallings, USF, will lead this third phase of the “Spawning Habitat and Early-Life Linkages to Fisheries” (SHELF) project , which over the next 3.5 years will advance technologies used to collect and barcode fish eggs to improve our understanding of seasonal spawning dynamics and conduct a targeted study to link adult abundances to egg production. The research team will also conduct studies that help operationalize the application of these techniques across the Gulf and beyond.

 “Long-term monitoring is an essential tool to help us unravel complex patterns in species abundance and diversity relative to their environment. This project contributes to the data stream used to make us better managers of the Gulf’s important resources,” Dr. Bonnie Ponwith, Chair of the Program Management Team and former Director of NOAA Southeast Fisheries Science Center stated.

Originally awarded in 2016, with a possibility of up to 15 years of funding, the project has demonstrated continued progress through two external science reviews, even overcoming significant challenges due to COVID-19.

“When COVID prevented us from sending USF students to work in close quarters at sea, we found another source of fish-egg samples that were being housed at Stennis Space Center (Mississippi) by NOAA Fisheries. FIO and the FLRACEP Program Management Team allowed us to adapt the SHELF II scope of work to substitute these archived samples for samples that we would have collected ourselves. Of course, NOAA Fisheries was happy to have us apply our DNA barcoding method to their archived samples, so the end result was a win-win situation for everyone,” said Dr. Ernst Peebles, Associate Professor and lead investigator for SHELF I and II.

About the Florida RESTORE Act Centers of Excellence Program

Funding for the Centers of Excellence and FLRACEP comes from the Resources and Ecosystems Sustainability, Tourist Opportunities, and Revived Economies of the Gulf Coast States Act of 2012 (RESTORE Act), which established a Gulf Coast Restoration Trust Fund in the Treasury of the United States. Florida Institute of Oceanography is the Gulf Coast State Entity responsible for administering FLRACEP. The program establishes Centers of Excellence in the State of Florida to conduct through a competitive grants process. To date, $10 million has been awarded to 10 Florida institutions to establish Centers of Excellence.

About the Florida Institute of Oceanography

The Florida Institute of Oceanography consists of 32 members including state universities. Established by the Florida Board of Governors and hosted by the University of South Florida, FIO provides support and shares marine science resources between the state’s universities and private, non-profit marine research entities. FIO operates the R/V Weatherbird II, R/V Hogarth and the Keys Marine Laboratory (KML) in Layton, Florida.