Project Grant NA10NMF4630072

This $199,676 National Science Foundation project grant supports research on the impact of the loss of the keystone sea urchin species Diadema antillarum on Caribbean coral reef community structure and function. The award period is from September 1, 2022 to August 31, 2023. The grantee, Florida International University, will utilize innovative imaging tools and spatially explicit analyses to quantify fine-scale temporal changes in the community composition, size distributions, and spatial...

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration awarded $1,437,229 to the Puerto Rico Department of Natural and Environmental Resources on October 1, 2025, under the Coral Reef Conservation Program (CFDA 11.482) for coral reef conservation and management activities through September 30, 2027. The recipient will enhance coral reef conservation and management through program management, administration, priority area management support, monitoring, emergency response coordination, and education...

The National Science Foundation Division of Emerging Frontiers awarded the Regents of the University of Michigan $932,086 on December 15, 2025, to reconstruct the environmental and ecological history of Caribbean and Great Barrier Reef corals using paleoenvironmental and paleometagenomic approaches under the Biological Sciences program (CFDA 47.074). The research will measure the chemical composition of coral skeletons from their earliest growth to the present day to establish a history of...

This two-year, $299,082 National Science Foundation Division of Ocean Sciences project grant will support research into using ancient DNA to illuminate the fate of Caribbean coral reefs. The principal investigator at the University of Texas at Austin will expand on prior work demonstrating the ability to sequence ancient DNA from coral fragments up to 6,000 years old. The project will compare corals and their microbes from Florida and the U.S. Virgin Islands over the past few thousand years,...

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) awarded a $5,000,869 Cooperative Agreement under the Habitat Conservation Federal Grant Program (CFDA 11.463) to Sea Ventures Inc., a small disadvantaged, veteran-owned business in Fajardo, Puerto Rico. The grant will fund the largest single-site coral restoration project in Puerto Rico, focused on propagating threatened elkhorn coral and developing a coral gene bank to preserve genetic material. The project will also include K-12...

The National Science Foundation Division of Materials Research awarded $430,420 to the University of California, Santa Barbara on July 1, 2026, under the CAREER program (Mathematical and Physical Sciences, CFDA 47.049) to identify material properties that accelerate coral cell growth and develop biomaterials to enhance coral skeleton formation. The project applies knowledge from human bone repair biomaterials to coral restoration, engineering scaffolds that manipulate porosity, stiffness, and...

The National Science Foundation Division of Ocean Sciences awarded The University Corporation $751,910 on August 1, 2026, to investigate ecological mechanisms preventing coral population recovery in the US Virgin Islands under the Geosciences program (CFDA 47.050). The research extends a 39-year coral reef monitoring time series and tests six integrated hypotheses within a hierarchical ecological framework to explain persistent low coral abundance on reefs. The project combines fieldwork at...

This Project Grant from the National Science Foundation's Biological Sciences program (CFDA 47.074) provides $767,109 to the University of Southern California from September 2022 through August 2025. The grant supports research into the role of adaptive plasticity in coral response to climate change. Specifically, the university will investigate the mechanistic basis and ecological consequences of morphological plasticity in the foundational Caribbean coral Acropora cervicornis. Researchers will...

This National Science Foundation (NSF) Geosciences program Project Grant of $328,414.00 awarded to Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences in East Boothbay, Maine will fund collaborative research to reveal the changing trophic niches (feeding behaviors and diets) of large herbivorous fish on modern coral reefs. The objectives are to (a) define the feeding behaviors and diets of herbivorous fishes on healthy coral reefs using traditional and cutting-edge techniques to better quantify resource...

This Project Grant award from the National Science Foundation's Geosciences Program (CFDA 47.050) supports research examining how chemical interactions between coral reef organisms, including corals, macroalgae, and encrusting algae, contribute to the success and biodiversity of economically important coral reef ecosystems. The $1,309,859 award to the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution aims to advance the understanding of contact-free, chemically-based interactions between benthic organisms on...