Real Coral Reefs of Miami: A Q&A with the marine biologist behind a popular livestream

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Downtown Miami might not be the first place that comes to mind when it comes to coral. Yet the Magic City is bordered by two enormous national parks–Everglades National Park to the west and the busy waters of Biscayne National Park to the east. These protected areas bring an incredible amount of biodiversity right into the bustling metropolis–including coral reefs.

The Coral City Camera gives viewers an inside look at the ecosystem with a livestream of an urban reef located in the Port of Miami. The project is a public art and scientific research project by Coral Morphologic and produced with Bridge Initiative and Bas Fisher Invitational. The Coral City Camera first began in 2019 and its audience grew as COVID-19 lockdowns had thousands dreaming of life under the sea. It has spotted over 218 species of fish and sharks, and even manatees, dolphins, sea turtles, squid, and sea birds.

Popular Science spoke with marine biologist and Coralmorphologic director Colin Foord about this art and science project, whose motto and mission is “civic pride through biodiversity.” Answers have been condensed for clarity.

Laura Baisas: How did this project begin?

Colin Foord: I’m a marine biologist and I studied at the University of Miami. I have been growing corals for almost 30 years now, since even before I got to Miami. In high school, I was growing corals in my bedroom in New Hampshire. I wound up being a lot more inspired by artists and musicians at the school. Miami, at the time, was going through a renaissance related to Art Basel, and it was becoming a cultural hub of art.

Also, in Miami, nature doesn’t really have a clear boundary. We’re surrounded by it, and they’ve [corals] taken advantage of our taxpayer funded infrastructure to set up and thrive. So, the Coral City Camera was born out of this recognition that we have all this marine life right below the waterline in Miami, and nobody was even really paying any attention to it.

LB: What animals do you see on the camera?

CF: We’re unique in the fact that we have megafauna like manatees. Those are for sure charismatic. Who doesn’t like a manatee? Seeing sharks has been one of the more surprising things. There’s a lot of sharks that live there. Lemon sharks are cool because they’re like salmon. The females return to where they were born to pup and so this is clearly a nearby nursery area. It’s always surprising when we see sea turtles and dolphins. But I think one of the things that is also very, very cool about the site is that I’ve started to refer to it as the parrot fish capital of the world. We have so many parrot fish and they are a really important part of the ecological health of a coral reef. They eat the algae that competes with the coral.

a lemon shark swims over a coral reef, with several smaller fish below it — *A lemon shark swimming by Coral City Camera. CREDIT: Coral City Camera.*

LB: Why do corals live in the Port of Miami?

CF: There’s not very many places in the world where corals are pioneering into places that they previously couldn’t live before humans existed there and this happens to be one of them.

There are springs coming up throughout the bay so there’s much lower salinity. They also had to dredge the shipping channel because coral reefs were once a terror to ships. So now, every incoming high tide is bringing clear water from five miles offshore, straight into downtown Miami. It’s like a pipeline that’s bringing coral larvae and tropical fish. Then at low tide, it flushes a lot of nutrients in that water that’s good for the coral. As long as they’re getting that clean bath between this nutrient and phytoplankton, rich water.

Much of Miami Beach, the Port of Miami, and a lot of these islands are all dredged out of the muck to begin with. Because real estate is really what Miami has to sell, the only way to protect that waterfront real estate is building sea walls. These require cement and rock wrap to hold it all together, which then creates the hard substrate that the corals and marine life can colonize, so they actually have a place to live.

LB: What role do corals play in the ecosystem as a whole?

CF: So corals are community builders. They’re the first real estate developers on planet Earth. They build the homes and the structures that all the other fish and marine life are attracted to. They’re the original city builders.

What we see is that the camera basically has accomplished the same thing in building a human community. I describe it as kind of like a digital campfire.

a brown and red coral — *Numerous coral species including elkhorn, stag, and brain coral make up the reef in the Port of Miami. CREDIT: Coral City Camera.*

LB: How is this project aiding conservation research, especially as bleaching events continue to escalate?

CF: If you’re going to restore coral reefs, you need to select strains of corals that are going to be resistant to bleaching and stress. What we saw in the Coral City Cameras was that most of the corals that were native to the Port of Miami didn’t bleach in 2023 [when many of Florida’s corals bleached due to extreme heat.]

Most excitingly, we have that strain of stag for an elkhorn coral that are expressing genes that are related to resilience, and their microbiome is also quite different from the same species that are living offshore. So we’ve now clearly been able to identify that these corals are adapting. They are different. When they didn’t bleach in 2023 it really highlighted the fact that these strains that we have at the Port of Miami are probably some of the most valuable genetics of corals that we have in all of Florida, in the least expected place.

a manatee family swims by a reef — *Manatees, one of Florida’s most iconic animals, are also visitors to the reef. CREDIT: Coral City Camera.*

LB: Why do you think that livestream cameras like this are important for both humans and wildlife?

CF: It’s a technological reminder that we need nature in our lives. It uses technology to bring that nature directly into our offices, into our classrooms. It’s a very non-invasive way to appreciate nature. There’s no human underwater there. If we’re going to save the planet, I think a network of these live streaming cameras in nature is absolutely critical, because that’s how the world becomes smaller. It’s how people get invested in caring for a place that might not be in their own backyard. But it can become your virtual backyard. So when you have kids that can be engaged watching these happy, healthy creatures in nature.