Scientists' Corner

The working field site where marine biologists have been running coral health transects since the early 2000s. Permanent monitoring plots, temperature loggers anchored to the seafloor, and coral colonies tagged with numbered plaques make this look less like a dive site and more like an open-air laboratory. The question the data is trying to answer: why does this reef outperform every other Caribbean system — and can whatever protects it here be engineered or replicated elsewhere? Divers share the water with researchers mid-survey. The giant brain corals here are the largest documented specimens in the Mesoamerican system.