To view the Making of DiveBar Reef video click here.
The DiveBar Reef has been featured in the Sun Sentinel and on the cover of the FL Bar News.
In partnership with Nova Southeastern University’s Oceanographic Center (NSUOC), DiveBar has created DiveBar Reef! Located within the nearshore environment of Broward County, Florida, DiveBar Reef was created utilizing staghorn coral fragments removed from corals grown within NSUOC’s offshore nursery. In just the first two months of 2014, DiveBar members and sponsors outplanted over 650 nursery coral fragments to create DiveBar Reef on an otherwise barren strip of reef. As these outplanted corals grow, DiveBar Reef will transform a limited reef into a complex three dimensional living structure, providing habitat for reef fishes and other members of the reef community, including a multitude of vertebrate and invertebrate species. It will also help restore the reef system that our community relies on for food, recreation, and income. By utilizing multiple genotypes we increased the likelihood of successful cross fertilization during annual spawning events which in turn increases population genetic diversity. As these corals grow they will promote species recovery through increasing natural population size and the likelihood of successful sexual reproduction. This project will provide important information on the effectiveness of utilizing the asexual fragmentation capacity of A. cervicornis to facilitate population recovery through the outplanting of nursery grown corals. NSUOC will collect data on the survival of the outplanted colonies and the relative change in fish populations across DiveBar Reef. After DiveBar’s April outplanting dive, DiveBar Reef will have over 1,000 corals thanks to the financial support of DiveBar and the hard work of its members and sponsors.
