Throughout many parts of Miami there’s a whole lot of coral growing at the water’s edge and no one knows that better than the coral-huggers at Coral Morphologic. We’ve written extensively about Core More over the years: first with some fantastic Caribbean zoanthids, an appearance on PBS, discoing up Miami with aquarium projections, discovering new species of Ricordea shrimp, discovering mutant Acropora in the Miami river and most recently with a TED presentation that pwns almost every aquarium talk we’ve ever seen. Seriously, is there any limit to what Coral Morphologic can do? Well apparently not because now they’ve been awarded a grant from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation but they still need support from the aquarium industry to pimp out American corals.
99.9% of the corals in American reef aquariums are from the Pacific Ocean but there’s lots of cool and unique species of soft and stony corals right in our own waters, and especially around Southern Florida and Miami. The first of Coral Morphologic’s aquarium art projects aims to create amazing coral displays at their studios from which a live feed will be sent to high definition televisions mounted around the Miami International Airport. From this humble beginning Coral Morphologic hopes to scale up and help to build excitement for the $275 million Miami Science Museum which is slated to be built in the heart of Miami on the shores of Biscayne Bay. The MSM is expected to open in 2015 with 800,000 gallons of aquarium water displaying a diversity of local marinelife.
Coral Morphologic’s mission has always been to help bring the attention of Miami residents to local marinelife but we think there’s a bigger picture at work here and that is to bring national attention to American reef life. By accurately representing the best of Miami’s biotopes we have faith that Coral Morphologic can elevate the status of American reef life not only in Miami but also in the rest of the country as well. However, Coral Morphologic’s grant to do this project is a matching grant, meaning that in order for them to receive funds from the Knight Foundation, they need to come up with a corresponding amount on their own.
In other words, they won’t simply be getting a $150,000 check so they will also be soliciting sponsorships from aquarium dry-goods manufacturers in the form of equipment, as these can be claimed as matching in-kind donations. These companies would be highlighted as the exclusive providers of the equipment in question (lighting, skimmers, pumps etc, etc) and advertised as sponsors of the project. Core More hasn’t yet begun soliciting companies, but will begin in the next several weeks with the exception being Two Little Fishies which has already signed on, and is an existing sponsor of Coral Morphologic/Morphologic Studios.
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