About - Reef Discovery Center

About Our Center

History

Florida’s coral reefs have sustained extensive damage due to disease, pollution, ocean warming, and other environmental stressors. Numerous local and national organizations are working diligently to address these problems and to restore our reefs to their former glory. It takes an enduring collaboration between dedicated scientists, environmentalists, government agencies, and the general public to mitigate these threats. The Reef Discovery Center, a 501c3 nonprofit, has enthusiastically joined this effort.

RDC Timeline

Meet Our Team

Dr. Kirk Dotson

Founder, Board President

Kirk Dotson, a retired aerospace engineer, received his degrees from Texas A&M (BS) and Rice University (MS, PhD). He worked for 27 years at The Aerospace Corporation in El Segundo, CA, where he specialized in the analysis and prediction of rocket vibrations induced by aerodynamic and propulsion excitation.
Kirk is a member of the Southeast Florida Coral Reef Initiative (SEFCRI), the Florida Marine Science Educators Association, and the Economic Resilience Committee for the Fort Lauderdale Chamber of Commerce.
He is an active participant in SEFCRI Technical Advisory Committee meetings and enjoys following scientific research on coral diseases, corallivory, and reef restoration techniques.
Kirk is a director on three other boards: Rice Engineering Alumni Association, South Florida Association of Environmental Professionals, and Friends of North Beach Village. Finally, he is a member of United Way's philanthropic Alexis de Tocqueville Society, and is the founder of two permanent endowed graduate fellowships at Rice University: in Engineering and in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology.

Stacy Brown

Vice President and Treasurer

Stacy Brown is an ocean advocate, environmental educator and community connector with more than 15 years of non-profit management, finance and grant experience. She holds a BS degree in Marine Biology and is currently enrolled in a Master of Marine Science program at Nova Southeastern University.
For the past three years, she has served as CFO and Education Director for 1000 Mermaids Project & co-founded and served as CFO and Education Director for Ocean Rescue Alliance from 2020-2021 and has been instrumental in creating, researching and deploying over 70 artificial reef modules and educating thousands on the health of our reef systems. For the past five years, she has served as Operations and Development Director for Urban Farming Institute building more than 7 community or school based raised bed and hydroponic gardens, writing grants and managing day to day non-profit operations. She has presented at the Florida Artificial Reef Summit, Global Coral Reef Week and SDG 14 Planting Seeds Panel.
Stacy currently sits on boards for the Florida Food Policy Council, South Florida Association of Environmental Professionals, Urban Farming Institute and Dania Beach Marine Advisory and currently manages or participates in local community serving projects ranging from community and school garden building to oyster and coral nursery efforts and is a volunteer BleachWatch Instructor for Florida Department of Environmental Protection promoting coral reef protection.

Dr. Pamela Fletcher

Secretary

Dr. Pamela Fletcher has 30 years of experience working in the field of marine research and management in New England, Florida, Central America, and the Caribbean. Pamela’s background in policy and management are built on experiences as an employee of public and private organizations including a unique liaison role set between a public university and a federal research laboratory, and as a Fulbright Scholar. Much of Dr. Fletcher’s work is focused on facilitating the use of research data and information for management and science communications.
Pamela holds a BA in Marine Affairs, BS in Fisheries Science and Technology, MS in Management and Policy, and a PhD in Soil and Water Sciences.
Pamela’s doctoral research examined the use of decision support for coral reef and marine resource management melding science and policy concepts with social science. Dr. Fletcher currently focuses on the integration of biophysical, institutional, and human dimensions science for informed decision making. Current projects include marine and coastal conservation and management, and developing long-term monitoring to improve the understanding of ecosystem change and socio-ecological connections.
Pamela is committed to implementing and encouraging others to apply real-world strategies and solutions to the wise stewardship of shared resources for the benefit of people and the environment.

Dr. Jose V. Lopez

Director

Jose V. Lopez, PhD has been a professor of biological sciences at Nova Southeastern University’s Halmos College of Arts and Sciences (NSU HCAS) since 2007.
Jose’s research pivots on the action of genes/genomes, microbes and evolution. For over 25 years, his lab has applied genomics tools to address various specific questions in marine symbiosis, microbial ecology, forensics, metagenomics, and systematics/phylogenetics.
Jose is a co-founder of the nonprofit Global Invertebrate Genomics Alliance (GIGA -http://GIGAcos.org), and also works with the Earth BioGenome Project (EBP) (https://www.earthbiogenome.org/) and the Aquatic Symbiosis Genome (ASG) project funded by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation and the Wellcome Sanger Institute (https://www.sanger.ac.uk/collaboration/aquatic-symbiosis-genomics-project/). These parallel endeavors focus on genome sequencing and bioinformatics training to determine the whole genomes of diverse non-model invertebrate species, including corals and marine sponges.
A large portion of recent funding revolves around characterizing local water quality and environments with molecular techniques, such as understanding the basis of cyanobacterial bloom communities in the Lake Okeechobee watershed.

Dr. Abby Renegar

Director

Dr. Renegar is a research scientist at Nova Southeastern University Oceanographic Center in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. She presently manages the Marine Toxicology Laboratory and Coral Histology Laboratory as well as the Onshore Coral Nursery at NSU.
Dr. Renegar's primary research interest is experimental evaluation of the impacts of land-based sources of pollution and climate change on scleractinian coral biology and ecology. Her current research is focused on examining the acute and chronic effects of exposure to environmental contaminants, including pesticides, metals, petroleum hydrocarbons and UV filters on the health of scleractinian corals and other reef organisms.

Kyle Pisano

Advisor

Kyle Pisano is the Onshore Coral Nursery Manager for Nova Southeastern University Oceanographic Center in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Kyle’s primary focuses are coral aquaculture as well as recirculating aquaculture systems design & maintenance. Kyle handles the day-to-day logistics of keeping the coral nursery running as well as coordination for various laboratories and third party entities, such as environmental contractors and government agencies; Ensuring corals are handled with care and efficiency. Prior to moving to Florida from Massachusetts, Kyle worked in a large recirculating aquaculture farm that produces barramundi (Australian Seabass).
When not running the Onshore nursery for NOVA, Kyle also cares for many people's ornamental aquariums in addition to spending a good deal of time fishing the offshore waters of Broward county.

Interesting Fact

Did you know?

That’s a parrotfish ready to take a bite of algae growing on dead coral. Parrotfish teeth are incredibly strong. The dead coral that this “excavator” bites off with the algae gets ground up by a second set of teeth in the fish’s throat and is pooped out as sand!

Parrotfish are great at keeping the ocean floor clean of algae, so that corals can grow. However, it’s recently been discovered that they can be a problem when scientists attempt to restore reefs by putting laboratory-raised corals into the ocean.

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