From CCMI & Little Cayman Research Centre

REEF-CAP ’25: OUR YEAR IN REVIEW

2025 has bought some of CCMI’s biggest successes to date, opening the door for a new chapter and an exciting 2026!  In the last quarter of 2025, we purchased the property next to the Little Cayman Research Centre through the funds raised over the last two years for the Coral Fund, putting us years ahead of the original plan to build a new facility from scratch! This was followed by a record-breaking Festival of Seas gala, which means that in 2026, we can support every year 6 child in government school in the Cayman Islands with the residential trip to CCMI.

As the year comes to a close, we are grateful for our supporters that have got us this far. Now we look to the opportunities of next year, you can support this next step by donating to CCMI’s amends on the new facility – help us to create a world-class marine education and research space that will serve up to 800 students and researchers each year!

CONTENTS

In this newsletter, we cover: 

• This Year’s Big News
• Research and Conservation 2025
• Education Successes
• Coral Fund Capital Campaign Updates
• CCMI Giving Corner – Donating Stock
• Notes from the Field Station
• CCMI Online Store
• Featured Partner: BDO
• CCMI Scientific Publications

CCMI BIG NEWS

This year’s Festival of Seas gala was more than a fun opportunity to connect with stakeholders and supporters, thanks to all that attended, we raised a total of US $469K plus a further US $15K from VIP supporter donations. 

The masked ball resulted in a fantastic evening – but most importantly, we made significant headway into being more impactful as an organisation. At the Festival of Seas, we launched our goal to support every Year 6 student from a Cayman Islands public school with a residential trip to CCMI. This would impact approximately 400+ students each year. We currently up support approximately 80 students (plus chaperones) who receive all-expenses-paid scholarships to attend the MEC, so the increase is significant. 

This early marine sustainability education is vital to connect students with the ocean and develop their ocean literacy. Thanks to the success of the Festival of Seas, plus our dedicated sponsors (this programme has been running since 2009!), we will be able to achieve this goal in 2026.

At Festival of Seas, CCMI shared the new video: “Learn. Advocate. Act.”, highlighting the unique moment we are in – and the urgency of acting now for the future of the ocean and coral reefs.

Join us in our new campaign: Learn. Advocate. Act. Together we can have a profound and far-reaching impact for the future of our ocean and coral reefs.

CCMI ACQUIRES ‘ROCK BOTTOM’ PROPERTY

WE’RE DOUBLING OUR CAPACITY FOR RESEARCH AND EDUCATION AHEAD OF SCHEDULE!

On 31st October, CCMI completed the purchase of Rock Bottom, a 6,000 sq. ft. building on one acre of land that is located adjacent to the current facility on Little Cayman.

Many thanks to our donors who supported the Coral Fund capital campaign the last few years, helping us raise almost US $2 million! Because of your support, we were able to complete this purchase in a very short time, rather than pursue our original plan to construct a new facility, and we are expanding our work much sooner than originally planned!

READ MORE ABOUT OUR NEW FACILITY!

If you or your company would like to know more about supporting the Coral Fund to help us make the necessary updates to ensure this new facilities is a fully functional education and research space, or if you would like to donate via bank transfer, contact us today!

RESEARCH AND CONSERVATION 2025

CCMI’S research team successes for 2025 include the completion of a 3-year Dawin+ project to map offshore seamounts and the delivery of a seamounts chapter for the Cayman Islands Biodiversity Action Plan, Wheaton Women in Ocean Science Scholars, exciting new discoveries for climate change mitigation and signs of hope after extreme bleaching through our Healthy Reefs Programme.

This year’s Healthy Reefs surveys in Little Cayman gave us critical insight into signs of recovery after 2024’s data showed us the extent of damage done to biodiversity on Little Cayman’s reefs after the 2023 global coral bleaching event. Although coral cover remained well below pre-bleaching levels of 26%, overall it had increased from its lowest in 2024 (9.8%) to 13.4%.

Excitingly, individual site analysis revealed some sites that showed no loss in coral over the 2023 marine heatwave and others that have shown high resilience through significant coral recovery from 2024 to 2025.

Blue Carbon Offset and Biodiversity

This project aims to investigate the capacity of corals and seagrasses to sequester carbon and determine the potential for using coral restoration near seagrass meadows to increase carbon sequestration and promote biodiversity. 

In 2025, this project has delivered some exciting results, including:

• Measuring the amount of carbon stored in Little Cayman seagrass meadows, which was higher than the regional average

• Identifying that outplanting coral within and near seagrass meadows does increase the amount of sediment accumulated within the meadow and thus likely increases the amount of carbon sequestered by the seagrass.

Excitingly, these results suggest that strategically locating coral restoration efforts within or nearby seagrass meadows could improve the amount of carbon sequestered and thus the climate change mitigation capacity of seagrass habitats. Specifically in relation to Little Cayman, this carbon sequestration capacity is already above the regional average, thus, if combined with coral restoration, these habitats could be a significant player in blue carbon offset in the Cayman Islands. 

These results and the final project report will be released in 2026. Read more about the project on our website.

This project is made possible by the support of Butterfield.

In other exciting news, the construction of our new National Science Foundation-funded marine wet lab is underway. We aim to finish the build in early 2026. Watch this space for further updates in the new year.

Read more about CCMI’s other ongoing research projects including our climate-smart restoration programme and Healthy Reefs in the research section of our website.

EDUCATION 2025 SUCCESSES

This year, more than 100 scholarship students passed through the doors of CCMI’s research station on residential courses. These memorable experiences give participants the chance to engage with and learn about their marine environment in ways they often haven’t before. Breaking out from the typical classroom, these immersive education experiences build the connection to the ocean and foster environmental stewardship.

2025 was also our education team’s biggest year since Covid for international university courses. The team hosted students from different universities from around the world, including The University of Charleston, Dartmouth College, and Indiana University

Ocean Outreach with Uli Kunz and Doug Allan

1,000 people engaged in ocean stewardship in October 2025 

In the last two weeks of October 2025, CCMI’s outreach team, aided by professional ocean communicators Uli Kunz and Doug Allan (OBE), delivered interactive and visually stunning talks to over 1,000 students and local stakeholders, including the sustainability champions within the local government.  

Emotional connection to the ocean and its inhabitants is a proven method of engaging people to take better care of the environment. Now, more than ever, this connection is crucial to the future of coral reefs.

WATCH PAST REEF LECTURES

New additions to CCMI’s Education Team

Anna Berry and Elsa Chaucesse joined CCMI on November 17th as our new Education Assistants.

Anna joined us from Scotland, has an MS in marine biology, and is a PADI dive instructor. 

She has a lot of experience as an environmental educator in Thailand and the Philippines, and grew up diving and snorkeling in the coral reefs of Zanzibar.

Elsa joined us from the Maldives, where she was a divemaster, educator, and naturalist. With a background in communications, she climbed the ranks of an NGO in France to lead their Impact and Communications department, but left that world behind to pursue full time her passions in marine conservation and educating the public about the environment.

To read the whole article go to: REEF-LECTIONS