The Caribbean Coral Reef Ecosystems (CCRE) Program is a long term field site dedicated to investigations of coral reefs and associated mangroves, seagrass meadows, and sandy bottoms. Field operations are based at the Carrie Bow Cay Field Station on the Meso-American Barrier Reef in Belize.
Carrie Bow Cay Field Station serves as a permanent site in the Smithsonian's Tenenbaum Marine Obvservatories Network, a global-scale network of sites which spans latitudes and ocean basins. For over forty years, research at Carrie Bow Cay Field Station has focused on the topography, origin, geological development, and oceanography of the Meos-American Reef and its numerous islands, as well as the biodiversity, evolution, and ecology of its organisms and communities.
In the late 1960’s, a group of scientists from the National Museum of Natural History began to look for a Caribbean field site to establish a long-term and multi-disciplinary research program to further the understanding of shallow-water marine ecosystems. Their focus was the most diverse marine ecosystem on Earth: coral reefs. Surveys revealed that Belize represented a pristine location with a high diversity of organisms and reef types. In 1972, they located a small island in southern Belize and negotiated a short term lease with the island’s owners, Henry and Alice Bowman. The island sat adjacent to a reef tract that met the team's scientific requirements, and would later prove ideally situated for the study of nearby mangrove and seagrass ecosystems. The research station, and the relationship with the Bowman family, have lasted over 35 years and continue today.
In addition, comparative studies in other places in the Caribbean basin have been initiated or are planned. A modest sub-program of fellowship support is augmenting Smithsonian staff research under this program. Recent field work has included studies of the long-term climatic and human effects on coral reef biodiversity, making photographic and artistic records of plants and animals, work on an identification guide to reef plants, and collection and study of various species of reef plants and animals. Grants from the Exxon Corporation aided the program and in the early 1980's stimulated a new focus on the ecology of Caribbean mangrove swamp communities. This new program became known as the Smithsonian Western Atlantic Mangrove Program (SWAMP), with its logistical base at Carrie Bow Cay and nearby Twin Cays as the model mangrove system.
