Coral City, Urban reef, Miami Live Cam

The Coral City Camera is an underwater camera streaming live from an urban reef in Miami, Florida. It is located along the shoreline at the east end of PortMiami in about 10’ (3m) of water. It was deployed by Coral Morphologic as a hybrid art-science research project produced with Bridge Initiative and Bas Fisher Invitational and initially funded through grants awarded by a Knight Arts Challenge grant from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, and an Art Works grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.

The Coral City Camera provides a fish-eye view into the urban marine ecosystem that has developed around the human-made shorelines of Miami. The project was launched with the idea that the incredible biodiversity living just below the waterline in Miami should be a point of civic pride that engages the public to protect what they know and love. The riprap boulder shoreline along PortMiami demonstrates that human infrastructure can offer imperiled species with refuge and functional habitat in unexpected urban locations as well as serve as conveniently accessible research sites.

While the abundance of fish and marine life makes for a real-life aquarium screensaver you can enjoy all day, the Coral City Camera also serves as a valuable scientific tool to monitor the health and wellbeing of this underwater life in a non-invasive fashion. Coral Morphologic is working with ACCRETE from NOAA to sample and record the site’s water parameters while using the camera as a research tool to monitor a coral nursery that houses fragments of brain corals (Pseudodiploria strigosa) from urban habitats in order to investigate their resilience. We are also working with Rescue-a-Reef from the University of Miami to use the site to identify the hardiest genotypes of staghorn (Acropora cervicornis) and elkhorn (Acropora palmata) corals that have been propagated in their offshore nursery in Biscayne National Park.