Center Overview

About Us

The Nova Southeastern University Oceanographic Center (NSUOC) is situated at Port Everglades in Hollywood, near Fort Lauderdale. It has a large marina, and its 10-acre campus is surrounded by water on all sides - affording immediate access to coastal and open ocean environments and ecosystems.

The NSU Oceanographic Center offers several academic concentrations in biological and physical oceanography. Students can choose from several areas of interest, including coral reel studies, modeling of large scale ocean circulation, coastal dynamics, ocean atmosphere coupling, benthic ecology, marine biodiversity, calcification of invertebrates, marine fisheries, marine microbiology, molecular ecology and evolution, and wetlands ecology.

An ideal location for students, scientists and faculty of oceanography, the Oceanographic Center is also home to several institutes: The National Coral Reef Institute for research and training on coral reef assessment, monitoring and restoration; the Guy Harvey Research Institute for fish research and conservation; and the Save Our Seas Shark Center specializing in providing accurate scientific information to government and international NGOs to guide better management, conservation and recovery of our global oceans in shark studies. An additional research initiative at the Center includes the Broward County Florida Sea Turtle Conservation Program, dedicated to the conservation and improved understanding of endangered and threatened sea turtles.

Information and solutions are needed to understand, conserve, sustain and restore the ecological integrity of our oceans, which are under threat from both global and local stressors. Research and education is critical to improving the world's understanding, management and conservation of these fragile and valuable environments.

The NSU Oceanographic Center is working to meet these needs and has established the Center of Excellence for Coral Reef Ecosystems Science (CoE CRES) Research Facility. The only research facility in the United States dedicated entirely to coral reefs, the CoE CRES will advance research, education and conservation efforts by providing new laboratories, training areas, equipment, conference rooms, offices, library and field staging area for current and new faculty, researchers, visiting scientists, post-doctoral fellows and graduate students.

The 86,000-square-foot CoE is to be located at NSU's Oceanographic Center and its National Coral Reef Institute (NCRI), on the Port Everglades side of the campus. Funded in part by a grant from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) at a cost of over $30 million, the research facility is expected to create 22 new academic jobs and 300 construction jobs; employ 50 graduate students; and preserve 22 existing academic jobs. Major goals include not only fundamental research, but also to finding management and conservation solutions to pressing coral reef issues. The Center of Excellence will open in mid 2012.

As one of NOAA's external Coral Reef Institute partners, NCRI has long supported NOAA's mission by providing outstanding scientific research to support federal, state and local management and conservation in providing local, regional, national and international research products that can offer solutions to the coral reef crisis. The new CoE provides both urgently needed state-of-the-art research facilities and consequently expanded scientific capacity.