Research & Projects
Research & Projects
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Conserving calcification: Integrating alkalinity enhancement into restoration of Florida’s coral reef
Conserving calcification: Integrating alkalinity enhancement into restoration of Florida’s coral reef
This collaborative project explores how Ocean Alkalinity Enhancement (OAE) can support coral and crustose coralline algae (CCA) calcification for climate-resilient reef restoration strategies and engages local and scientific communities. As a Smith Fellow, I am working with a range of academic and conservation organisations to ensure direct implementation of the results of this project. More updates coming soon!
Tracking Calcification: A novel Biogeochemical Tool for Reef Restoration
Tracking Calcification: A novel Biogeochemical Tool for Reef Restoration
During my Fulbright year, I worked with the Coastal Carbon Lab at Georgia Southern University and Mote Marine Laboratory’s International Center for Coral Reef Research and Restoration (IC2R3) to develop a novel biogeochemical method using alkaline metals to understand how different reef organisms contribute to community-level calcification. This approach provides a new way to evaluate how reef restoration sites are performing and how effectively restored corals are rebuilding reef structure. Read more about my year in the Keys.
Coral Observer
Coral Observer
A new digital tool for coral spawning research
A new digital tool for coral spawning research
Coral Observer is live! I am pleased to share the Coral Observer app, a new web-based app I co-founded with quantumweb, designed to engage dive professionals and citizen scientists in tracking coral spawning events. This tool helps fill critical data gaps and supports more effective reef protection and restoration planning. The app directly supports the Caribbean Coral Spawning Database (CCSD), a compilation of coral spawning data collected over the past ~20 years.
Read more about this project here.
Smithsonian Postdoctoral Research Fellowship 2022
Smithsonian Postdoctoral Research Fellowship 2022
Exploring the Impacts of Ocean Deoxygenation on Coral Health
In 2022, supported by a University of Glasgow–Smithsonian Institution Knowledge Exchange Award, a 6-month Smithsonian Postdoctoral Fellowship, and a grant from the Coral Conservation Society, I established a series of experiments at the Smithsonian Marine Station to investigate how ocean deoxygenation — the loss of oxygen from warming coastal waters — affects different life stages of Caribbean corals.
Our team examined larval settlement, early recruit survival, and adult coral metabolism across several key reef-building species. We found that low oxygen conditions significantly reduced the survival of early coral recruits in Orbicella faveolata and Colpophyllia natans, but not in Pseudodiploria strigosa — revealing clear species-specific differences in resilience. These results were published in:
📄 Mallon, J.E. et al. (2023). “The influence of deoxygenation on Caribbean coral larval settlement and early survival.” Frontiers in Marine Science, 10. https://doi.org/10.3389/fmars.2023.1254965
Building on this work, our second study explored how adult corals respond metabolically to declining oxygen. Over two weeks of controlled deoxygenation experiments, we found that while all species survived, they experienced sublethal shifts in photosynthesis and respiration, showing that even moderate oxygen loss alters coral metabolism. This paper was published in:
📄 Mallon, J.E. et al. (2025). “Sublethal changes to coral metabolism in response to deoxygenation.” Journal of Experimental Biology, 228(4). https://doi.org/10.1242/jeb.249638
To share this research with a wider audience, I also wrote a feature article for The Conversation, discussing why oxygen loss is an emerging but often overlooked threat to coral reefs, and how understanding it is critical for reef conservation and restoration.
📰 Mallon, J.E. (2022). “Why oxygen loss could be the next big threat to coral reefs.” The Conversation. Read the article →
Together, these studies shed new light on how deoxygenation influences coral resilience from early life to adulthood — helping to inform strategies for protecting and restoring coral reefs in a rapidly changing ocean.
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