In mid-January, I hopped on a boat from a Key West, Florida, harbor with my colleagues from the Natural Resources Leadership Institute. As the sun rose higher in the morning sky, we diligently applied sun lotion and pulled on wetsuits, organizing our snorkel gear and flippers.

We met in Key West to learn where the marine protected areas around the Keys were located and also how they came into being – a result of stakeholder groups working together for years to hammer out the final maps. Now, we motored out to the protected reefs themselves to see what the anglers, divers, scientists and others had worked so hard to conserve.

Read the rest at the Duke Nicholas School of the Environment!