Corals make up part of “the base of the ecosystem, all on the bottom,” said Bill Hoffman, Ph.D., manager of the St. Lucie Aquarium.
A batch of six Atlantic corals made their way to the aquarium 25 years ago last month in a partnership with St. Lucie and the Smithsonian Institution, which the county feted Aug. 22 and Aug. 28.
The aquarium opened for free to all visitors on Aug. 28, the exact day it opened with these exhibits in 2001. They continued showing before thousands, including 47,567 visitors between Jan. 1, 2025, and Aug. 27, according to St. Lucie Communications Director Erick Gill.
Alongside mangrove and estuary exhibits unique to them, the six exhibits gained through this partnership are “the world’s first living display of an Atlantic coral reef,” according to Hoffman.
Hoffman spent his morning near the Florida Atlantic University’s Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute collecting plankton samples. Throughout the day, he led visitors to the aquarium’s central laboratory, where he and Smithsonian workers tend to seagrass patches and a mangrove tree in tanks throughout. Part of his lunch break had him sorting through coral samples from the Gulf Coast. He recalled biologists “all the way up to Daytona” lacked the space to keep the plants that St. Lucie facilities could.
“I am not aware of any other place that carries the idea of simulating marine aquatic ecosystems,” Hoffman said. “I don’t think any of those places have a seagrass exhibit. None of them have a mangrove exhibit. I’m glad I was still figuring out how to keep mangrove trees alive and healthy.”
Friction, both in St. Lucie and Washington, D.C., led to the county aquarium’s acquisition of the reefs. They were first presented, according to Hoffman, in the Oceans Hall of the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History in 1980.
“I switched from the fish division and took over that exhibit back when it was in D.C. in 1993,” Hoffman said. His time as an aquarium educator near the National Mall would be cut short by inner turmoil.
The Oceans Hall closed in 1999 despite a five-year, “million-dollar renovation.” Real estate developer Kenneth E. Behring donated $100 million to the museum to establish its current Division of Mammals.
“There was a huge uprising in the Natural History museum,” Hoffman said. “It was mostly scientists behind the scenes saying, ‘you can’t have a Natural History museum without an ocean.’”
The Ocean, for Hoffman, floated a move to Fort Lauderdale before it pitched camp near the St. Lucie Smithsonian Marine Station, present since 1971. Its founder and director, Mary Rice (who died in 2021, aged 94), vouched for the Oceans Hall corals during its diaspora.
Rice spoke with advocates in D.C. to adopt the reefs. “Apparently, the county had been asking her, ‘hey, when’s the Smithsonian going to do something here (for) the community?’” Hoffman said.
From its founding, the Marine Station shared an inseparable link to Harbor Branch. With J. Seward Johnson, heir to the Johnson & Johnson consumer goods fortune, and submersible inventor Edwin A. Link founding it, the two, Hoffman said, also “invited” Rice and the Smithsonian to work in Fort Pierce.
That led researchers to make a home “out of a floating, (World War II)-era barge” in the nearby canal “for over two decades,” said Hoffman.
The intercession of then-County Administrator Doug Anderson and “an old-fashioned slideshow” from Hoffman’s mentor, algae researcher Walter Adey, Ph.D., convinced St. Lucie to make a home for the corals at the aquarium.
Two years passed as a “legal fight,” Hoffman said, between the Marine Station and Harbor Branch dragged on, with the latter unable to give the space needed for them.
Hoffman hopes to expand the aquarium’s space further now that time has passed with these corals in tow, something he explored since 2008. “What I wanted was not more aquarium’s ecosystems, per se, but I wanted a bigger space that would be marketable as a reception hall (and) lecture room.”
“This being my life’s work, I want to see it live on,” Hoffman said.