Michael Crosby, CEO, Mote Marine Laboratory

August 2026 —In an interview with Invest:, Michael Crosby, CEO of Mote Marine Laboratory, discussed the impact of the new Mote Science Education Aquarium (SEA), the organization’s expanding research enterprise, and its vision for growing a marine science and technology economy in Southwest Florida. “The new International Marine Science, Technology & Innovation Park, combined with Mote SEA, is going to serve as that catalyst for the evolution of Southwest Florida into a Silicon Valley of marine science and technology,” Crosby said.

How has the opening of the Mote Science Education Aquarium impacted the organization?

The new Mote Science Education Aquarium, or Mote SEA, is the first step in achieving a much broader vision that we laid out about 10 years ago for the growth and impact of Mote Marine Laboratory and Aquarium. That vision focuses on restoring, conserving, and sustainably utilizing marine and coastal resources, not only in Florida but around the world, because Mote is a global research enterprise.

The heart and soul of Mote is groundbreaking marine science research. It always has been. We are over 70 years old, having started in 1955, and we have grown to a staff of more than 350, including over 45 Ph.D.-level scientists. With Mote SEA, we now have 10 diverse campuses throughout Florida, while our scientists conduct research and maintain partnerships around the world.

Until 1980, we were exclusively a marine research facility. At that time, the decision was made by Mr. William Mote, the organization’s namesake, that it was important for us to translate and transfer our science and technology development and research findings as a public service to increase ocean literacy and positively impact human society and the marine environment. That helps the broader public gain a greater appreciation for the importance of science and a greater understanding of the connections we all have with the ocean.

Since 1980, our aquarium has always been viewed and operated not primarily as an entertainment facility, although the public certainly experiences it that way, but as an informal science education experience. We needed to increase our ability to have that impact through education, public outreach, and ocean literacy.

The vision was to move the aquarium off City Island, one of our campuses at the tip of Longboat Key in Sarasota on Florida’s Gulf Coast, to a location that is much more accessible to a broader cross-section of Florida communities and visitors from around the world.

It has been a long road to achieve this, a long SEA voyage, if you will. We opened it to the public and cut the ribbon in October 2025. In an average year at our previous aquarium, we would welcome 340,000 guests. As of today, we are welcoming an average of 100,000 guests each month at the new Mote Science Education Aquarium. We have already broken past records and exceeded what our pro forma business model forecasted for the first year.

The focus of that facility, as the name implies, is science education. There are three state-of-the-art STEM teaching laboratories, specifically designed to deliver immersive education experiences for students in kindergarten through 12th grade. Across all of the disciplines of our marine research programs, we have 38 very diverse research programs and centers of excellence, from manatee conservation to biomedical immunology, molecular microbiology, ocean technology, artificial intelligence, coral restoration, and fisheries. These children have experiential learning opportunities that they would never have otherwise.

How are Mote’s research programs advancing in areas such as coral reef restoration, red tide mitigation, and marine biomedicine?

Now that we have moved the aquarium and given it a rebirth inland in a much more accessible area, we aim to evolve the 10.5 acres on City Island into a new International Marine Science, Technology & Innovation Park. It will be a collaboratorium and a hub for scientists, engineers, and entrepreneurs from around the world.

Our vision is to add another 10 or so Ph.D.-level scientists to the existing 45 we currently have, and another 100,000 square feet of research infrastructure as part of this innovation park. There will be two significant anchors to this new innovation hub. One will be a new center of excellence focused on derived products from the sea, which will bring together several existing research programs in molecular microbiology, immunology, marine biomedical research, and ecotoxicology. We will also be adding a medicinal chemistry laboratory.

The other center of excellence will focus on ocean technology and AI. We will expand our existing programs in manned and unmanned remotely operated and autonomous vehicles, including airborne, surface-driven, and subsurface platforms. We will enhance our robotics program, our sensor development program, and bring in significant components of both large language models and small language models for swarm technologies that allow autonomous vehicles to communicate with each other in real time.

That capability can help address many of the challenges we are facing in our oceans and coastal environments. Take harmful algal blooms, for example. Mote has two major multimillion-dollar funded initiatives focused on identifying and developing mitigation tools that can decrease the impacts of harmful algal blooms by killing harmful algae and denaturing toxins.

Once you have those tools, methods, and compounds, you need to know where to deploy them. Harmful algal blooms are three-dimensional features that move rapidly in time and space. You have to track them and identify them in real time. It is almost like a military operation, where you have to identify the target in three dimensions, make sure it is the target you want to address with these mitigation technologies, deploy those technologies, and then determine the impacts of the mitigation strategy.

Swarm technology is a very advanced new technology that we feel can have incredible positive impacts for dealing with everything from hazardous material spills to harmful algal blooms, and for helping restore coral reefs and seagrass beds. We will be expanding in all of these areas while also growing existing research programs such as seagrass restoration, coral restoration, genetics, and land-based sustainable marine aquaculture systems in recirculating systems that have zero impact on the environment.

Those systems can give the agriculture and ranching communities inland a whole new crop that they can grow with marine fishes and shellfish. That can help farmers and ranchers grow an environmentally friendly, sustainable new economy.

In the end, we envision that this new International Marine Science,Technology & Innovation Park will be the catalyst for attracting scientists, engineers, and entrepreneurs from around the world into this collaboratorium. The intellectual property that comes out of that will not only serve our goals of restoring, conserving, and sustainably using our ocean and coastal resources, but also serve as the foundation for growing a whole new marine science and technology-based economy.

What role does Mote play in the regional economy?

In 2017, our annual operating budget was about $20 million to $22 million. I had an outside consultant conduct an economic impact estimate because everybody talks about the economic impact of a business beyond its operating budget. At that time, the economic impact of that budget was $90 million for the broader Tampa Bay region.

Many people thought the aquarium had the biggest economic impact because of the tourists and visitors coming in. I asked them to break it down, and out of that $90 million impact, only $11 million came from the aquarium at that time. Nearly $80 million, or 90% of the economic impact, came from science and the spin-offs from that.

That is important because now that we have transferred the aquarium to the new Mote Science Education Aquarium, we are planning to expand this campus into an International Marine Science, Technology & Innovation Park. The Tampa Bay Business Journal did its own independent economic impact assessment of businesses, both for-profit and nonprofit. Mote was identified as the No. 1 nonprofit cultural organization for economic impact. Based on 2024 data, we had an $80 million revenue stream and more than $200 million in assets.

That was before Mote SEA even opened. Imagine what the economic impact of this independent nonprofit organization is now. It is pretty phenomenal. The new International Marine Science, Technology & Innovation Park, combined with the Mote SEA, is going to serve as that catalyst for the evolution of Southwest Florida into a Silicon Valley of marine science and technology.

What are your key goals and priorities over the next two to three years?

My key goals and priorities over that period are to develop the full build-out master plan for the International Marine Science, Technology & Innovation Park here on City Island, secure the funds we will need to build the new campus, add another 100,000 square feet of research infrastructure, and establish the two new centers of excellence that will anchor this area.

We want to break ground and have it begin operations within the next three to five years to fulfill this vision. We want Mote SEA to continue reaching millions of new people and individuals we otherwise never would have been able to reach.

We also want to continue enhancing the overall level of ocean literacy among the public and give hundreds of thousands of people every year the opportunity for experiential learning in marine science and technology. This helps them to gain a greater understanding of the connections we all have with the oceans, no matter where we live, and hopefully have a positive impact on the long-term vitality of our shared ocean resources. That is our mission.