“Best fishes, Devon” Meet the Canon Fellow who opens hearts to coral reefs

“What you have to do is to get into the heart. And how do you get into the heart? With stories.” –  Dr. Jane Goodall, speaking at the World Economic Forum

Would you like a story that will get into your heart? Once upon a time, the reefs of Florida were an undersea paradise, vibrant forests of coral teemed with life. But over time they grew quieter and more fragile. Centuries to grow, a mere human lifetime to deteriorate. Now it fights for its life. 

This is not a fairytale. Florida’s coral reef is still the third largest in the world, but in just a few decades it has lost more than 90% of its coral cover. No, that’s not a typo. Ninety percent.

As a result, in 2015, Dr. Diego Lirman founded a coral restoration programme at the University of Miami’s Rosenstiel School of Marine, Atmospheric and Earth Science called Rescue a Reef (RAR) and by 2019, a partnership with Canon USA meant it could hire interns to support its work. Seven years on, these Canon Fellows are a cornerstone of RAR – not just as rookie marine scientists, but as storytellers, using Canon technology to bring the reefs to life.

Devon Ledbetter was a Canon Fellow in 2022. Today, she is a Senior Research Associate and Programme Manager at Rescue a Reef, responsible for onboarding and overseeing the new cohorts. “I think it's been our best year yet. We’ve had three of our top performing social media posts of all time this summer – all content produced by our Fellows,” she smiles. “They've just wrapped up, but we were so impressed that we’ve asked them to stay on as programme associates. That essentially means we're hiring them part time to continue working and creating content for us”.

Like so many marine scientists, Devon started diving young and had her first underwater camera put in her hands by her grandfather on a holiday, setting the ball rolling for a portfolio she has continued to build ever since. In fact, she was so determined to gain her certifications that at only 13 years old she constructed a full business case (including PowerPoint presentation!) for her parents, to convince them to allow her to join a liveaboard diving programme and become a scuba certified instructor. “I wouldn’t stop talking about it and I made this huge presentation for them. They bought it,” she laughs.

So, naturally, when the time came for Devon to go to college and choose a career path, it felt obvious that she would study marine science at the Rosenstiel School. Except, somehow, it didn’t feel quite right. “I’ve never really felt like I fit when it came to lab studies, doing research-based projects and STEM science classes,” she explains. “But I’d been in the water for a while and even if you're not knowledgeable on ocean ecosystems, it's easy to see they've been changing. I started to realise that I wasn't passionate about marine science in the traditional sense, I was more excited to find a way to bridge the gap between science and the public.”

As she was in the process of completing her dive instructor’s qualification, she came across the Rescue a Reef Canon Fellowship – “this awesome chance to finally find a niche where I could support marine conservation, but use my passion for communications to do it,” she recalls. “Opportunities that specific can be hard to find, but this gave me the chance to work underwater, plus learn skills in photography. I couldn't pass it up.”

She was interviewed by Dalton Hesley, Senior Research Associate at RAR, who is now Devon’s boss, and can remember the experience like it was yesterday, right down to the butterflies in her stomach. And she keeps this moment in mind as she sits on the other side of the table, interviewing students who are, as she was, desperate to be part of this unique programme – “It’s an incredible full circle moment”. Understandably, they will often ask what a working day will look like. “And we always chuckle to ourselves because every day is totally different.”

Some days she would find herself in the lab, working on coral restoration, others would be spent underwater, taking photos or at a desk colour grading them (“I’d never had any serious training in this until I was a Canon Fellow – colour correction teaches you a lot about patience!”). Other days were spent video editing or doing graphic design tasks for social media. Over the last two years, these tasks have grown in importance, with the latest Fellows taking over the RAR social accounts in their entirety and creating a complete content strategy for the organisation that has been a roaring success.

“Science communication is an emerging field,” Devon explains. “It’s very new and, traditionally, there haven’t been many opportunities to break into the field. But this is definitely changing”. Sadly, the greatest driver for this has been climate change and the need to tell stories of its effects in a way that both reaches and resonates. But working with RAR has taught her and the other Canon Fellows a great deal about what this takes, even going so far as to sign off her emails ‘Best fishes, Devon’. She knows that people will remember even the smallest details. And that matters.

“Twenty years ago, the role of ’Science Communication Specialist’ largely did not exist,” she adds. “But we’re realising that science has no value to society unless it is communicated”. These new scientists, including the Canon Fellows, will have a wide range of skills that simply weren’t needed in the past – everything from content creation and campaign strategy to community outreach and public speaking. But most important of all, stresses Devon, “these skills work with our passion to make a difference for our oceans and communities”. In other words, telling stories that reach hearts. 

We’re supporting efforts to save the unseen world of coral. Follow the progress of our work here.