New Smyrna Beach native Annie Morgan Roddenberry has been named as the 2025 recipient of Marine Discovery Center’s Rhizophora Conservation Hero Award.
MDC presents its Rhizophora Award to individuals and entities working to make a positive impact on the health of the Indian River Lagoon by demonstrating Marine Discovery Center’s mission “to protect and restore Florida’s coastal and Indian River Lagoon ecosystems through education, research and community stewardship.”
The award is the nature center’s highest conservation honor. It was presented during the annual ShORE Symposium in April at the Brannon Center.
A regional biologist with Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC), Roddenberry’s focus has been on aquatic habitat restoration and conservation. She attended New Smyrna Beach High School on the same grounds now occupied by Marine Discovery Center. Following her collegiate undergraduate and graduate studies, she became a biologist with FWC and assisted with the restoration of her former high school site as a salt marsh.
“This conservation award is a huge honor for me because I love the work I do,” said Roddenberry. “It’s rewarding because we’re making real improvements for wildlife and people with habitat conservation.”
Roddenberry recalls the local impact of the brown algae bloom in 2012 and how plants and animals in the lagoon were adversely affected. She credits the 2013 “Our Hands Across the Lagoon” event that created awareness of the lagoon’s role in this coastal community for stoking her interest in conservation.
“There were alarms going off in our community and people were asking what they could do to help?” said Roddenberry. “We needed a way to answer questions about the health of the lagoon in a conversation with scientists who have been doing work here for decades.”
An MDC employee in 2013, Roddenberry helped start the Indian River Lagoon Public Forum, which, two years later, became ShORE – Sharing Our Research with Everyone. She also helped launch and name MDC’s new Shuck and Share oyster recycling program in 2013.
As a new biologist with FWC in 2014, she led volunteers in planting MDC’s newly reclaimed salt marsh. By 2024, she was the lead FWC biologist on MDC’s most recent shoreline restoration project of its west-campus parking lot.
“It takes volunteers, community partners, scientists and students to do this conservation work,” she added. “It’s a unique situation for me to work in restoration to make these ecosystems better in my hometown and on a site where I did so much of my early learning.”
Roddenberry attends the ShORE Symposium each year to hear both professional and student presentations about Indian River Lagoon research, restoration and conservation. And she is pleased the event continues to attract community support as high school students and undergraduates have an opportunity to present their own research.
“I think people have more hope and optimism about the future of the lagoon with bright young minds working on solutions and solving problems,” she added. “Bringing students into the fold with new ideas for this work is really exciting.”
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