To connect, empower, and elevate coral reef professionals at every career stage — from students and early-career researchers to seasoned scientists and leaders — helping them advance their careers, share knowledge, and collaborate to protect coral reefs worldwide. At its heart, the Hub exists to preserve and conserve coral reefs by empowering the people who dedicate their lives to studying, protecting, and restoring them. When coral reef researchers succeed, reef conservation succeeds.

The Coral Reef Research Hub is THE career development and global professional networking hub for coral researchers, early-career scientists, and other reef specialists. Built by coral reef scientists for coral reef scientists, the Hub combines connection, mentorship, opportunity, and collaboration — creating a thriving global ecosystem that supports both professional growth and the preservation of the world’s reefs.

We benefit those in every career stage

Early-career researchers

Gain mentorship, training, and access to jobs, grants, and collaborations that turn passion into impact.

Mid-career professionals:

Expand your network, refine your career path, and build leadership skills to scale your conservation work.

Established experts:

Share your experience, mentor the next generation, promote your research, and find bright new minds to collaborate with.

Together, these groups form the backbone of a connected, purpose-driven community that bridges every career stage — making the Hub a truly global professional ecosystem driving reef conservation forward.

How do we differ from legacy social media?

Regular social media functionality is not built to allow easy networking and is filled with paid promotions. It also uses algorithms that choose what content you see, and due to this posts seemingly disappear as soon as you’ve seen them. Ever tried looking for a post you saw yesterday because you want to show a friend? It can be a very frustrating process!

Our community site improves on networking with detailed and searchable profile fields, has zero advertising and does not use algorithms to decide what posts you see. Posts display in the order they were posted, and do not change order based on posted comments or popularity. They are always right were you last saw them!

What else do we currently offer?

Aside from networking we also provide a number of other premium career development services designed to try and help you on your professional coral journey. Coming out of University and wanting to get into this highly competitive field, or already being in it and wanting to develop your career, is not easy. To try and help with this we provide up-to-date career opportunity postings, mentorships, knowledge sharing masterclasses, small research grants, courses, publication hosting and more. These services are going to be expanded on and added to over time, and with our app launch on the horizon, this year is set to be an exciting one!

What future services will be offered?

As we develop and grow we are currently looking to attract coral reef employers to our site, who will use our platform to find potential employees or contract personnel. As an employer they will have access to enhanced profile search features and will be able to get in touch with you directly via our messaging service if they feel you would be a valuable asset to them. Over the coming years we hope to become the go-to place for coral reef researchers to be head-hunted!

Is it free to join?

Yes, we have a free membership tier that gives you access to the community networking pages of our site. From here you can search for and message other members as you need. We also have paid membership levels that provide access to the premium career development content mentioned above. Click the button below for a breakdown of what is included with the different membership tiers.