{"id":161037,"date":"2026-02-19T10:40:09","date_gmt":"2026-02-19T10:40:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/161037\/"},"modified":"2026-02-19T10:40:09","modified_gmt":"2026-02-19T10:40:09","slug":"penguins-help-lobby-for-coral-restoration-hurricane-protection","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/161037\/","title":{"rendered":"Penguins help lobby for coral restoration, hurricane protection"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Florida Aquarium<\/a> brought an interesting lobbying group to the Capitol on Wednesday.<\/p>\n

Four African penguins from the Tampa institution waddled the hallways: Archi, Enzi, Nuri and Pebbles. They attracted a lot of attention \u2014 to themselves, and to the aquarium\u2019s budget priorities.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe like to spread joy as well as awareness,\u201d said Katrina Cox, the aquarium\u2019s senior director of grants and government affairs, as Enzi and Nuri honked at visitors behind her.<\/p>\n

Her team is urging lawmakers to continue funding Florida\u2019s coral reef restoration efforts. The Florida Aquarium and other groups have applied for and gotten money<\/a> from a $9.5 million annual fund.<\/p>\n

Florida\u2019s reef has been damaged by increasing water temperatures, as well as disease, storms and pollution.<\/p>\n

The aquarium itself has been hit by storms \u2014 a couple of hurricanes in the last couple of years \u2014 and it wants to prevent risk to its animals. It\u2019s also requesting $1 million for a hurricane resiliency project.<\/p>\n

Last year, Gov. Ron DeSantis vetoed<\/a> $1 million the Legislature appropriated for the purpose.<\/p>\n

\"Nuri<\/p>\n

Nuri the African penguin on display at the Florida Capitol on Wednesday, Feb. 18, 2026.<\/p>\n

If you have any questions about state government or the legislative process, you can ask the Your Florida team\u00a0by clicking here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

This story was produced by WUSF as part of a statewide journalism initiative funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Florida Aquarium brought an interesting lobbying group to the Capitol on Wednesday. Four African penguins from the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":161038,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[232,234,233],"class_list":{"0":"post-161037","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tallahassee","8":"tag-tallahassee","9":"tag-tallahassee-headlines","10":"tag-tallahassee-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/161037","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=161037"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/161037\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/161038"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=161037"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=161037"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=161037"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}