The Caribbean Coral Reef Ecosystems (CCRE) program began with a collaborative field project conceived by six National Museum of Natural History scientists during the early 1970s. The scientists interests included a range of disciplines central to reef ecology, including: invertebrate and vertebrate zoology, botany, carbonate geology, and paleobiology.[1] The primary work site is the Carrie Bow Marine Field Station, a research station at Carrie Bow Caye (16°48′9″N 88°4′55″W / 16.80250°N 88.08194°W) on the Meso-American Barrier Reef in Belize. The program is an extended duration study of coral reefs, mangroves, sea grass meadows, and the sandy bottoms.[2] It has been a functioning research program since the early 1970s when it was called the Investigations of Marine Shallow-Water Ecosystems (IMSWE). [2]