The Reef Systems Academic Unit (UASA by its name in Spanish: Unidad Académica de Sistemas Arrecifales) is an integral part of the Institute of Marine Sciences and Limnology (ICML by its name in Spanish: Instituto de Ciencias del Mar y Limnología) and it belongs to the National Autonomous University of México (UNAM by its name in Spanish: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México), and it was conceived to be a resarch unit for scientific studies, dissemination and awareness of science to the community, and teaching at the graduate level. We are located on the East coast of the state of Quintana Roo at the municipality of Puerto Morelos, which is surrounded and, at the same time, protected by a coral reef, underwater prairies and mangroves.

The main goal of our research is to understand the functional behavior of the coral reef and, through a constant monitoring, to obtain the necessary information to tailor protection and conservation strategies for this complex biological system. These latter being indispensible due to the negative effects of present natural and anthropogenic factors, some of enormous magnitude as global warming.