Florida’s Coral Reef is in trouble—but hope is on the way in the form of nearly 1,050 coral babies spawned and raised at The Florida Aquarium. Wednesday, the Aquarium’s Coral Conservation team transported the young elkhorn corals to the Florida Keys, where they’ll be planted on the reef or nurtured in ocean-based nurseries. The corals will help to bring new life to one of Florida’s most important marine ecosystems—providing shelter for marine life, protecting coastlines from hurricanes, and supporting the state’s recreation, tourism, and fishing industries.

Timely Response to a Global Coral Crisis

The coral transfer comes at a critical time amid the fourth and most severe global bleaching event in history, and it’s not clear when the current crisis will end. According to the International Coral Reef Initiative (ICRI), 84% of the world’s coral reefs have been affected since January 2023. Coral bleaching—often caused by ocean heat stress—results in corals releasing the algae they depend on for survival, leaving them vulnerable to disease and even death.

These baby corals, all born in 2022 and 2023 at the Aquarium, came from rescued parent colonies originally from Florida’s Coral Reef. Their parents were brought to safety to ensure their survival at The Florida Aquarium’s Coral Conservation and Research Center in Apollo Beach before the devastating 2023 mass bleaching event hit—the worst on record. 

“The summer of 2023 was devastating to Florida’s elkhorn coral population.” said Keri O’Neil, Director of the Aquarium’s Coral Conservation Program. “The coral juveniles we just transferred are made up of many new mother and father combinations that we hope will be more resilient to future stressors. Without human intervention, these parent corals would not be able to breed due to the extent of the loss. They’re a sign that, even during a crisis, we can make a difference. By working together, we’re protecting a reef that’s essential to our environment, our economy, and the thousands of species that call it home.”

From Apollo Beach to the Keys: A Journey to Revitalize Florida’s Coral Reefs

The special delivery rolled out of The Florida Aquarium’s Coral Conservation and Research Center in Apollo Beach earlier this week. Biologists and volunteers carefully packed and loaded hundreds of elkhorn corals into coolers, kicking off a road trip to the Florida Keys to support critical reef restoration efforts.

The destination: Keys Marine Laboratory (KML) on Long Key, operated by the Florida Institute of Oceanography at the University of South Florida. Once there, the coral babies were gradually introduced to KML’s temperature-controlled seawater systems to acclimate before being distributed to restoration partners:

• Coral Restoration Foundation
• Mote Marine Laboratory
• Reef Renewal USA
• Sustainable Ocean and Reefs (SOAR)

Each organization received approximately 300 young corals, with SOAR receiving 100. These corals will eventually be planted on reefs within NOAA’s Mission: Iconic Reefs, one of the world’s most ambitious coral restoration projects, targeting seven critical sites in the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary.

The juvenile elkhorn corals delivered were collected, spawned, and reared with support from the NOAA Restoration Center, the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, the NOAA Coral Reef Conservation Program, and the National Marine Sanctuary Foundation.

“Florida’s Coral Reef is facing an unprecedented crisis. Warming waters and past bleaching events have put this vital ecosystem on the brink,” said Dr. Katey Lesneski, Research and Monitoring Coordinator for Mission: Iconic Reefs. “The Florida Aquarium’s work to raise and restore genetically diverse, resilient coral is a critical part of our collective fight to protect Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary.  That’s why we support projects like this—not only to help preserve coral species at risk of extinction, but also because they give us hope for the future.”

The Florida Aquarium’s Coral Conservation and Research Center is one of the largest land-based coral propagation facilities in the country, dedicated to breeding and raising genetically diverse corals for reef restoration. In addition to the juvenile corals, the Aquarium also provided about 40 fragments from original parent colonies to help partners continue growing new colonies in the field.

Funding for KML’s restoration seawater tables was made possible by the Florida Department of Environmental Protection’s Office of Resilience and Coastal Protection, in partnership with Monroe County.

Visit The Florida Aquarium’s website for more information about the Coral Conservation Program, or Mission: Iconic Reefs.

If coral larvae responded to advertising, Dr. Mark Ladd’s pitch could go something like this:

Pssst. I see you drifting by looking for a place to settle, and boy, do I have a deal for you! It’s a modern one bedroom with a couple of PVC tiles that look just like those hard, rock-like surfaces you favor in the wild, and some shaded over-hangings to protect you from things that want to eat you. It’s a great place to start a colony of your own. You know, build out the whole suburban lifestyle. We have a five-star guest rating online so, what do you say?

Ladd’s B&B is part of a research project for Mission: Iconic Reefs, a large-scale NOAA-led and partner-driven coral restoration initiative in NOAA’s Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary. The dwelling structures, called calcification accretion units (CAUs), mimic the places larvae settle naturally before growing calcium carbonate structures that become coral reefs. CAUs are left on the seafloor for up to a year, and then retrieved for scientists like Ladd to record the number of coral recruits and the weight of calcified material that accumulated on the tiles.

“We are interested in coral recruitment because this is a fundamental process for the persistence of coral populations on reefs,” said Ladd, a coral research scientist and lead of the Coral Ecology Unit at NOAA’s Southeast Fisheries Science Center in Miami.

Mission: Iconic Reefs is only five years into its 20-year plan to outplant five million corals on seven important reefs in waters many call the fishing and diving capitals of the world. Coral reefs are the foundation for the state’s recreation and tourism industry, which generates over $2 billion and 20,000 jobs annually in the Florida Keys.

Ladd is interested in understanding how these restoration efforts impact coral populations’ ability to be self-sustaining through sexual reproduction. The recent deployment of more than 30 CAUs at Horseshoe Reef and Cheeca Rocks will establish a baseline—a “before” snapshot—for comparison with future measurements taken after outplanted corals mature and spawn on their own.

“This will allow us to measure if and how restoration efforts influence coral recruitment in the future,” Ladd explained. “The experimental design for the tile deployments lets us assess coral recruitment across Mission: Iconic Reefs sites as a whole; across different habitats, like forereef terrace vs. patch reefs; and among reef sites. We are also deploying tiles in control and restored plots at Mission: Iconic Reefs sites, thus allowing us to test if restoration has an effect on coral recruitment at smaller scales.”

 Ladd and Dr. Jenny Mallon, a post-doctoral research fellow from Nova Southeastern University, teamed up with Mission: Iconic Reefs field team members to deploy the tiles inside sanctuary waters in the Florida Keys.

 “We are looking for relatively clear spaces, free of larger types of algae and soft corals that could physically interfere with the recruitment process on these tiles,” said Shane Gallimore, a marine stewardship and monitoring specialist who took part in the work. Across all seven Mission: Iconic Reef sites,  252 tile units will be established across 63 plots.

“This type of research is important because it helps us quantify coral recruitment and determine what, if any, bottlenecks exist in the process,” said Dr. Katey Lesneski, research and monitoring coordinator for Mission: Iconic Reefs. “For example, if there are low rates of reproduction, there would be little to no recruits found in these tiles. If there is adequate reproduction and we find recruits on the tiles but not on nearby reef structure, either the natural reef structure is not suitable habitat, or another cause of early mortality, like predation, is present. From there, we can consider interventions such as increasing the density of reproductive-sized colonies, or improving the amount of suitable habitat especially around the spawning season.”

The health of coral reefs is a leading indicator for the economic outlook of fishing, diving, and other marine recreational activities. NOAA is investing in Mission: Iconic Reefs through several programs, including its National Marine Fisheries Service, Coral Reef Conservation Program and the Office of National Marine Sanctuaries.

Florida Keys coral restoration groups and scientists from Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary planted resilient, heat-resistant species of coral at Carysfort Reef on February 28, 2025 commemorating the fifth anniversary of the sanctuary’s Mission: Iconic Reefs program. The bold undertaking encountered a major challenge due to a marine heat wave in the summer of 2023 that caused devastating mortality at many restoration groups’ in-water coral nurseries and areas of the Florida reef.

From that challenge, though, came hopeful discoveries regarding coral survival in the
face of future climate change, researchers said, adding that coral reefs around the world
are also confronted with such issues.

“They’re actually using genets, or clone lines, of coral that we know are resistant to heat
stress,” said Dr. Katey Lesneski of the divers involved in the outplanting at Carysfort,
located off Key Largo. “We’ve done a fantastic job across so many organizations of
preserving genetic diversity which will be important in future outplanting efforts.”

Lesneski is the sanctuary’s Mission: Iconic Reefs research and monitoring coordinator.
“So these individuals have been propagated from others that survived the heat stress
event in 2023, whether out on the reef or in ocean-based nurseries,” Lesneski said,
referring to the infant corals. “So we have a lot of confidence that the corals that are
being returned to the reef today will continue to do well even in future warming
conditions.”

The three organizations that aided in outplanting the young corals included Coral
Restoration Foundation, Mote Marine Laboratory and Reef Renewal USA.

In the future, sanctuary officials hope to bring in more coral restoration organizations
and research partners with additional concepts about how build upon information
learned to date, according to Lesneski.

For some 20 years, organizations in the Florida Keys have pioneered breakthrough
efforts to restore coral. “Florida’s coral reef provides billions of dollars in revenue annually,” Lesneski said. “And if we want generations in the future to enjoy these same benefits, we have to continue to do this work and preserve this very important resource.”

Playa del Carmen, December 2024 – Reef Futures unfolded on the Yucatán Peninsula of Mexico with 850 attendees registered for a week of shared insights and innovations, featuring a dozen Mission: Iconic Reefs (M:IR) colleagues presenting at plenary, concurrent, workshop and poster sessions. The symposium arrived at a critical juncture for coral restoration practitioners. In recent months, critics had been lobbying for a pause in restoration investment until larger solutions about climate change can be addressed. The symposium embraced the criticism, and responded with thoughtful dissent.

“I came away with renewed hope in the tenacity, dedication and innovation of this community to continue to combat all the challenges we are facing,” said Jennifer Moore, M:IR’s Senior Manager and Reef Future’s program chair. “The panel discussion on combating negative criticism that restoration has been taking was amazing, giving all of us the tools on how to do our work in light of that criticism. The other thing that exploded in my mind about hope was in Rose Huizenga’s plenary presentation empowering young Indonesian women to do coral restoration and, in some cases, the first time being in the water. We need to capitalize with that kind of engagement more broadly.”

Huizenga’s Coral Catch aspires to build a network of 100 female leaders who protect and restore the coral reefs of Indonesia, and her presentation symbolized the healing by-product of gathering with like-minded colleagues.

“Over the past few months, I’ve struggled with doubts—witnessing setbacks and seeing fellow restoration practitioners lose hope left me questioning my career and even considering early retirement,” said M:IR partner Dr. Phanor Montoya-Maya, Reef Restoration Program Manager  for Coral Restoration Foundation. “But attending Reef Futures changed everything. The opportunity to reconnect, listen, and share stories with the global coral restoration community reignited my motivation and reminded me why this work is worth every challenge.”

Michelle Loewe, who serves on the M:IR leadership team, chaired the core planning team for Reef Futures. M:IR was envisioned in 2018 at the inaugural Reef Futures, which is organized by The Coral Restoration Consortium, a global community of practice dedicated to restoring corals in the places where they are most needed.​

Mission: Iconic Reefs has published a five-year report to coincide with the anniversary of the program.  The 40-page document outlines past, present and future in a nod to the transparency expected of a program in which so many have invested.  “We are stewards of resources on behalf of taxpayers and investors who have been promised something bold,” said Senior Manager Jennifer Moore, “and we accept the mission.”

The report can be viewed online here: