Father-daughter project sparks coral restoration
A family project led to a global coral restoration model. In the Florida Keys, a father and daughter began experimenting with staghorn and elkhorn coral fragments in the early 2000s. Their research showed that rather than allowing broken coral pieces to die on the seafloor, they could keep them alive and encourage them to grow. The experiment became successful, and the father, Ken Nedimyer, donated the propagated coral to the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary.
The Nature Conservancy granted funding, allowing Nedimyer to expand the project into a larger coral-growing operation. In 2007, Nedimyer founded the Coral Restoration Foundation, which developed offshore coral nurseries where coral fragments were suspended from structures known as coral trees. This method enabled the growth of small fragments into larger colonies in just six to nine months.
Once the colonies were large enough, they were cut and attached to damaged reef areas, creating a cycle of growth, division, and outplanting. This approach provided the much-needed scale for coral restoration, allowing restoration teams to grow coral fragments in nurseries and return them to degraded reefs when they were strong enough.
Research later documented the varying survivorship of these restoration efforts across different locations, emphasizing the importance of choosing the right reef site and restoration strategy. The Coral Restoration Foundation has since planted over 200,000 corals, and some restored reefs have shown the ability to reproduce naturally.
Nedimyer has since worked with Reef Renewal International to spread the coral tree nursery approach to other reef restoration sites worldwide, including Bonaire, Curaçao, Saint Vincent, the Cayman Islands, Hawaii, French Polynesia, and Australia. Despite facing challenges from warming seas, disease, bleaching, and storms, the coral trees pioneered through Nedimyer's early work demonstrate that damaged reefs can be given another chance—one fragment at a time.
Written by urgent.news from The Economic Times's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
