Coral reefs are vital to Florida’s coastal ecosystems, providing habitat for marine life, supporting fisheries, and protecting shorelines. But restoring these reefs at scale comes with a surprising challenge: how to safely move corals from nurseries to restoration sites without harming them.
Through our Freedom to Fail grant program, our Foundation is investing in innovative ideas that push the boundaries of restoration science. These grants give researchers the flexibility to test new approaches, take calculated risks, and focus on improving the quality and effectiveness of restoration efforts.
With this support, Reef Renewal USA launched a project to explore one of the biggest logistical challenges in coral restoration: transport.
Traditionally, corals are moved from land-based holding tanks fully submerged in seawater, a method that is reliable but heavy, expensive, and difficult to scale. This project tested whether corals could instead be transported “dry,” kept damp but not submerged, without compromising their health.
Over six months, researchers conducted a multi-phase study transporting coral fragments between offshore nurseries in the Florida Keys and a facility in central Florida. The study included three important reef-building species and evaluated both wet and dry transport methods over different time periods.
The results were striking. Coral survival remained extremely high across all phases of the project, with 100 percent survival in the first two phases and 94 percent survival in the final phase. Researchers observed no disease or long-term stress in surviving corals, and even minor transport-related damage healed quickly.
Most importantly, the study demonstrated that dry transport can be just as effective as traditional wet methods. This challenges a long-standing assumption in coral restoration and opens the door to more efficient and scalable practices.
By reducing weight, labor, and cost, dry transport allows restoration teams to move more corals at once and expand their impact. As coral restoration efforts grow across Florida and beyond, innovations like this will be essential to keeping pace with the scale of reef loss.
This project is a powerful example of what the Freedom to Fail program is designed to do. By supporting bold ideas and giving researchers room to experiment, we can uncover new solutions that make conservation efforts stronger, smarter, and more effective.
