Healing the Ocean With a Garden of Coral

Coral are the backbone of the whole tropical ecosystem and if they disappear we’re in a lot of trouble says Ken Nedimeyer, founder of the Coral Restoration Foundation. The pseudo-farmer has spent a lot of time in the water and has seen too many coral die, so he plants coral in an offshore nursery near the Florida Keys and replants them on reefs.

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Closed Caption:

morale is kind of like the trees of a
forest
they're just the backbone of a whole
tropical ecosystem and if they disappear
weren't a lot of trouble
my name is candy tomorrow i'm the
founder of the coral Restoration
Foundation reason I'm doing this I was
that been growing up diving spent a lot
of time in the water look to be
basically watch the coral reefs dying as
the reefs died that fish didn't come
back and I realized i'm tired of
watching and I need to do something
about it
and so I developed this whole idea of
growing corals in an offshore nursery
and replanting them on the reason
so you're kind of like a farmer I'm a
farmer
yeah we grow corals just like a farm
there is a good time of the year to
plant and there's a harvest time and we
have five offshore nurseries in the keys
each treatment hold a hundred corals we
start with little fragments that we
collect and after six to nine months
maybe a year that fragment has turned
into a colony that might have a hundred
centimeters of growth on it
we cut that off and then we planted out
on the reef
so we just harvested some corals and
we're going to take them out to pickles
reef right now and plant them
we've got a couple thousand of them out
there that we've already planted and add
some more
it is a bit of gardening when you put
the corals back out on the rape you're
saying i think that would look nice over
there and that would look nice over
there and so is based on what used to be
there and what should be there and
that's how we do our planting we planted
20,000 already this year will plant
25,000 next year those corals will
probably spawn next year
part of the long range goals get the
corals reproducing on their own
I'm excited every time I get in the
water whether i'm going to work in the
nursery or whether i'm planting corals
or just looking for new areas to plant a
lot of people said all you can never do
that it'll never work
can't do it on a big enough scale and I
think I've proven that they can be done
and if we can train enough people and
teach enough people in other places
I think we can really see a significant
turnaround another day another whirl
yeah
yeah