Florida’s coral reef is disappearing faster than most people realize — and the scientists working to save it are doing it on shoestring budgets that keep getting thinner. Florida’s own coral restoration program, the Florida Coral Reef Restoration and Recovery Initiative, was cut from the state’s 2026–2027 budget — roughly $9.5 million a year in support gone, with more than a dozen research teams and nonprofits across the state now scrambling to cover the gap themselves. At the federal level, NOAA — the agency behind many of the grants these same organizations rely on — is facing proposed cuts of over a billion dollars to its research budget, putting future coral funding in doubt as well.
These aren’t abstract line items. They’re the people literally growing coral by hand, in tanks and on the reef, to replace what bleaching and disease have killed. We wanted to use this space to introduce you to a few of the organizations doing that work — most of them within a few hours of Key West — and make it easy to support them directly. None of the donation links below come to us. Every one goes straight to the organization.
Click through to each site below, read what they’re actually working on, and see where your own time or money would do the most good — a reef-keeping community that already spends real money keeping coral alive in living rooms and shop tanks is exactly the audience that should know this work exists. Even if you can’t dive or donate right now, sharing what these organizations are doing costs nothing and reaches people who might.
Coral Morphologic & the Coral City Camera
Coral Morphologic is the Miami-based project of marine biologist Colin Foord and musician Jared McKay, founded in 2007. Working out of an aquaculture lab on the Miami River, they rescue coral colonies that would otherwise be destroyed by dredging and shipping channel work, propagate them, and study which genotypes survive best in a warming, urbanized bay — research that feeds directly into reef restoration efforts elsewhere. They’re probably best known for the Coral City Camera, a live underwater feed streaming from a coral nursery in Biscayne Bay that has introduced millions of viewers worldwide to a living reef, many for the first time.
Funding: Coral Morphologic runs on Knight Foundation–matched donations through the Miami Foundation, along with grants and public support — it does not have the institutional backing of a university or a state agency behind it, which makes direct donations disproportionately meaningful.
Get involved: They mentor University of Miami marine biology students in coral aquaculture and are reachable directly for volunteer or collaboration inquiries.
Donate to Coral Morphologic →Watch the live camera & learn more →
Plant A Million Corals Foundation
Plant A Million Corals is a Summerland Key–based nonprofit built around Dr. David Vaughan’s micro-fragmentation technique, which grows coral up to 25–40 times faster than it grows in the wild. Their work spans lab research, in-water planting, and community education, with partner projects reaching as far as Costa Rica.
Funding: Supported through donations, grants, and community fundraising — the kind of funding most vulnerable when state and federal grant cycles tighten.
Get involved: They run six different volunteer tracks — in-water coral planting for certified divers, nursery maintenance (no experience required), education and outreach, event support, and even remote volunteering for grant research, data entry, and content work you can do from anywhere.
Donate to Plant A Million Corals →See volunteer options & learn more →
Mote Marine Laboratory — Coral Restoration Program
Mote Marine Laboratory runs one of the largest coral restoration efforts on Florida’s Reef Tract, the 350-mile barrier reef system that runs the length of the state. Their Protect Our Reefs program has funded more than 350 reef projects across two decades, largely through Florida’s “Protect Our Reefs” specialty license plate — $25 of every plate sold goes directly to reef research and restoration.
Funding: A mix of the license plate program, state and federal grants (including NOAA), and donations — Mote is also one of the organizations directly affected by this year’s state and proposed federal cuts.
Get involved: Mote runs hands-on coral restoration dive programs (registration through their citizen science page), a BleachWatch program where trained divers monitor and report reef health, and SEAFAN, which lets anyone report unusual marine events they observe.
Donate to Mote Marine →See citizen science options & learn more →
I.CARE — Islamorada Conservation and Restoration Education
I.CARE is built on a simple idea: recreational divers already love reefs, so put them to work restoring one. Based in Islamorada, they run coral transplant dives at Alligator Reef and partner with Mote, the Coral Restoration Foundation, and several universities to improve coral survival rates.
Funding: Primarily private donations and community partnerships — a single major gift from a local donor allowed them to expand propagation and launch a sponge restoration program, which gives a sense of how far individual contributions go for an organization this size.
Get involved: Their Dive & Transplant Schedule lets certified divers join active restoration dives, and their Trash Derby events are open to anyone, diver or not.
Donate to I.CARE →Learn more about their work →
We’re a small Key West aquaculture shop, not a conservation nonprofit — but the corals we sell exist because people like these keep wild reefs alive to begin with. If you can dive, several of these programs will put you to work in the water. If you can’t, every organization above takes a donation of any size directly, with no markup and nothing routed through us.