A few months ago Ned and I spent a week hanging out with Denise and Ken Nedimyer, founders of the Coral Restoration Foundation, based in Key Largo (you can read a short article and watch the video we made in 2008 after a visit to their coral garden in the Florida Keys), Their coral surveying trip to Bonaire coincided with our annual stay at Buddy Dive, so for a few days our morning coffee discussions switched from fish to coral. Denise and Ken were keen to cover as much of the accessible shoreline as possible to look for Acropora cervicornis (Staghorn coral) and Acropora palmata (Elkhorn coral). Susan Porter (Bonaire Shore Diving Made Easy) volunteered to show us some known stands of the week’s target species at one of her favorite sites, a seldom visited area off Bonaire’s southern tip.

To view more photos and the video, please visit the original article in The BlennyWatcher Blog.

Since 2010, Georgia Aquarium has been working in partnership with the Coral Restoration Foundation (CRF) in the Upper Florida Keys to help to restore Staghorn (Acropora cervicornis) and Elkhorn (Acropora palmata) corals using ocean-based aquaculture nurseries and transplantation methodologies.  CRF is a non-profit conservation organization created to develop off-shore coral nurseries and reef restoration programs for critically endangered coral reefs at local, national, and international levels.  The mission of CRF is to develop affordable, effective strategies for protecting and restoring coral reefs and to train and empower others to implement those strategies in their coastal communities.  CRF has developed the largest offshore coral nursery in the United States, with more than 15,000 coral “frags” or “nubbins,” (14,000 Staghorn, 1,200 Elkhorn) and transplanted more than 3,000 corals from nursery to reef at 22 different reef areas in the Upper Florida Keys, with concentrated effort in Molasses Reef, located in the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary off of Key Largo, Florida. The goal of each restoration project is to re-establish genetically diverse thickets of coral and nurture them to maturity so they can spawn and repopulate downstream reef areas.  This approach to active reef management has the potential to restore reefs to approximately their original biodiversity and stability.

Newswise — KEY WEST, Fla. -- Over the past decade, the populations of staghorn and elkhorn corals in the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary have remained steady after dramatic declines in the last century. Long-term monitoring conducted by researchers from the University of North Carolina Wilmington (UNCW) has revealed that while populations of the iconic branching corals remain far below their historic numbers, the surviving populations of both species have not suffered further declines.