I’m not even talking about damage caused when boats ram them or drop an anchor on them–or from snorklers who step on them. Some combination of factors is making corals more susceptible to disease, and being overgrown by seaweeds and invertebrates.

Since we don’t yet know how to counteract it, we’re trying to jump-start reef recovery by transplanting healthy, naturally occurring, broken-off pieces of fast growing coral species to new locations where they’re more likely to survive.

No one’s tried using ‘at-risk’ fragments before, which means the grant we received may be responsible for helping these marvelous ecosystems for future generations. I hope so – spiritually, it’s very important to have places like National Parks.”