Coral Restoration with Ken Nedimyer

Sanctuary Friends provided a $10,000 grant to help fund Ken Nedimyer's Coral Restoration Project. Ken had hundreds of staghorn corals ready to transplant to areas devoid of coral caused by disease or damage from boat groundings. Volunteers participated in transplanting these corals to selected areas on the reef.

Sanctuary Friends Foundations Executive Director Glenn Patton provided his personal boat to support the volunteers who helped Ken Nedimyer with his Coral Restoration Projects throughout the year.

During the winter and spring of 2008 he took six groups of Upper Keys High school students to the offshore coral nursery, and they helped expand the nursery from about 1,200 corals to over 2,000 corals ready to transplant.

In the spring of 2008, Ken received permits to enhance his existing nursery stock of staghorn corals with 40 new wild collected nenotypes, and to begin a Lower Keys Nursery program. He also received permits to undertake 6 new coral restoration projects in the Upper Keys using corals grown on their offshore nursery.

Four of the six restoration projects were completed in the summer and fall of 2008, with a total of 72 new corals being planted on the four sites. During the projects, over 70 different people participated in the classroom teaching and fieldwork and local team leaders were trained to help in future projects. During 2008 Ken was able to give presentations on coral restoration to over ten different organizations and reached over 1,000 people.