Sanctuary Friends supports the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary Coral Nursery Program. Sanctuary biologists also maintain a coral nursery nearshore in Key West that provides corals for research purposes and for restoration projects.

Activities supported by the FKNMS Coral Nursery Program fund includes but not limited to coral protection restoration, research and management strategies in response to resource injury within the Sanctuary. The FKNMS Coral Nursery Program provides needed repositories to cache corals that would otherwise be destroyed or impacted by human activities in the near shore environment. The corals are then maintained through husbandry for beneficial uses such as scientific research, reef restoration, coral aquaculture and public education in exhibits.

Nursery-raised corals may prove to be key building blocks in restoring coral reefs in the Florida Keys. These nurseries are important not only in re-establishing corals where they once existed, but also in preserving the genetic material of the many species of coral found in the Keys. In a first for coral restoration transplant effort, sanctuary scientists and volunteers recently relocated staghorn coral colonies to a reef where the corals had once existed. Through careful monitoring, researchers will identify the corals that survive best under known environmental conditions and use this information in managing coral reefs in the future.