Florida News

Saving Florida's coral reef onboard 'The Ark'

WUSF | By Steve Newborn

Published March 18, 2026 at 7:11 AM CDT

Martha Campbell, project manager, Alexandra Rodriguez, marine biologist, and George Koturo, aquaculture technician, at Reef Renewal USA gaze into a tank of baby corals transferred from the Florida Aquarium's grow house in late 2026 and early 2026. Breeding corals in laboratories could be the answer to Florida's reef die-offs.

Florida's fragile coral reef has been battered recently, with massive die-offs from disease and warming seas the past several years. So a radical idea has been hatched: breed corals in laboratories.

So we visit a place where they're being raised before they can be released back on the reef.

This greenhouse could be called a nursery for baby corals. Here, in a fast-growing part of Apollo Beach hemmed in by sprawling subdivisions, sits several 30,000-gallon tanks.

Baby corals transferred from the Florida Aquarium's grow house will spend the next few months incubating at Reef Renewal USA's Ruskin location before eventually being planted into coral reefs along Florida's coast.

Here, immersed under gentle waves created by water pumps, are what look like little hors d'oeuvres of pink, green and yellow. They're topped with tiny dabs. Those dabs are baby corals - the end product of several years trying to figure out how to spawn them on land.

"So we call this The Ark. and this our Tampa Bay farm," said Sherri Sutton, executive director of Reef Renewal USA.

And like some kind of modern-day coral Noah, she's trying to rise above the threatening storms of warming seas, disease and rising oceans.

"We need to grow the corals of the future," she said. "So we need to really sit down and think about what that's going to be."

Sherri Sutton, CEO of Reef Renewal USA, at their Apollo Beach coral growing facility

What it's become are a dozen or so concrete tanks, with grates holding little squares Sutton calls paper. They're topped with the end product of years of research by the Florida Aquarium — tiny baby corals.

In January, the aquarium transferred 9,000 juvenile corals spawned in its Apollo Beach grow house. Now, they're being nurtured — if you will — at places like this a few miles away.

Inside a warehouse-like structure that formerly served as an aquarium fish farm, a dozen or so concrete tanks are the new home for baby corals bred and birthed at the Florida Aquarium's grow house in Apollo Beach. The babies start off in quarantine tanks like these.

"So it'll grow on these papers until it fills the entire paper, and then we'll frag it," Sutton said. "We'll take it over there to the saws, and we'll take it what we call a fragging process, and it really just propagates the coral, much like you'd cut a plant and have it grow roots. And it helps stimulate it to grow faster."

ALSO READ: Baby corals take first steps to getting back on the Florida Reef

This means the original root stock can continue to keep growing. In the tanks, little sailfin mollies are on patrol, gobbling up algae that can smother the corals. Shade cloths high above mimic the natural undersea light. They've even planted mangrove trees to help create as natural a setting as possible for these little guys.

They want to grow 300,000 corals every year. They hope to return these corals to the reef sometime next year.

One key goal is to have a diverse number of species, which may be more able to withstand hotter seas and disease.

After the baby corals leave their quarantine tanks, they're transferred to these tanks where little sailfin mollies are on patrol, gobbling up algae that can smother the corals. Shade cloths high above mimic the natural undersea light. They've even planted mangrove trees to help create as natural a setting as possible.

"So we have different genotypes, different species, and then we're able to test them, because we believe that the corals of the future aren't born yet, right? Sutton asked. "Their parents are here, but we really need to figure out what those corals are that are going to thrive in the future."

Much of this is funded by the state department of environmental protection. It's part of Florida's Coral Reef Protection and Restoration Program. They plan to restore at least 25% of Florida's coral reef by 2050.

Reef Renewal received $830,000 from the program this year.

ALSO READ: Florida promised to restore a quarter of the state's reef by 2050. So where's the funding?

Sutton said they also have a federal NOAA grant, as well as private donations.

The biggest donation might have been the land itself.

This is a former aquarium fish farm owned by Marty Tanner. Tanner said he plans to become the state's largest land-based grower of coral. And it's all pro bono - no money will come his way but satisfaction will.

This is a former aquarium fish farm owned by Marty Tanner. One of Reef Renewal's board members knew he wanted to help.

"It's something that I've been interested in my whole life," Tanner said. "I think, if there's going to be a change, we're going to have to do it at this level. I mean, they're thinking they need as many as 5 or 6 million corals to repopulate the reef in the next four or five years, and we're not going to do it 10,000 pieces at a time."

Tanner said he plans to become the state's largest land-based grower of coral. And it's all pro bono - no money will come his way but satisfaction will.

"I've actually got a place down in the Keys," he said. "I took my grandson down there last year and dove, and it was just to see him experience the reef system through a child's eyes. I mean, that was just priceless. So, we're building a foundation for the future."

And because of efforts like this, Florida's coral reef may have a future as well.

This former aquarium fish farm is now being used to raise baby corals that will eventually be transplanted onto reefs.