$3.3million coral restoration project in the Florida Keys

 The world’s largest coral restoration project will see 30,000 Staghorn and Elkhorn colonies grown and transplanted along 300 miles of reef, when it comes to an end in December.  “We’re just giving them a jump start,” said The Nature Conservancy’s James Byrne, the marine biologist who is overseeing the massive, three-year project funded by the American Recovery and Restoration Act of 2009. “Now, if they can successfully reproduce, it will blow away anything we can do,” he said. Ken Nedimyer of Key Largo, whose pioneering work in coral nurseries has been the blueprint for the project, already has witnessed his transplanted corals doing the wild thing at Molasses Reef, a popular dive site. “Before, most coral restoration efforts focused on places with large [vessel] groundings,” said Sean Morton, superintendent of the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary. “This is the first attempt to do it reef-wide and turn around a long-term trend of coral reef decline.” Corals off Floridian waters have seen a devastating decline to about 10% of their previous coverage over the last 30 years, from a number of factors such as die off of algae munching urchins, disease, bleaching and pollution. “If you went snorkelling or diving anywhere in the Caribbean in the early ’80s, you’d see corals everywhere,” Byrne said. “Staghorn used to be the dominant one on the reef, providing almost all the habitat for small juvenile fish to go into. And Elkhorn dominated the top of the reef, building big reef crests that waves break on.”  In 2006, staghorn (Acropora cervicornis) and Elkhorn (A. palmata) were the first corals to be listed under, under the US Endangered Species Act and both are considered vitally important to Florida’s ecosystem and economy. “This is not just about restoring nature for nature’s sake,” said Rob Brumbaugh, The Nature Conservancy’s director of global marine restoration. “This is restoring nature for people’s sake. These habitats are nature’s infrastructure … We’re making fish. When you make fish, you make jobs. It’s a good investment.” The $3.3 million was just a small part of the $167 million in stimulus funding given to coastline restoration projects, and not even a blip in the entire $831 billion package. The funding ends in December. The entities involved are trying to find more funding because while the project is a good start, there’s much more to do. Much has been learned about growing corals since Nedimyer — who started the non-profit Coral Restoration Foundation — first tried the feat in 2000 as a 4-H project for his daughter, Kelly. Nedimyer said his nursery is the biggest in the world, at more than an acre. “We’ve got more than 20,000 ready to go, and if we cut them up as small as they transplanted them today, we’d have about 150,000.” He said that two years ago he could fill only a five-gallon barrel with his grown coral. “Now we can fill a couple of dump trucks.”
Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/05/18/v-fullstory/2828591/stimulus-money-funding-coral-reef.html#storylink=cpy