Under a white tent on Summerland Key, scientists and volunteers are building cribs for baby corals.

The team is working through the late summer heat to rig tanks with hoses, pumps and filters designed to cycle saltwater over a brood of 100,000 coral fragments. Just offshore, the battered reef is once again bleaching in record-breaking ocean temperatures. This land-based nursery is part of a state-backed project to rescue, breed and replant corals to keep Florida’s reef from disappearing completely.

But the rescue mission is in peril after the state legislature and Gov. Ron DeSantis, who proudly touted the program three years ago, cut all funding for Florida’s Coral Reef Restoration and Recovery Initiative (FCR3) in this year’s budget. Organizations that spent taxpayer money to build new facilities and train staff to work on the state-led project are now scrambling to find grants and private donations to keep the lights on.

“The biggest concern for our organizations is how are we going to continue to support these larger projects that we designed with the idea that there would be future funding,” said Dee Dee Vaughan, co-founder of the Plant A Million Corals Foundation, a nonprofit that got $950,000 from the state to expand its Summerland Key coral nursery.

DeSantis launched FCR3 through a 2023 executive order, noting the reef’s vital role in preventing flooding and supporting Florida’s economy. He wrote that his first term had ushered in a “golden era for conservation” and vowed to “achieve even more now for Florida’s environment and ensure that we leave Florida to God better than we found it.”

The state has since given $28.5 million to 14 organizations, including universities, nonprofits, and the Florida Aquarium, as part of an ambitious 27-year reef restoration project.

“Safeguarding our coral reef is important both environmentally and economically and we will continue to support projects that keep this natural resource healthy,” DeSantis said in a March 2024 press release announcing the first round of FCR3 grants.

Two years later, DeSantis left FCR3 out of his budget proposal and state legislators allocated zero dollars to the program. Coral restoration groups were expecting $25 million this year to start the next phase of the project, which was supposed to fund the biggest coral planting effort in state history.

“We had the commitment from the state of Florida that this is something they cared about and that they were behind it,” said Kylie Smith, co-founder of I.CARE, an Islamorada-based reef restoration nonprofit that used $585,000 in FCR3 funding to train divers and hire new staff. “It kind of pulled the rug out from under us that it wasn’t included in the budget for this year.”

DeSantis didn’t explain why he defunded FCR3, but at a June 29 bill-signing ceremony he celebrated cutting $800 million from this year’s $117.6 billion budget, shrinking the state’s debt and padding its emergency fund.

“We should be thankful that we’re run in a successful way and really set up for whatever happens in the future,” DeSantis said at the event.

Neither the governor’s office nor the Florida Department of Environmental Protection responded to emailed questions.

“Now we’re starting to build or have built expanded facilities, and then there’s no money to operate them,” said Keri O’Neil, director of the coral conservation program at the Florida Aquarium. “To me it feels like a waste of this huge investment by the state.”

A last chance for Florida’s reef

Florida’s coral reef tract is a natural wonder and economic engine that spans 350 miles from the Dry Tortugas to the St. Lucie Inlet.

The reef and its resident sea life reel in $6.3 billion in tourism revenue each year and support 71,000 jobs, from dive shop operators to hotel staff, according to the Florida Department of Environmental Protection. It also breaks up waves before they reach shore, preventing $675 million in damage every year, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

But the reef is dying. Since the 1970s, diseases, heatwaves, pollution and damage from boats and storms have killed 90 percent of Florida’s coral, according to the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration. Scientists have declared once-thriving species like staghorn and elkhorn coral “functionally extinct” because they can no longer reproduce enough to maintain their population. About 70 percent of Florida’s reef is crumbling without enough living coral to rebuild what’s lost to erosion.

Amid the gloom, there are a few rays of hope. Even after a catastrophic 2023 heatwave set off the worst coral bleaching event in state history, some plucky polyps clung to life. Scientists collected several types to breed them and understand what made them so tough.

“We were able to identify which genetic strains we should focus on moving forward to put the corals out there that have the highest chance of survival the next time this happens,” Smith said.

Florida launched the FCR3 program that year during what may be the final window to save the state’s reef before it’s gone for good. State officials set an ambitious goal of restoring 25 percent of Florida’s original reef — an effort that would require new equipment to support millions of baby corals and an army of trained divers working every clear day to plant the new corals onto the degraded reef.

State officials envisioned the program running through 2050. Environmental regulators recruited 14 universities, nonprofits, aquariums and laboratories to focus on different pieces of the project, from genetic research and reef monitoring to coral breeding and outplanting. The state gave the group $9.5 million annually for three years and encouraged them to build and staff up quickly.

This year, funding was supposed to ramp up to $25 million a year to pay for boats, air tanks, and divers to get the corals out of the nurseries and onto the reef. But just as the project was supposed to take off, politicians defunded it.

“My staff built everything on time. We were as efficient as possible to stretch every dime as far as it could go,” said Leneita Fix, executive director of The Reef Institute, a West Palm Beach nonprofit that got $3.5 million from the state to build a coral nursery and train new staff. “Now we’re supposed to go to the next phase to get these corals in the ocean…but it’s all stalled because we don’t know where the funding is coming from.”

Nurseries in limbo

Instead, FCR3 recipients are scrounging for cash. State funding is off the table until lawmakers wrangle over next year’s budget, and the Trump administration has slashed federal grants for science. So, several FCR3 recipients said they’re looking for private donations to keep Florida’s signature coral program running.

Program directors insisted they’ll find a way to keep the lights on.

“I’m going to breathe my last breath to make sure that these corals are taken care of and to make sure they get out in the ocean,” Fix said.

But, if they can’t scrape together enough private money, some coral scientists acknowledge they may have to lay off staff or close parts of their nurseries — right after they spent nearly $30 million in taxpayer money to expand.

“It would be tragic to spend that much money and then have no follow-through,” said Ken Nedimyer, technical director of Reef Renewal USA, a nonprofit that got $2 million from the state to expand a land-based coral nursery near Tampa.

“We’re gearing up and we’re growing all these corals, and we have these targets to grow 100,000 tennis-ball sized corals a year in two years,” Nedimyer said. “But how are we going to pay to put them on the reef? I don’t know that. It worries me.”

It’s not just about the money. The FCR3 grant recipients also praised the program and state officials for coordinating all their individual efforts, so that each of the 14 organizations could focus on one piece of the project without duplicating another group’s work. Fix compared it to the Apollo mission, in which NASA corralled 20,000 companies and universities to make millions of parts to build a rocket none of them could have launched individually.

“To restore 25 percent of 350 miles of reef, you need every organization working in lockstep with each other,” Fix said. If FCR3 falls apart, “my fear is that we will become disjointed. It’s so easy for it to unravel and for us all to not be on the same page anymore.”

In the meantime, organizations like the Plant A Million Corals Foundation are charging ahead with their plans, hoping that lawmakers will restore their funding soon. For coral restoration efforts, time is scarcer than money.

“We can’t just wait to see how everything is going to settle down before we start trying to restore Florida’s reef tract,” Vaughan said.