Coral Vita

Sam Teicher is the Co-Founder and Chief Reef Officer of Coral Vita, a mission-driven company that grows resilient corals up to 50x faster to restore dying reefs.

Alongside his friend Gator Halpern, he launched Coral Vita while obtaining his Master of Environmental Management degree from the Yale School of the Environment. Sam helps manage the company’s overall strategy, partnership and sales development, communications, and community-based programming. He’s a Forbes 30 Under 30 Social Entrepreneur, Echoing Green Fellow, Global Climate Action Summit Climate Trailblazer, and JMK Innovation Prize winner.

Previously, Sam worked to implement climate resiliency initiatives at the White House and for the Global Island Partnership, launched a United Nations-funded coral farm, and was a contributing author to SDG 14. He’s an optimistic DC sports fan, play for the Bahamas Rugby Football Union, and has been in love with the ocean since becoming a scuba diver as a child.

Coral Vita works to solve the threat of global coral reef degradation. More than 50% of reefs are dead and over 90% are on track to die by 2050. This ecological tragedy, which threatens 25% of marine life, is also a socio-economic catastrophe. Coral reefs directly support 1B people globally and conservatively generate $30B annually via tourism, fisheries production, and coastal protection. Their loss will be disastrous to society and to all of life on Earth.

We use breakthrough methods to grow corals up to 50x faster (microfragmenting) while strengthening their resiliency to climate change (assisted evolution). Our business model can sustainably finance large-scale restoration projects through eco-tourism and selling restoration as a service (RaaS), and our methods scale so that each farm can potentially supply an entire nation’s reefs with diverse and resilient coral. Through our work, we help preserve ocean life and community welfare for future generations.

We are working to solve two problems: preserving dying coral reefs and scaling reef restoration.

Coral reefs are dying at frightening rates, which may cause cataclysmic challenges for society. Their death is driven by poor development practices, overfishing, pollution, and climate change. Reef degradation threatens fishing communities and their families, coastal residents exposed to more powerful storm surges, and industries & national economies dependent on the draw of reef attractions in over one hundred nations.

The process of coral farming, where fragments are grown in farms and then installed into reefs, is scientifically-proven to revitalize reef health and benefits. But restoration – which has existed for two decades – is primarily executed by non-profits using ocean-based nurseries. Such nurseries only grow limited species, cannot enhance their resiliency to climate change, and must be built for each target reef. This process, especially when tied to the grant/donation model, does not sufficiently scale to solve the problem.

Coral Vita is addressing these problems by working to scale restoration globally. By growing more diverse, resilient, and affordable coral sustained by a land-based commercial farming model, we can achieve unprecedented and needed levels of restoration to keep reefs alive despite the threats they face.

Coral Vita’s ultimate vision is to establish a global network of land-based coral farms supplying restoration projections with mass quantities of diverse, resilient, and cost-effective coral. 

Our methods directly help restore and increase the resilience of the local environment, which is particularly important in fragile and degrading ecosystems like coral reefs. Outplanting corals has been proven by countless other practitioners to increase coral cover. As well, we take great care to promote species and genetic diversity in our work, while physically boosting the resiliency of coral fragments to stressors such as warming and acidifying oceans. This in turn strengthens the overall resilience of the local environment by bolstering reefs ability to survive deteriorating oceanic conditions due to climate change. Our work further stabilizes and increases natural biodiversity. Increasing coral cover not only improves the health of various coral species, but the relevant marine life that depend on reefs.

To support this work, we sell RaaS to customers that depend on reefs valuable ecosystem services, including resorts, developers, coastal insurers, cruise lines, governments, and corporate sponsors. We also turn our coral farms into revenue-generating tourism attractions where guests can pay to experience coral farming and even adopt or plant coral.

Emphasizing community-based stewardship into our restoration work is a key part of our model. Ultimately, reef health most directly impacts dependent communities. Coral reefs are found in over one hundred nations globally. In many areas, they are sources of cultural heritage, medicines, food, jobs, and protection from storms. As reefs die, their livelihoods are jeopardized.

Building local capacity and integrating local knowledge is critical to the long-term success of both our projects and promoting marine health. Our farms further function as education centers for community members and students, hoping to inspire a new generation of caretakers. Our farm managers will ideally be trained reef scientists from the host country. And we work with locals like fishermen, training them to be part of our coral installation team.

In Grand Bahama, where we launched our pilot coral farm in May 2019, we’ve welcomed hundreds of Bahamian students, environmental groups, government officials, fishermen, and other community members to experience our work. Following Hurricane Dorian last year, we used our resources to engage in search and rescue, deliver aid, and raise funds for communities impacted by the storm. Coral Vita is committed here and beyond to empowering communities as we protect reefs.

By revitalizing reefs, catalyzing a novel ecosystem restoration market, and using our work to educate the public and stakeholders about the urgent need to protect coral reefs, we are well-aligned with the Second Dimension. Global reef degradation is one of the world’s most difficult problems, threatening biodiversity, livelihoods, prosperity, and stability. We tackle this challenge by scaling up restoration through innovative scientific and a market-based approach, while using the exciting nature of planting coral to raise awareness about mitigating the threats that are killing ecosystems in the first place. We also relate to the First Dimension through our community-based model.

When Sam helped launch the UN-funded coral farm in Mauritius before grad school, he saw how coral farming can revitalize reef health, but the existing restoration model has significant limitations: projects are small-scale, not ecologically holistic, and don’t have sustainable financing sources. That one UN grant (which was difficult to obtain) funded 5,000 coral once, when a country like Mauritius needs 5,000,000 coral annually.

At grad school, Sam and Gator started evaluating major environmental challenges that government, non-profits, and academia weren’t solving at the pace and scale needed to prevent catastrophic consequences. Putting aside their lifelong love for the ocean, they recognized that coral reef health directly impacts socio-economic prosperity, and that creating a mission-driven business could galvanize the growth of a restoration industry to achieve the scale of impact needed to preserve reefs for the future.

They built out an initial model at the business school, recruited two leading coral scientists as advisors, and were accepted into the Yale Entrepreneurial Institute’s summer accelerator. From there, they raised Coral Vita’s initial $1.6M Seed Round, developed a partnership with the Grand Bahama Port Authority and Government of The Bahamas to launch our pilot farm, and began farming operations in May 2019.

The power of a healthy environment is staggering when we consider just how important it is for humanity’s sustenance and survival. Wilderness and nature are the original source of human innovation. It was these elements that first forced early humans to work together, learn how to feed themselves, and develop the tools necessary to live. And it’s worth considering how modern civilization only emerged during the relatively stable climate since the end of the last Ice Age. It’s during this specific time in Earth’s long history when a balanced environment with the ideal ecosystems, temperature ranges, and abundance of natural resources enabled human beings to make the leap forward to modern humanity. Only now, we are destroying the home that supports us all.

That’s why we are fighting to protect coral reefs. They’re home to some of Earth’s most majestic life. And they’re foundational ecosystems that sustain nearly 15% of the world’s population. Their destruction is a tragedy of the greatest proportions. Yet there’s an opportunity and ability to help protect oceans and the communities that depend on them. That’s why we’ve dedicated ourselves to improving the system of coral farming and scaling up reef restoration around the world.

Coral Vita was founded by Sam Teicher and Gator Halpern, who lead strategy and operations. Their experiences help define their respective roles, helping them manage long-term goals, short-term actions, and adapt to shifting circumstances for over six years. Sam's role is more outwards facing, building relationships with government officials, potential customers, and development agencies. Gator’s role is more internal, managing the logistics of project management, contracts with investors, and financial modeling. They work together fluidly to shape the company’s overall vision, lead fundraising, and manage employees.

The restoration team is led by Joe Oliver who has 15 years of coral husbandry experience. Our scientific advisors include Dr. Dave Vaughan (microfragmenting) – prior to her passing we also were advised by Dr. Ruth Gates (assisted evolution), whose lab we still collaborate with. Our business advisors include Tom Chi, formerly co-founder of Google X.

Our team designed and is ideally prepared to operate our innovative model. Cutting-edge science and R&D; a global network to navigate regulatory policies and partnerships; a commercial strategy to scaling work and impact; a community-based approach to promote local long-term stewardship; and team resilience to combat a complex challenge having personally navigated one of the strongest recorded hurricanes in Atlantic history together now with Covid19’s impacts. Through raising funds, establishing partnerships, hitting key milestones, recovering from Hurricane Dorian, and progressing with our pilot farm while garnering interest in our work abroad, our management structure has demonstrated a strong ability to navigate the complexity and scale of this project.

We launched our pilot farm in Freeport in 2019 with support from the Grand Bahama Port Authority (GBPA) and Government of The Bahamas. For three months, we successfully grew 24 native species, reduced the ratio in coral breeding of new genotypes per egg from 1:1,000,000 in the wild to 1:100 in our lab, and operated the farm as a popular tourism and education center while negotiating restoration services contracts. Then we were hit by Hurricane Dorian, one of the strongest storms in recorded history.

Despite building our farm to withstand Category 5-force winds and siting its foundations at nearly double the 100-year-flood levels of 5’, we had no way of preparing for the 17’ foot storm surge that hit us. We lost all our coral and spent the next few months engaged in humanitarian efforts before turning our attention back to rebuilding the farm, which resumed operations in March 2020 just as Covid19 emerged.

Despite this major setback, we decided degradation’s urgent problem couldn’t wait and we shouldn’t restart at pilot-scale. We’re now raising funds to expand the facility into the world’s largest coral farm growing ~100k corals/year, which will position us to start launching such farms around the world.

When Hurricane Dorian hit Grand Bahama, our phones somehow maintained internet and informed us that massive surges were ripping through homes and forcing people into attics on rooftops. I somehow was connected with a TV journalist, and as the storm sat on us for two days I used the opportunity to direct people’s attention to the forthcoming aid needed by Bahamians and highlighting this as a clear example of what our climate crisis feels like. With the internet holding and battery packs keeping my phone alive, I ended up doing interviews with numerous outlets, each one asking for help for The Bahamas.

On the second day, we knew folks with jet skis and small boats were launching in 100mph+ winds to save trapped families. My housemates and I loaded our truck and brought fuel for the crafts and food/water for the rescuers. Once the waters cleared two days later, we drove out to remote eastern settlements to deliver water/relief supplies and see if anyone needed hospital care. In the coming weeks and months, we raised $60k for relief and continued delivering aid to these settlements, and are now strategizing a reef restoration project for one such village.

Coral Vita has three main innovations focuses: ecological, commercial, and technological.

As mentioned earlier, restoration is almost entirely carried out by small-scale ocean-based farms, which have several key limitations that impact restoration’s effectiveness. Ocean-based farms generally rear fast-growing branching species, often missing out on slow-growing bouldering and massive corals are essential for reef habitats. Such farms can do little to strengthen coral resiliency against climate change threats, which is critically important. As well, these underwater farms are at risk to bleaching events and boating accidents that could jeopardize projects. And finally, they must be set up and maintained near each target reef, which isn’t scalable to match the scope of global reef degradation. Together with traditional non-profits’ dependency on grants on donations, the existing model needs transformation.

Land-based farms support game-changing techniques. Microfragmenting unlocks critical species diversity while assisted evolution allows us to boost their resiliency. If we have sufficient land, we can expand facilities until we can grow corals to restore reefs around an entire island or country, rather than establishing a network of unwieldy ocean-based farms. And our innovative commercial approach unlocks funding streams critical for sustaining the large-scale restoration needed to protect reefs. It also gives us a R&D budget to develop methods and tools to improve restoration, such as ways to improve the efficiency of outplanting, execute enhanced reef monitoring, or strengthen the resiliency of key aspects of the coral beyond just the animal such as the symbiotic algae or microbial communities.

If Coral Vita successfully builds and scales climate resilient coral growth and propagation methods by utilizing new technologies, solutions, and models, we can catalyze the growth and development of restoration economy that ultimately protects critical biodiversity and at-risk communities against the threats of global reef degradation.

Using microfragmenting (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4614846/) and assisted evolution methods (http://www.pnas.org/content/112/8/2307), we’re growing climate-change resilient coral at up to 50x faster than nature. A recent NDRC report found that under a business-as-usual scenario, the annual costs associated with increasingly severe weather systems from climate change will add up to almost $1.9 trillion in 2100, or 1.8% of U.S. gross domestic product (GDP). Climate change mitigation strategies are no longer a “nice to have” for businesses, they are a commercial imperative. Given that half of coral reefs are dead and over 90% are on track to die within 30 years, we are investing millions to test, scale, and deploy technologies and methodologies to restore coral reefs and other vital biodiversity commercially because we believe that market-based solutions are required to deploy climate change adaptation strategies at scale.

By creating new revenue streams and increased resiliency for communities on the front lines of climate change, we’re working to jumpstart a Restoration Economy to protect ecosystem health. Restoring reefs mitigates risks of damage from erosion and hurricanes, shores up biodiversity to support fisheries, promotes sustainable eco-tourism, and protects biodiversity that hold enormous potential for medicines and life-saving treatments (https://scripps.ucsd.edu/projects/coralreefsystems/about-coral-reefs/value-of-corals/). A restoration market offers a compelling alternative to traditional extractive economic projects in coastal communities which destroy local ecosystems and further exacerbate social costs and environmental harm.

Throughout our scientific and commercial work, we also integrate a community-based model. By providing experiential marine education programming and job opportunities to local communities, we can build long-term capacity for these critical stakeholders to advance inclusive economic development alongside environmental health. We can further leverage our restoration work to educate farm guests as well as digital audience members on the importance of protecting coral reef health by mitigating key threats like climate change, pollution, overfishing, and habitat destruction.

There are several ways to consider this question: how many people we serve through restoring coral reefs, local education and employment via our coral farms/work, and digital awareness-building.

Due to Hurricane Dorian, coral farming operations only recommenced in March 2020. Growth cycles are ~6-12 months, at which point we’ll be able to start restoring reefs and impacting local communities. We project restoring one hectare of reef over in one year and nearly 140 hectares in five years, with local context determining how many people this will impact.

We employ two locals and have educated ~1000 people in Grand Bahama since launching, but this is on-hold from Dorian and Covid19. We project employing 12 locals in and educating 3000 locals in one year, and employing 130 locals and educating 15,000 locals in five years. We also project educating 30,000 tourists in one year and 210,000 in five years.

We also use our work to promote awareness beyond the areas we physically work of the importance of protecting coral reefs. Through videos/articles about us, speaking engagements, and multimedia we’ve produced, we generated over 7 million impressions since launching Coral Vita. It’s difficult to say how many people we’ll reach in one and five years, and we appreciate that such work may not be directly considered “serving” constituents. But as the best thing to do for coral reefs is to stop killing them (which requires massively expanding awareness-building to people around the world), we consider this an important component of our work.

Within the next year, we plan to expand our Grand Bahama to grow 100k+ corals/year. This would make it the largest coral farm for restoration in the world (the previous largest was a USAID-funded project that grew 40k coral once). This would allow us to create massive impact for revitalizing reefs, restoring hectares every year. We’d continue operating the farm as an education center and eco-tourism attraction (pending Covid19 restrictions), building capacity amongst Bahamians. This is a crucial aspect of coral farming at this any all future facilities, because local knowledge and buy-in helps improve our restoration impact while empowering the populations that most benefit from reef health. Opportunities to demonstrate revenue generation at this stage will also open opportunities to scale our work globally.

Within the next five years, we aim to launch at 5+ large-scale coral farms, including one giga-farm capable of growing 1M+ corals annually. This translates into restoring 55 hectares of reef annually and educating 15k local community members annually. This would have unprecedented impact on protecting marine biodiversity while building local where we work. This impact would not only be powerful in its own right, but would set us on a path to achieve two high-level goals. The first is to launch land-based coral farms in every nation with reefs, helping preserve them for future generations. The second is, through our mission-driven commercial model, galvanizing the launch of a ‘Restoration Economy’ that spurs innovation and investment into protecting the ecosystems that sustain us all.

Financial: Prior to Coral Vita, we know of no investment rounds committed to reef restoration companies. Over the next five years, we will need to showcase impact and revenue proof points to continue raising sufficient finances from investors.

Technical: We’re on the clock facing mounting threats to coral reef health. Although advances are being made in coral restoration science, methods, and technologies, there still is an urgent need to mitigate climate change, pollution, and other issues killing reefs. Not every reef can be restored, and this forces us to considerate how we design our restoration projects.

Legal: There are local laws that govern how corals can be handled. As further international treaties require us launching farms in each nation we operate in, we must obtain all necessary coral restoration, immigration, and business permits to work in each location.

Cultural: Corals are found in over 100 nations, each of which have distinct cultural nuances and reef heritage that must be respected and navigated.

Market: Prior to Hurricane Dorian, we were negotiating local restoration contracts while exploring with marketing our farm as a new guest attraction with cruise line executives. Dorian sidelined both of these, and now Covid19 has limited tourism for the foreseeable future. Over the next five years, we are effectively helping galvanize the restoration market. While it’s showing enormous growth potential, it’s still quite nascent, necessitating educating certain stakeholders global reef degradation’s risks and the value-add from restoring reefs they depend on.

Financial: Coral Vita raised the first-ever investment round for a commercial reef restoration company and are raising a $2M round now. Our business model is designed to scale our solution globally, and we are continually expanding our network to help support our ambitions.

Technical: The largest restoration project ever grew 40k coral once before funding expired. Our forthcoming expansion will let our farm grow ~100k coral annually with sustainable funding streams, before launching large-scale farms globally. We’ll concurrently pursue R&D projects to solve additional existing roadblocks, and are keen to establish new partnerships with engineers, material scientists, and other innovators.

Legal: We have all necessary permits to execute coral restoration in The Bahamas. Through our membership in the Global Island Partnership (GLISPA) and participation in United Nations programs, we have connections to coastal nation leaders/regulators to streamline permitting in advance of launching farms in individual locations.

Cultural: Integrating local communities through education, employment, and knowledge-sharing is essential to our model. Reef health matters most to the people who rely on them, and are projects will be more successful by promoting local capacity building.

Market: We’ve restarted service contract discussions with local stakeholders, and plan to launch digital revenue streams like an adopt-a-coral campaign and virtual farm tours amid Covid19 travel restrictions. Innovative conservation financing mechanisms are emerging like blue bonds, debt-for-adaptation swaps, and reef re-insurance schemes that could dramatically accelerate spending in reef restoration, and we are building out a sales pipeline in The Bahamas and beyond for our services.

As mentioned earlier, we’re members of GLISPA, a coalition of island nations and collaborators working to advance climate resiliency. They’re at the forefront of sustainability policy, conservation financing, and knowledge-sharing, and as we support their work we also utilize their network of island leaders to explore ways to bring our farms to their countries. We’re also members of the Coral Restoration Consortium, working with other practitioners to advance the field.

For our pilot farm, we established several key partnerships. The Grand Bahama Port Authority (GBPA) and Grand Bahama Development Company (GBDevco) envisioned Coral Vita supporting their interests for environmental health, economic growth, real estate, and other key issues, and invited us to build our first farm in Freeport. In doing so, they provided us with peppercorn rent, expedited business licenses, and introductions to key public, private, and community stakeholders.

One such group was the Government of The Bahamas, who now actively support us. They’ve granted us all necessary permits to execute restoration, provided us with public support (such as the Deputy Prime Minister speaking at both our groundbreaking and grand opening ceremonies), and are exploring ways to collaborate on environmental, economic, and educational development initiatives post-Hurricane Dorian and throughout Covid19.

We also are members of several leading social entrepreneurship communities us as the NEXUS Impact Accelerator, JMK Innovation Prize, Echoing Green, and others. Through networking and ideas exchange, these partnerships allow us to better build, run, and scale our business to maximize the impact we can achieve.

Coral Vita has two main revenue streams: selling restoration as a service (RaaS) and eco-tourism.

Unlike traditional grant and donation-funded ocean-based coral farms, Coral Vita uses high-tech commercial land-based farms, supplying restoration projects with more diverse, resilient, and affordable corals through microfragmenting and assisted evolution. Depending on land available, tanks can be continually added to increase capacity, with the potential to grow millions of fragments annually from each farm to ship out to reefs.

Our model can finance previously unfeasible large-scale restoration projects. Through RaaS, stakeholders who depend on reefs’ ecosystem services which are threatened by global degradation can hire Coral Vita to restore these critical assets. Customers include governments, resorts, tourism operators, coastal property owners, international development agencies, re-insurers, and corporate sponsors. Right now, they can only source corals from the small-scale projects that grow limited species. For example, the re-insurance giant Swiss Re proposed a pilot parametric insurance scheme to incentivize coastal Mexican resorts in to restore reefs, but there aren’t enough coral available. When a Coral Vita farm is operational in such a location, it’ll be designed at the scale required to make such projects feasible.

Our farms also generate revenue through eco-tourism like farm visits, coral adoption and planting, and reef restoration SCUBA certifications. This stream can cover operational costs to run a large-scale farm while financing the growth and outplanting of more corals. With tourism slowed down due to Covid19, we’re exploring digital avenues like virtual farm tours and an adopt-a-coral campaign.

Coral Vita’s core goal is to preserve coral reef health through ecologically-sound reef restoration. We achieve this by launching restoration facilities that are built upon public-private partnerships, integrate local communities, and act as financially sustainable vehicles to scale coral farming operations.

As we use our farms to grow coral to restore dying reefs, they simultaneously function as education centers and eco-tourism attractions. Revenue generated from farm visits, coral adoption, coral planting, and restoration SCUBA certifications helps finance the growth/outplanting of more corals. Amidst Covid19, we are exploring digital revenue generation through activities such as an online adopt-a-coral campaign and virtual farm tours (something we’re discussing with AirBnb) to offset a halt in tourism.

Longer-term, selling RaaS is our primary focus. Stakeholders who depend on reefs’ valuable ecosystem services can purchase restoration to protect these critical assets. Such customers include governments, resorts, tourism operators, property owners and developers, international development agencies, re-insurers, corporate sponsors, and more. Additional revenue streams in this space are opening up as innovative conservation financing mechanisms come online, such as blue bonds, debt-for-adaptation swaps, and reef insurance schemes. As we build out our sales pipeline and negotiate such contracts, we project eco-tourism at large-scale farms (e.g. 100k+/coral grown annually), being capable of covering farm OPEX.

We are currently raising a $2M investment round to expand our Grand Bahama farm from pilot-scale to the largest coral farm in the world, capable of achieving high impact and financial sustainability. We also continuously apply for grants as additional revenue sources.

We aren’t at liberty to disclose the names/amounts of our investors. If there is interest in follow-up and such information is required, we are happy to speak with the MIT Solve Team.

Funds Raised --

Investors (2017-2020): $2M through SAFE notes 

Grants/Prizes/Fellowships (2015-2020): ~$550k (Echoing Green, JMK Innovation Prize, Halcyon Incubator, Wild Gift Fellowship, Ocean Exchange Neptune Award, WeWork Creator Awards, Yale Entrepreneurial Institute)

We are currently raising $2M round to expand our Grand Bahama facility into the largest coral farm in the world. We have $430k committed via SAFE notes and are concluding terms for a $1M investment via a convertible note. We’re targeting the end of this summer to conclude fundraising.

$910,450

One of the most amazing offerings by The Elevate Prize is its network of social entrepreneurs, mentors, and supporters. Beyond practical skills (which undoubtedly will be invaluable), there’s such a wealth of experiences and perspectives I can tap into. Our own leadership paths have been shaped, challenged, expanded, and improved in so many ways throughout the years by the people we’ve been fortunate enough to learn from.

The Elevate Prize’s development services can improve our abilities to manage people, tasks, operations, and strategy during this major growth phase for Coral Vita. In this light, the MIT Solve community has such incredibly diverse talent, perspectives, and networks to help us help protect the ocean. We want to tell captivating stories to raise awareness about threats to reef health, build out coastal engineering initiatives to amplify the restoration’s impact against storm surges, integrate robotics and 3D printing into coral farming efficiencies, create engaging marine educational content for six to sixty-year-olds, and more.

As we’re currently raising a $2M round to expand our facility into the largest coral farm in the world, the prize funds will help us achieve our goal. This in turn not only will create transformational impact for restoring Bahamian reefs but better position us to scale our solution globally. And over the long-term, The Elevate Prize community is full of thought leaders in impact investing, innovation, and catalytic change to help us protect coral reefs and dependent communities for future generations.

There’s so much room for Coral Vita to better problem-solve, run our organization, and share our story to scale and amplify our impact. The MIT Solve and Elevate Prize communities offer incredible opportunities for us to achieve the transformational change we’re working to achieve. Mentorship is always welcomed by our team, and we’re currently exploring ways to expand our network of advisors (especially in fields like coastal engineering and robotics). Our marketing efforts thus far have been largely organic, effectively building our brand through our local impact, positive media exposure, and word-of mouth. Now that we’re preparing to scale up operations, we want to scale up our marketing correspondingly, and resources, skills, and talent provided by The Elevate Prize could greatly help us. And as the nature of our work involves future operations in multiple countries, assistance in navigating legal and regulatory matters is incredibly useful.

Collaboration is at the core of Coral Vita’s vision. As mentioned earlier, we already have partnerships with policymakers such GLISPA, scientists in the Coral Restoration Consortium like the Mote Marine Lab and Gates Coral Lab, and innovators in a range of entrepreneurship communities. There's so much room and need for teamwork in this space due to urgent and monumental nature of global reef degradation, together with the nascent state of coral restoration. That’s why, among other efforts, we worked with other practitioners like Dr. David Vaughan, Tom Chi, representatives from the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the Great Barrier Reef Foundation, the Ocean Agency, and Wise Oceans to pitch a Saving Coral Reefs XPRIZE, which was ultimately chosen as the new XPRIZE in 2018.

We’re keen to expand and deepen relationships with more organizations. This's especially true in fields like robotics, engineering, materials science, oceanographic monitoring, and machine learning. Many of methods, technologies, and materials used throughout the coral farming space are off-the-shelf. We’re exploring several R&D projects, and partnerships with (but not limited to) such organizations could greatly amplify our impact and opportunities (along with for other restoration practitioners):

·      MIT

·      Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution

·      TU Delft Coastal Engineering

·      ECOncrete

There're also ways to further catalyze the restoration marketplace by working with leading environmental and financial organizations committed to scaling up ecosystem health, such as:

·      Emerson Collective

·      Schmidt Futures

·      Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation

·      The Nature Conservancy

·      National Geographic