I have been volunteering with CRF for more than 4 years and have done hundreds of dives with them to tend CRF's vast coral nurseries and help plant thousands of corals both in the Florida Keys and the Caribbean. CRF is a great organization that engages volunteers, uses innovative techniques to grow corals and restore coral reefs and educates others about the importance of our coral reefs and the crises that our reefs face.
I have volunteered with the Coral Restoration Foundation for a year. I am so impressed by the level of dedication of both the staff and the volunteers. This goes beyond the staff doing it as a job and the volunteers wanting to help. This is giving back. Giving back to nature and maybe selfishly wanting to sustain something that gives such joy to all of us. Come see, come learn and come join a great endeavor.
From day 1 working with the CRF has been an extraordinary experience. I am retired and have been a diver enjoying the oceans and reefs around the world for over 50 years. The CRF has provided me an opportunity to give back for all that enjoyment. The first day was training. We learned about the CRF mission, the science and biology of corals and practiced the skills expected of us. From that point on we worked by providing the needed time, energy and skills to support the CRF mission. I cannot overemphasize the feelings I had at the end of the week having helped populated two of the nurseries and planted corals in an existing stressed reef. This is an impressive, well run program staffed by very competent staff, interns and volunteers.
CRF is such a wonderful group of dedicated divers and communicators who are working to bring the Florida reef track back to life. So much of our own health and livelihood is reliant on a healthy ocean, and replanting the reef with healthy coral is a huge step in the right direction. I am so lucky to be able to volunteer with them, and spread their mission with everyone I meet!
Amazingly well ran dive operation. I've been volunteering with CRF for around a year and all I can say is that I love it. I feel engaged with work, staff conduct themselves with great professionalism and responsibilities feel like plenty, even for a volunteer. I should not forget to mention that I am in love with CRF's mission. Join to make a real change in this world!
Coral Restoration Foundation works on land, at sea and with great heart to protect, preserve and restore the coral reef. Volunteers like me work along aside scientists to grow coral in a nursery (mostly off Key Largo), plant it on the reef and then monitor its growth. Hard data shows that this hard work is paying off. I love that volunteers can come for a day (like me) or, like my husband and other volunteers, on a weekly or daily basis. There's also work to be done on land for those who don't have the desire or skill to dive. I even helped with an art project designed to bring awareness to the problem with plastics in the ocean. The CRF team is fun to be with and dedicated to their work.
The Coral Restoration Foundation is the only coral restoration program in the world that is truly fixing our depleted reefs. The organization has nearly 30,000 corals in the water, is working to protect and strengthen genetic diversity, which is critical now that 95% of the hard corals in the Keys/South Florida are dead. Coral reefs protect our coasts from storms, they provide critical habitat for fish to spawn, for fishing trips and scuba diving (i.e. tourism). I cannot think of any other organization doing more to help our planet and world. Oceans and coral reefs are dramatically threatened and CRF is working incredibly hard day after day to save the building blocks - hard corals.
Review from Guidestar