In October 2023, a marine heatwave tore through the Florida Keys with a speed and intensity that caught even seasoned reef scientists off guard, bleaching and killing coral across the reef tract in a matter of weeks. Three years on, the recovery work is still underway, mostly out of sight of the tourists who fill the Keys' dive boats every season, but it's adding up to something real.
Nearly 16,000 corals went back onto the Florida Keys reef in eight months — 80% of it paid for by tourism tax dollars.
Between October 1, 2025 and June 1, 2026, the Coral Restoration Foundation returned 15,846 corals spanning 17 species to ten reef sites across the Keys, among them Carysfort Reef, Sombrero Reef, Cheeca Rocks, and Looe Key. The mix included 2,900 elkhorn corals (Acropora palmata), 4,600 staghorn corals (Acropora cervicornis), and 5,950 colonies of slower-growing massive and encrusting species, the reef-building corals that give the Keys their structure.
Tourism Dollars Funding the Comeback
More than 80% of that work, over 13,450 colonies, was funded by Monroe County's Tourist Development Council, meaning a meaningful share of the bill was covered by tourism tax revenue rather than grants alone. "Florida's reefs are at the heart of the Keys experience," said Phanor Montoya-Maya, CRF's Restoration Program Manager. "When visitors come here to dive, snorkel, fish, or simply enjoy the ocean, healthy reefs are a big part of what makes that experience possible."
It's not a full recovery, and nobody involved is claiming it is. The reefs that lost the most coral in 2023 are still years from looking the way they did before the heatwave, and another marine heat event could undo a lot of this work before it has a chance to mature. But nearly 16,000 corals back on the reef, largely funded by the industry built on that same reef, is a concrete step in a restoration effort, Mission: Iconic Reefs, that will need many more seasons like this one to add up to anything close to what was lost.
Image credit: A NOAA diver working on a coral colony