Sept. 3, 2026
Show Me the Receipts: Why I.CARE Monitors Every Coral It Plants
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Overcast Most coral restoration groups check on a sample of what they've planted, often around 20 to 30 percent, and report that sample as if it represents everything in the water. I.CARE checks on all of it. Every single coral outplant gets monitored at one week, one month, 90 days, then one, two, and three years, with no substitute and nothing left unaccounted for. That rule was built in by co-founders Mike Goldberg and Dr. Kylie Smith before I.CARE ever planted its first coral, and Mike frames it as a matter of fiduciary duty, the same obligation he'd expect from anyone handling someone else's money, whether that's a $2 add-on on a Key Dives trip or a large donation.
The number that discipline actually produces is a 47 percent one-year survival rate, tracked across all 17 coral species I.CARE works with. Mike considers it strong, and few practitioners in the field can even produce a comparable number, since it depends on tracking everything rather than a flattering sample. I.CARE didn't pause that reporting during the 2023 global bleaching event either; it kept publishing survival numbers straight through it. That matters because coral restoration, as a field, mostly doesn't do this. A 2020 peer-reviewed systematic review in PLOS ONE found that roughly 60 percent of restoration projects worldwide were monitored for less than 18 months, and that 45 percent of projects didn't even measure the ecological goals they'd originally set out to hit. A second peer-reviewed paper, published in Conservation Letters in September 2025, goes further, arguing that funding for marine restoration is currently outpacing the underlying science and framing under-monitored projects as a real greenwashing risk to the field.
None of this is about naming or shaming any specific organization; both papers describe a structural, field-wide problem. It also lands at a genuinely uncertain moment for funding: Florida's 2023 executive order promised to restore a quarter of the state's reef tract by 2050, but as of the 2026–2027 budget cycle, neither the state House nor Senate proposal funded the program's second phase, leaving over a dozen research groups and nonprofits needing to shuffle funding. That's exactly why I.CARE's visitor-funded model and its radical transparency about outcomes, good and bad, matter more right now than they would in a world of stable government funding. This is episode four of a four-part week built around Andrew's interview with Mike Goldberg, co-founder of I.CARE, airing Friday.
Takeaways:
- Checking on 100 percent of what's planted, instead of a sample, is unusual in this field, and it's the specific practice Mike credits with earning donor trust.
- I.CARE didn't stop reporting its numbers during a bad year (the 2023 bleaching event). That's arguably the real test of whether transparency is a genuine practice or just a marketing line.
- Field-wide, peer-reviewed research backs up how unusual this actually is: most coral restoration projects worldwide get monitored for a year or less, and close to half don't even measure the goals they originally set out to hit, a gap recent research frames as a real greenwashing risk for the field.
- A spot check of a fraction of what's actually in the water can't tell you the truth about the rest of it, and representing it as if it can misrepresents the real outcome to the people funding the work.
- State and federal funding for Florida's own coral restoration effort is genuinely uncertain right now, documented independently of Mike's interview, which is exactly the kind of risk a visitor-funded, trust-based model is built to survive.
website: https://icareaboutcoral.org/
Transcript
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We've been talking a lot about
coral restoration this week.
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If you haven't listened to the
other episodes before you wanna
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listen to this one, you might
wanna go listen to the other ones.
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We talked specifically about
an organization called ICARE,
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ICAREaboutcoral.org is the website.
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Now, this is a coral restoration
organization that's takes fragments of
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a coral and rebuilds them in a nursery
and then puts them out into the ocean.
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We talked a lot about their method
yesterday in yesterday's episode, but
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today we're gonna be talking about why
they monitor 100% of their specimens
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that they put out into the ocean.
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That's not normal.
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Most coral restoration groups check on a
sample of what they planted, maybe 20%.
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But ICARE checks on all of it, like 100%.
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That single decision made before ICARE,
was planted its first coral, and is the
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reason why people keep giving money.
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It matters more right now than ever
because the funding ICARE and groups
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like that depend on is generally at risk.
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So we're gonna talk about that
on today's episode of the How
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to Protect the Ocean podcast.
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We're getting into why monitoring
100% is a good case scenario for
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people who fund this type of stuff.
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Now, as we said yesterday, the funding
model for ICARE mainly is about divers
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who go at the dive shop at Key Dive,
and they spend an extra two bucks
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for every $100 dive that they do.
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And so that funds the coral restoration
efforts, or part of the coral
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restoration efforts that ICARE does.
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So Mike and Dr. Kylie Smith,
who is the co-founder.
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They're both are the co-founders.
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But from the very beginning, before
ICARE ever put its first coral in
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the water, Mike and Kylie built in
a rule that shaped everything else
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about how the organization will run.
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Every single coral outplant that gets
checked at fixed intervals, one week,
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one month, 90 days, then one, two,
and three years, with no substitute
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and no coral left unaccounted for.
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This wasn't necessarily like the standard
practice elsewhere in the industry,
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at least not in the Keys at that time.
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So like others were like
doing 20%, maybe 30%.
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And that's, like to be honest,
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from a scientific perspective,
you wanna look at a portion of it.
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To do all of them, if you're planting
like, thousands of oak plants, well then
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maybe you're not gonna be able to do it.
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But they decided to do 100%,
which I think is admirable.
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I think is really, really admirable.
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' Cause the alternative approach, you
know, checking a random sample of oak
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plants and reporting that sample as
if they're representative of everything
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else planted, was like the norm Mike
said he saw around him in the field.
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He rejected it on the grounds that a spot
check of a fifth of what's actually in
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the water can't tell you the truth about
what's happening in the other four-fifths.
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And representing it as if it could
misrepresent the real outcome
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of the people funding the work.
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So his hero of the story wasn't the reef.
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His hero of the story was the
people who were funding the work.
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It's the funders.
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He had this mission to ensure that
they knew what was happening and
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they knew the restoration of the
coral, whether it was good or not.
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Whether it worked out or not.
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'Cause let's be honest, when
you're restoring something, it's
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not always going to be 100%.
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You're not always going
to be 100% successful.
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You are working in coral reefs
that have already seen damage.
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They've seen disease, they've seen
climate change impacts like increasing
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heat of the surface of the sea and even
the bottom of the sea, like everywhere.
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Everything is bad.
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Ocean acidification happening.
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We're seeing more fresh water in
the water in general, sea level
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rise, all that kind of stuff.
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It is crazy.
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It is nuts to see what happens.
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So you're never gonna get
a full 100% success rate,
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especially with fragging corals.
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It's not gonna happen.
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But monitoring that mattered.
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It mattered enough to build an
entire organization around it.
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Like Mike frames full monitoring
as a matter of fiduciary duty, the
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same obligation he'd expect from
anyone handling someone else's money.
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Whether it's $2 dive
add-on or a large donation.
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If donors and dive customers are
funding actual coral survival, not
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just the act of planting the coral,
but the group owes them the real number
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rather than the flattering estimate.
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If I'm paying $2, I don't wanna
just know that you're doing the work.
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I wanna know if it's successful.
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Because there's nothing worse than
saying, "Yeah, I gave two bucks.
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I kinda had to when I did the dive.
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It was for the fragments." And somebody's
like, "Well, does it work?" I don't know.
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I mean, I see reefs out there, but it's
not like… It's just, it's not perfect.
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It's not wall-to-wall as it wouldn't
be because these are coral fragments.
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So like, you wanna know.
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It's like, "Oh, actually, yeah.
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They send me a report.
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I've spent two bucks, they send me a
report like every month or every year,
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whatever they do, and I get to see how
successful their work is, and I've only
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paid two bucks." But it makes me want to
pay more because I know they've invested
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in it because they share the data.
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They survey, they monitor 100%
of the corals that are planted.
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Like, that's crazy.
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So for Mike, like skipping full monitoring
would have let, like, ICARE quietly
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avoid ever reporting a bad outcome.
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There's biases in sampling.
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We know this as science.
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We have to remove the bias.
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So when you technically say you have
100 corals, and you're like, "I'm
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gonna take a representation of 25. I'm
gonna monitor 25 of those corals."
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And it could be across species or
it could be like, for each species.
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So say you have one species and
you're gonna do 25 of them out of 100.
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Now, you're not gonna do it in all the
same area, 'cause if you do it all in the
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same area and that's a successful area,
you're gonna say, " We know we've had
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75% success rate." But if I go diving
and I'm a funder and I go diving and I
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don't go in that area, I go in the other
area, I'm like, "Well, hold on a second.
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I see, like, these corals, they're dying.
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Like, these are little
frags and they're dying.
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Why?
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Like, 'cause they just look like pieces
of rock that are cemented on with epoxy.
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Like, that's you guys are doing
this, but you told me that there
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was, like, a 75% success rate."
Well, that's because this one area
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that we surveyed, that was the rate.
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Now, normally what you would do is you
take the 25, but you would go all over
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the place, like your entire study area, so
that you can see how they're all doing in
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your entire envelope of your study site.
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So you can do that from a 25% rule, right?
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25 of 100.
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But if you did all 100 and you
started to look at it and you
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said, "Hey, yeah, you know what?
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We actually have a 47% survival rate."
That's what they're producing 47%.
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The tracked across, like, 17
coral species ICARE works with.
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You know, a figure Mike considers
is strong, and one he notes few
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practitioners in the field can even
produce, since it depends on tracking
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everything rather than a sample.
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So what he's basically alluding to
is that some organizations will say,
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"We have a higher success rate," but
they're not looking at everything.
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So they're kinda hiding
some of the failure.
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And look, it's science.
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You have failure.
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This is why having somebody like Dr. Kylie
Smith as the co-founder and the scientist
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on the board, they kinda look at that and
say, "Look, we gotta take the bias out."
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It's not just a matter of,
like, we're taking funding in.
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We have a duty to that funder to say,
"Yes, this is working," or, "Hey, we
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haven't had, like, the success that
other people have, but we're monitoring
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everything." We're not taking sub-samples.
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And you can even say, if I took a
sub-sample over on the left side here, I
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can say that 90% of the coral survived.
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But if I look over on the right
side and I just take those, I can
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say that, like, 25% survived, just
in the way that they were doing it,
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and we're looking at why that is.
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But if I said, "Okay, 47% survived,"
it'd be like, "Oh, that's kinda
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low." But then, like, when you look
across, we looked at everything,
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and here are some of the reasons.
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The conditions over on the right side had
maybe a little more nutrient runoff or
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more algae or something like that, and
then the ones on the left side didn't.
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But we're seeing an overall 47%
success rate, which is great.
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And so I think that's what's
missing from a lot of these reports.
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A lot of these, Like, I was
at our liquor store, LCBO.
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And they will ask for donations.
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Like, you pay for your booze, and
then they say, "Oh, hey, do you wanna
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add $2 onto the SickKids Hospital?"
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Well, yeah, sure.
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No problem.
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It's two bucks.
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I can do it.
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Now, I have no idea how
this money is being used.
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I can probably go on a site, they
can probably give it to me, and
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I can see how it's being used.
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But right from then and there, I
don't know how it's being used.
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But if I go to a dive shop for ICARE,
like, Key Dive, which is one of ICARE's
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dive shops that funds it, and I say,
"Hey, I'm giving you this two bucks.
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I don't mind giving it to you,
'cause it's part of the dive
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package, but what's it going to?
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Can you show me?" Like, Oh, you're doing
coral restoration. That's kinda cool.
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Like, can you take me through it?" And,
like, Mike will take you through it.
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His staff will take you through
it, and they'll talk about it, and
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they'll talk about the monitoring
and everything like that.
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That is powerful.
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That is transparency at its core.
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That is science.
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That's conservation.
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And I guess like the real test of
whether the transparency was genuine
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came during a 2023 global bleaching event
which we covered in Monday's episode.
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ICARE kept publishing its survival
numbers straight through it rather
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than pausing reporting or going
quiet until the conditions improve.
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So not every outplant survives,
and ICARE doesn't treat it
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as a failure to explain away.
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Coral living on a real reef faces
storms, disease, and heat regardless
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of how carefully it was planted.
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So some loss is simply like, to be
honest, it's the honest cost of doing
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the work in the ocean rather than a lab.
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Now the more restoration that's done,
the more frags are out there, probably
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the more survival that will happen, the
more resilient it can get, the connection
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will be better, and that's great.
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But the payoff in Mike's own framing,
so full transparency about outcomes
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good and bad, is what gives the
donors and dive customers a reason
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to trust ICARE with more support
over time because they can see their
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specific coral's actual fate rather
than just like some marketing summary.
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And I think again, that helps
when you have a co-founder who is
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a scientist, a coral scientist.
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Now this is a real world example
of exactly the kind of standardized
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universal metric tracking.
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That's what we need.
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That NOAA and the Coral Restoration
Consortium's own monitoring guide
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recommends as the field standard.
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Except ICARE was doing it way
before it was even a standard.
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Like this isn't just ICARE being
unusually diligent for its own sake.
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Independent field-wide research
shows monitoring like ICARE's
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is the exception, not the norm.
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So across coral restoration generally.
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The most comprehensive look at this
is a 2020 systematic review in a
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open source journal called PLOS ONE.
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00:09:21,844 --> 00:09:26,294
Which it analyzed coral restoration
projects worldwide, and roughly 60% of
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the projects reviewed were monitored
for less than 18 months total, and
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the median monitoring period across
all of them was just 12 months.
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Like nowhere near ICARE's built-in
three-year check-in that they have.
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About 45% of the projects measured
different metrics than the ecological
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goals that they had actually set going
in, meaning like a large share of the
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00:09:45,764 --> 00:09:49,494
field can't clearly show whether it
achieved what it set out to do, and
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this could be just in project planning.
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Not to say that the people who
are in charge of this did so
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'cause it skewed the results.
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All I'm saying is it's good to
have a plan and stick to it.
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00:09:58,248 --> 00:10:02,168
Like how survival itself gets measured
and reported varies so much from
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00:10:02,168 --> 00:10:06,348
project to project that outcomes are
often not meaningfully compared across
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00:10:06,348 --> 00:10:10,258
the field, and cost reporting is
almost entirely absent industry-wide.
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So funders usually have no independent
way to judge value for money.
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Now, in the review's own language, it
found little to no scientific input
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00:10:18,947 --> 00:10:22,627
or detailed monitoring common enough
across surveyed projects to describe
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00:10:22,627 --> 00:10:24,657
it as a pattern and not an exception.
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Now, a second paper and more pointed
that is worth citing in this is
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00:10:28,947 --> 00:10:32,167
from in Conservation Letters in
September 2025, Algier and Griffith.
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00:10:32,427 --> 00:10:37,114
It focuses on artificial reefs and coral
restoration specifically and argues
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00:10:37,174 --> 00:10:41,684
that funding for marine restoration
is currently outpacing the underlying
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00:10:41,684 --> 00:10:46,607
science, producing a wave of hastily
planned project that risk accelerating
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00:10:46,617 --> 00:10:49,057
harm to the very reefs they meant to help.
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00:10:49,513 --> 00:10:54,223
The paper frames this directly as
greenwashing risk, meaning projects
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that read as conservation success
stories without the monitoring
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behind them to support that claim.
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And it calls for real oversight and
accountability standards in the field
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00:11:02,843 --> 00:11:04,473
rather than good intentions alone.
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00:11:04,866 --> 00:11:06,846
It's a matter of, like, what is truthful?
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How can we make sure that we can
compare the metrics from one coral
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00:11:11,263 --> 00:11:12,423
restoration site to the next?
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00:11:12,423 --> 00:11:14,813
It's not a competition
between the two sites.
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It's what's working and what's not.
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00:11:16,490 --> 00:11:18,110
And that what do you learn from that?
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You learn how to do something better.
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00:11:19,810 --> 00:11:23,670
You learn how every each and
every site could be unique.
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00:11:23,730 --> 00:11:27,190
One country site is not gonna be the
same as the next country site because
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00:11:27,190 --> 00:11:29,830
they have different conditions, different
species, all that kind of stuff.
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00:11:30,220 --> 00:11:34,210
But when you can do that worldwide and
put together, oh, now you're talking.
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Now you're talking about a large
database where you can share information.
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00:11:38,730 --> 00:11:42,170
I can see conferences being put in
to talk about coral restoration.
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00:11:42,510 --> 00:11:47,980
And to increase knowledge and technology
transfer and sharing of information
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00:11:47,980 --> 00:11:49,530
to increase the success rate.
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00:11:50,006 --> 00:11:52,436
None of this is about naming
or blaming any specific group.
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00:11:52,446 --> 00:11:56,536
It's field-wide, peer-reviewed research
describing a structural problem.
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00:11:56,976 --> 00:11:59,436
Planting coral and photographing is easy.
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00:11:59,826 --> 00:12:03,386
Checking in on it years afterward
and reporting the losses, honestly,
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00:12:03,386 --> 00:12:05,106
like, alongside the wins is hard.
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00:12:05,473 --> 00:12:09,520
That's exactly the gap that ICARE
chooses to close from day one, and
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00:12:09,520 --> 00:12:10,920
I thought that was really cool.
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00:12:11,270 --> 00:12:15,090
The same gap both of these papers
say most of the field hasn't done.
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00:12:15,433 --> 00:12:18,293
Again, I don't want to, like, name
and shame any other organization.
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00:12:18,293 --> 00:12:23,263
What I want to like highlight here is that
the data matters, the metrics matter, and
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00:12:23,263 --> 00:12:27,943
having uniform or standardized metrics
is so important to the science and to the
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00:12:27,953 --> 00:12:31,323
legitimacy of the conservation success.
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00:12:31,740 --> 00:12:33,773
We know it's not gonna
be completely successful.
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00:12:33,916 --> 00:12:36,736
Anybody in their right mind knows it's
not gonna be completely successful.
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00:12:37,080 --> 00:12:40,910
But what we have to do is we have to
understand that we can learn from each
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00:12:40,910 --> 00:12:42,300
other, and we can increase the close.
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00:12:42,300 --> 00:12:45,053
But if we are working
separately, it's very difficult.
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00:12:45,063 --> 00:12:46,753
This is like what's the beauty of science.
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00:12:46,763 --> 00:12:49,353
Actually, sometimes in science
there's competition, there's silos.
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00:12:49,526 --> 00:12:52,776
But when business practitioners take
it and you see one person doing one way
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00:12:52,776 --> 00:12:54,506
and another person doing another way,
another person-- They don't have to
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follow scientific standards, to be honest.
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00:12:56,586 --> 00:12:59,716
They're just doing this as a way to
increase their business, and they're
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00:12:59,716 --> 00:13:00,936
gonna do what they need to do.
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00:13:01,242 --> 00:13:04,285
And some people might take
certain standardizations.
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00:13:04,325 --> 00:13:06,755
They might talk to one scientist who
says that, or they might talk to another
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00:13:06,755 --> 00:13:09,012
scientist, or may not talk to anybody
and just say, "Hey, I'm just gonna
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00:13:09,042 --> 00:13:10,652
look at these types of measurements."
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00:13:10,652 --> 00:13:13,405
I don't even know what the measurements
are, to be honest, not offhand.
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00:13:13,618 --> 00:13:17,458
But it would be great to have these
standard metrics so that you can compare,
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00:13:17,468 --> 00:13:20,858
not to say one is better than the
other, but how we can help each other
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00:13:20,858 --> 00:13:22,278
to ensure that these reefs are growing.
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00:13:22,298 --> 00:13:23,798
It is not a competition.
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00:13:24,002 --> 00:13:27,762
It is survival of coral
reefs as we know it.
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00:13:27,862 --> 00:13:29,622
That's what's at stake here.
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00:13:30,008 --> 00:13:32,798
And, like, looking at this, it costs a lot
of money to do this type of monitoring.
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00:13:33,155 --> 00:13:33,815
It's not easy.
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00:13:34,212 --> 00:13:36,822
It takes a lot of time and a lot
of effort, and that costs money
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00:13:37,042 --> 00:13:38,392
'cause you need resources to do it.
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00:13:38,745 --> 00:13:41,735
And Mike describes, like, a generally
uncertain funding environment at both
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00:13:41,745 --> 00:13:43,305
the federal and Florida state levels.
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00:13:43,305 --> 00:13:44,115
Remember, he's in Florida.
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00:13:44,375 --> 00:13:47,678
Tied to an upcoming change in state
administration, saying that the current
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00:13:47,678 --> 00:13:51,468
administration has been incredibly
supportive, but that funding has already
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00:13:51,468 --> 00:13:55,212
been cut for 2028, calling the situation
very uncomfortable for everyone in
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00:13:55,212 --> 00:13:56,762
Florida involved in restoration work.
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00:13:57,092 --> 00:14:01,682
And it tracks, 'cause with real current
reporting, Florida's 2023 executive order
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00:14:01,682 --> 00:14:07,516
promised to restore 25% of the state's
roughly 350-mile reef track by 2050.
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00:14:07,793 --> 00:14:13,390
The state allocated 28.5 million for the
program's initial phase running 2023 to
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00:14:13,390 --> 00:14:18,273
2026, with an original plan for roughly
25 million a year in follow-on funding.
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00:14:18,700 --> 00:14:23,380
As of March 2026, neither the Florida's
House nor the Senate budget proposal for
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00:14:23,380 --> 00:14:28,100
the 2026 and 2027 fiscal year included
continued funding for the program's
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00:14:28,140 --> 00:14:31,773
second phase, leaving more than a dozen
research organizations, universities,
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00:14:31,773 --> 00:14:36,343
aquariums, and nonprofits needing to
shuffle funding or risk losing staff.
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00:14:36,780 --> 00:14:38,080
So, like, where's the funding?
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00:14:38,340 --> 00:14:39,070
Where is it?
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00:14:39,290 --> 00:14:41,780
Why are they not understanding
that this is important to the
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00:14:41,780 --> 00:14:44,276
economy of the Florida in general?
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00:14:44,666 --> 00:14:49,236
This is exactly why ICARE is diversified,
like mostly visitor funding model,
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00:14:49,236 --> 00:14:53,066
and its radical transparency about
results matter more than they would in
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00:14:53,066 --> 00:14:54,846
a world of stable government funding.
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00:14:55,196 --> 00:14:58,376
A funding source Mike doesn't
control just got less certain.
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00:14:58,656 --> 00:15:01,686
A funding source built on trust
and receipts is the one he
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00:15:01,686 --> 00:15:03,586
spent years building on purpose.
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00:15:04,016 --> 00:15:05,446
That's where we're looking at here.
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00:15:05,756 --> 00:15:08,756
We're looking at making
sure funding is available.
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00:15:09,016 --> 00:15:12,836
Through constant source funding where
things are not going up and down.
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00:15:13,213 --> 00:15:14,763
He gets constant visits from divers.
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00:15:14,793 --> 00:15:16,413
They pay him on a regular basis.
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00:15:16,413 --> 00:15:18,813
The Keys are one of the best
places to dive in the US.
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00:15:19,136 --> 00:15:20,306
And so he's gonna get that.
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00:15:20,316 --> 00:15:23,016
$2 extra on a $100 dive is nothing.
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00:15:23,436 --> 00:15:27,366
That is guaranteed as long as people
keep coming, and if he continues to put
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00:15:27,366 --> 00:15:30,133
out the monitoring, people are gonna
keep coming, and that is important.
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00:15:30,400 --> 00:15:31,310
That is what's needed.
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00:15:31,786 --> 00:15:34,576
And I think that's like super
important to how things are going.
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00:15:35,013 --> 00:15:41,403
So as we look at what this framing of this
is, is the fact that 100% of the animals
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00:15:41,403 --> 00:15:46,013
or the outcrops that are being planted
for corals are monitored, gives the donors
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00:15:46,063 --> 00:15:50,103
and individual divers that pay money for
these corals to be restored, gives them
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00:15:50,103 --> 00:15:52,123
an idea of how successful this is done.
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00:15:52,470 --> 00:15:56,530
And knowing that the industry of coral
restoration is not working off the same
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00:15:56,530 --> 00:15:58,100
standardized effects is troublesome.
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00:15:58,493 --> 00:16:01,533
Not for the competition part, like
of one area doing it better than the
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00:16:01,533 --> 00:16:04,833
other, but for the advancement of
restoration science for coral reefs.
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00:16:05,046 --> 00:16:08,356
It is up to us to make sure that
the coral reefs are restored.
335
00:16:08,713 --> 00:16:10,363
It's not up to anybody else.
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00:16:10,593 --> 00:16:12,183
The people is where it goes.
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00:16:12,343 --> 00:16:16,436
And unfortunately, the people used to have
power in government, where government
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00:16:16,436 --> 00:16:19,146
would fund this kind of stuff that's
important to not only the economy,
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00:16:19,146 --> 00:16:20,906
but also the safety of the coastline.
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00:16:21,286 --> 00:16:24,596
And that seems like that, with a
lot of politicians, whatever side of
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00:16:24,596 --> 00:16:27,516
the aisle you're on, is just kinda
goes out the window these days.
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00:16:27,616 --> 00:16:30,276
Nobody's talking about climate
change, or not many people, and not
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00:16:30,276 --> 00:16:32,906
many people are acting fast enough
to do it in terms of government.
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00:16:33,299 --> 00:16:35,166
And so, we need to do it ourselves.
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00:16:35,196 --> 00:16:38,299
And sometimes businesses are the best
way to go forward because there's
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00:16:38,299 --> 00:16:41,356
constant stream of revenue that's coming
in, and that's an important aspect.
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00:16:41,726 --> 00:16:43,076
That is a very important aspect.
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00:16:43,472 --> 00:16:47,502
So, like, if you find a way to donate
through, like, purchasing products,
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00:16:47,502 --> 00:16:49,582
like if you have to spend an extra two
bucks or anything, I'd love to know
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00:16:49,582 --> 00:16:51,062
if you would do that kind of stuff.
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00:16:51,316 --> 00:16:51,896
Let me know.
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00:16:51,906 --> 00:16:52,516
Hit me up.
353
00:16:52,556 --> 00:16:54,209
If you're on Spotify, leave me a comment.
354
00:16:54,396 --> 00:16:57,406
If you are listening to this on
your favorite podcast app and you
355
00:16:57,406 --> 00:17:00,746
wanna get in touch, you can do
so by going to the show notes.
356
00:17:00,836 --> 00:17:03,332
You can DM me on Instagram,
TikTok, Facebook.
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00:17:03,332 --> 00:17:04,392
I'm on all those platforms.
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00:17:04,569 --> 00:17:05,349
I'd love to hear from you.
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00:17:05,809 --> 00:17:07,229
So yeah, think about that.
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00:17:07,439 --> 00:17:08,179
Love to hear from you.
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00:17:08,209 --> 00:17:09,099
That's the end of the episode.
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00:17:09,119 --> 00:17:11,049
Thank you so much for watching
this episode of the How to
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00:17:11,049 --> 00:17:11,959
Protect the Ocean podcast.
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00:17:12,096 --> 00:17:13,116
I am your host, Andrew Lewin.
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00:17:13,136 --> 00:17:13,716
Have a great day.
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00:17:13,736 --> 00:17:15,566
We'll talk to you next
time, and happy conservation.
00:00:00,049 --> 00:00:02,259
We've been talking a lot about
coral restoration this week.
2
00:00:02,259 --> 00:00:04,159
If you haven't listened to the
other episodes before you wanna
3
00:00:04,159 --> 00:00:06,689
listen to this one, you might
wanna go listen to the other ones.
4
00:00:06,950 --> 00:00:10,060
We talked specifically about
an organization called ICARE,
5
00:00:10,320 --> 00:00:13,180
ICAREaboutcoral.org is the website.
6
00:00:13,468 --> 00:00:18,528
Now, this is a coral restoration
organization that's takes fragments of
7
00:00:18,528 --> 00:00:22,588
a coral and rebuilds them in a nursery
and then puts them out into the ocean.
8
00:00:22,895 --> 00:00:25,928
We talked a lot about their method
yesterday in yesterday's episode, but
9
00:00:25,928 --> 00:00:30,558
today we're gonna be talking about why
they monitor 100% of their specimens
10
00:00:30,558 --> 00:00:32,288
that they put out into the ocean.
11
00:00:32,538 --> 00:00:33,408
That's not normal.
12
00:00:33,508 --> 00:00:37,658
Most coral restoration groups check on a
sample of what they planted, maybe 20%.
13
00:00:38,008 --> 00:00:40,498
But ICARE checks on all of it, like 100%.
14
00:00:40,765 --> 00:00:45,455
That single decision made before ICARE,
was planted its first coral, and is the
15
00:00:45,455 --> 00:00:46,895
reason why people keep giving money.
16
00:00:46,945 --> 00:00:51,525
It matters more right now than ever
because the funding ICARE and groups
17
00:00:51,525 --> 00:00:54,435
like that depend on is generally at risk.
18
00:00:54,695 --> 00:00:56,705
So we're gonna talk about that
on today's episode of the How
19
00:00:56,705 --> 00:00:57,745
to Protect the Ocean podcast.
20
00:00:57,775 --> 00:01:01,925
We're getting into why monitoring
100% is a good case scenario for
21
00:01:01,925 --> 00:01:03,835
people who fund this type of stuff.
22
00:01:03,855 --> 00:01:08,595
Now, as we said yesterday, the funding
model for ICARE mainly is about divers
23
00:01:08,595 --> 00:01:12,408
who go at the dive shop at Key Dive,
and they spend an extra two bucks
24
00:01:12,408 --> 00:01:13,928
for every $100 dive that they do.
25
00:01:14,162 --> 00:01:17,232
And so that funds the coral restoration
efforts, or part of the coral
26
00:01:17,232 --> 00:01:19,572
restoration efforts that ICARE does.
27
00:01:19,572 --> 00:01:23,072
So Mike and Dr. Kylie Smith,
who is the co-founder.
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00:01:23,272 --> 00:01:24,542
They're both are the co-founders.
29
00:01:24,852 --> 00:01:28,522
But from the very beginning, before
ICARE ever put its first coral in
30
00:01:28,522 --> 00:01:33,105
the water, Mike and Kylie built in
a rule that shaped everything else
31
00:01:33,145 --> 00:01:34,815
about how the organization will run.
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00:01:35,025 --> 00:01:39,565
Every single coral outplant that gets
checked at fixed intervals, one week,
33
00:01:39,705 --> 00:01:44,492
one month, 90 days, then one, two,
and three years, with no substitute
34
00:01:44,492 --> 00:01:47,068
and no coral left unaccounted for.
35
00:01:47,638 --> 00:01:51,438
This wasn't necessarily like the standard
practice elsewhere in the industry,
36
00:01:51,498 --> 00:01:53,758
at least not in the Keys at that time.
37
00:01:54,018 --> 00:01:57,065
So like others were like
doing 20%, maybe 30%.
38
00:01:57,215 --> 00:01:58,405
And that's, like to be honest,
39
00:01:58,542 --> 00:02:01,142
from a scientific perspective,
you wanna look at a portion of it.
40
00:02:01,152 --> 00:02:04,548
To do all of them, if you're planting
like, thousands of oak plants, well then
41
00:02:04,548 --> 00:02:06,428
maybe you're not gonna be able to do it.
42
00:02:06,608 --> 00:02:08,898
But they decided to do 100%,
which I think is admirable.
43
00:02:09,278 --> 00:02:10,708
I think is really, really admirable.
44
00:02:11,055 --> 00:02:14,035
' Cause the alternative approach, you
know, checking a random sample of oak
45
00:02:14,035 --> 00:02:17,702
plants and reporting that sample as
if they're representative of everything
46
00:02:17,702 --> 00:02:22,472
else planted, was like the norm Mike
said he saw around him in the field.
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00:02:22,722 --> 00:02:28,245
He rejected it on the grounds that a spot
check of a fifth of what's actually in
48
00:02:28,245 --> 00:02:31,435
the water can't tell you the truth about
what's happening in the other four-fifths.
49
00:02:32,165 --> 00:02:35,235
And representing it as if it could
misrepresent the real outcome
50
00:02:35,235 --> 00:02:36,505
of the people funding the work.
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00:02:36,505 --> 00:02:38,945
So his hero of the story wasn't the reef.
52
00:02:39,335 --> 00:02:43,365
His hero of the story was the
people who were funding the work.
53
00:02:43,738 --> 00:02:44,515
It's the funders.
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00:02:44,525 --> 00:02:48,902
He had this mission to ensure that
they knew what was happening and
55
00:02:48,902 --> 00:02:51,912
they knew the restoration of the
coral, whether it was good or not.
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00:02:52,204 --> 00:02:53,494
Whether it worked out or not.
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00:02:53,494 --> 00:02:55,964
'Cause let's be honest, when
you're restoring something, it's
58
00:02:55,964 --> 00:02:57,324
not always going to be 100%.
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00:02:57,614 --> 00:02:59,364
You're not always going
to be 100% successful.
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00:02:59,678 --> 00:03:03,188
You are working in coral reefs
that have already seen damage.
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00:03:03,188 --> 00:03:06,098
They've seen disease, they've seen
climate change impacts like increasing
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00:03:06,098 --> 00:03:09,198
heat of the surface of the sea and even
the bottom of the sea, like everywhere.
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00:03:09,228 --> 00:03:10,228
Everything is bad.
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00:03:10,488 --> 00:03:12,108
Ocean acidification happening.
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00:03:12,318 --> 00:03:14,771
We're seeing more fresh water in
the water in general, sea level
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rise, all that kind of stuff.
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00:03:15,728 --> 00:03:16,638
It is crazy.
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00:03:16,708 --> 00:03:17,708
It is nuts to see what happens.
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00:03:17,738 --> 00:03:20,248
So you're never gonna get
a full 100% success rate,
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00:03:20,298 --> 00:03:21,638
especially with fragging corals.
71
00:03:21,638 --> 00:03:22,428
It's not gonna happen.
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00:03:22,661 --> 00:03:24,121
But monitoring that mattered.
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00:03:24,504 --> 00:03:26,934
It mattered enough to build an
entire organization around it.
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00:03:26,944 --> 00:03:31,418
Like Mike frames full monitoring
as a matter of fiduciary duty, the
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same obligation he'd expect from
anyone handling someone else's money.
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00:03:35,288 --> 00:03:38,478
Whether it's $2 dive
add-on or a large donation.
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If donors and dive customers are
funding actual coral survival, not
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00:03:42,741 --> 00:03:46,331
just the act of planting the coral,
but the group owes them the real number
79
00:03:46,331 --> 00:03:48,161
rather than the flattering estimate.
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00:03:48,391 --> 00:03:51,734
If I'm paying $2, I don't wanna
just know that you're doing the work.
81
00:03:51,754 --> 00:03:53,194
I wanna know if it's successful.
82
00:03:53,521 --> 00:03:55,801
Because there's nothing worse than
saying, "Yeah, I gave two bucks.
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00:03:55,801 --> 00:03:57,671
I kinda had to when I did the dive.
84
00:03:57,918 --> 00:04:00,778
It was for the fragments." And somebody's
like, "Well, does it work?" I don't know.
85
00:04:01,158 --> 00:04:04,878
I mean, I see reefs out there, but it's
not like… It's just, it's not perfect.
86
00:04:04,878 --> 00:04:08,068
It's not wall-to-wall as it wouldn't
be because these are coral fragments.
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00:04:08,364 --> 00:04:09,504
So like, you wanna know.
88
00:04:09,514 --> 00:04:10,484
It's like, "Oh, actually, yeah.
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00:04:10,484 --> 00:04:11,644
They send me a report.
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00:04:11,898 --> 00:04:14,628
I've spent two bucks, they send me a
report like every month or every year,
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00:04:14,628 --> 00:04:17,824
whatever they do, and I get to see how
successful their work is, and I've only
92
00:04:17,824 --> 00:04:21,854
paid two bucks." But it makes me want to
pay more because I know they've invested
93
00:04:21,854 --> 00:04:23,344
in it because they share the data.
94
00:04:23,394 --> 00:04:28,094
They survey, they monitor 100%
of the corals that are planted.
95
00:04:28,526 --> 00:04:29,636
Like, that's crazy.
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00:04:30,016 --> 00:04:34,686
So for Mike, like skipping full monitoring
would have let, like, ICARE quietly
97
00:04:34,686 --> 00:04:36,436
avoid ever reporting a bad outcome.
98
00:04:36,780 --> 00:04:38,230
There's biases in sampling.
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00:04:38,400 --> 00:04:39,350
We know this as science.
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00:04:39,350 --> 00:04:40,830
We have to remove the bias.
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00:04:41,006 --> 00:04:43,656
So when you technically say you have
100 corals, and you're like, "I'm
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00:04:43,656 --> 00:04:48,353
gonna take a representation of 25. I'm
gonna monitor 25 of those corals."
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00:04:48,623 --> 00:04:51,490
And it could be across species or
it could be like, for each species.
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00:04:51,490 --> 00:04:55,156
So say you have one species and
you're gonna do 25 of them out of 100.
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00:04:55,376 --> 00:04:57,626
Now, you're not gonna do it in all the
same area, 'cause if you do it all in the
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00:04:57,626 --> 00:05:00,096
same area and that's a successful area,
you're gonna say, " We know we've had
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00:05:00,116 --> 00:05:04,403
75% success rate." But if I go diving
and I'm a funder and I go diving and I
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00:05:04,403 --> 00:05:06,923
don't go in that area, I go in the other
area, I'm like, "Well, hold on a second.
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00:05:06,923 --> 00:05:09,293
I see, like, these corals, they're dying.
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00:05:09,393 --> 00:05:11,033
Like, these are little
frags and they're dying.
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00:05:11,033 --> 00:05:11,313
Why?
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00:05:11,313 --> 00:05:14,703
Like, 'cause they just look like pieces
of rock that are cemented on with epoxy.
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00:05:15,053 --> 00:05:16,943
Like, that's you guys are doing
this, but you told me that there
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00:05:16,943 --> 00:05:20,463
was, like, a 75% success rate."
Well, that's because this one area
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00:05:20,463 --> 00:05:21,713
that we surveyed, that was the rate.
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00:05:21,763 --> 00:05:24,873
Now, normally what you would do is you
take the 25, but you would go all over
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00:05:24,873 --> 00:05:29,243
the place, like your entire study area, so
that you can see how they're all doing in
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00:05:29,243 --> 00:05:31,683
your entire envelope of your study site.
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00:05:32,136 --> 00:05:34,826
So you can do that from a 25% rule, right?
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00:05:34,826 --> 00:05:35,756
25 of 100.
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00:05:36,146 --> 00:05:38,316
But if you did all 100 and you
started to look at it and you
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00:05:38,316 --> 00:05:39,516
said, "Hey, yeah, you know what?
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00:05:39,606 --> 00:05:44,469
We actually have a 47% survival rate."
That's what they're producing 47%.
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00:05:44,752 --> 00:05:47,972
The tracked across, like, 17
coral species ICARE works with.
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00:05:48,342 --> 00:05:51,652
You know, a figure Mike considers
is strong, and one he notes few
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00:05:51,652 --> 00:05:55,352
practitioners in the field can even
produce, since it depends on tracking
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00:05:55,412 --> 00:05:56,872
everything rather than a sample.
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00:05:57,202 --> 00:06:00,292
So what he's basically alluding to
is that some organizations will say,
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00:06:00,322 --> 00:06:02,722
"We have a higher success rate," but
they're not looking at everything.
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00:06:03,039 --> 00:06:05,089
So they're kinda hiding
some of the failure.
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00:06:05,199 --> 00:06:06,229
And look, it's science.
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You have failure.
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00:06:06,999 --> 00:06:11,379
This is why having somebody like Dr. Kylie
Smith as the co-founder and the scientist
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00:06:11,419 --> 00:06:14,539
on the board, they kinda look at that and
say, "Look, we gotta take the bias out."
135
00:06:14,539 --> 00:06:16,919
It's not just a matter of,
like, we're taking funding in.
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00:06:17,172 --> 00:06:21,099
We have a duty to that funder to say,
"Yes, this is working," or, "Hey, we
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00:06:21,099 --> 00:06:23,999
haven't had, like, the success that
other people have, but we're monitoring
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00:06:24,069 --> 00:06:26,312
everything." We're not taking sub-samples.
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00:06:26,312 --> 00:06:29,422
And you can even say, if I took a
sub-sample over on the left side here, I
140
00:06:29,422 --> 00:06:31,392
can say that 90% of the coral survived.
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00:06:31,609 --> 00:06:34,069
But if I look over on the right
side and I just take those, I can
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00:06:34,069 --> 00:06:37,069
say that, like, 25% survived, just
in the way that they were doing it,
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00:06:37,069 --> 00:06:38,559
and we're looking at why that is.
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00:06:38,939 --> 00:06:42,029
But if I said, "Okay, 47% survived,"
it'd be like, "Oh, that's kinda
145
00:06:42,029 --> 00:06:44,669
low." But then, like, when you look
across, we looked at everything,
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00:06:44,669 --> 00:06:46,009
and here are some of the reasons.
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The conditions over on the right side had
maybe a little more nutrient runoff or
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more algae or something like that, and
then the ones on the left side didn't.
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00:06:52,746 --> 00:06:56,376
But we're seeing an overall 47%
success rate, which is great.
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00:06:56,772 --> 00:06:59,812
And so I think that's what's
missing from a lot of these reports.
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00:06:59,812 --> 00:07:02,712
A lot of these, Like, I was
at our liquor store, LCBO.
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00:07:02,922 --> 00:07:05,239
And they will ask for donations.
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00:07:05,239 --> 00:07:08,452
Like, you pay for your booze, and
then they say, "Oh, hey, do you wanna
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00:07:08,462 --> 00:07:10,522
add $2 onto the SickKids Hospital?"
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00:07:10,902 --> 00:07:11,612
Well, yeah, sure.
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00:07:11,722 --> 00:07:12,182
No problem.
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00:07:12,292 --> 00:07:12,982
It's two bucks.
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00:07:13,142 --> 00:07:13,752
I can do it.
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00:07:13,879 --> 00:07:17,116
Now, I have no idea how
this money is being used.
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I can probably go on a site, they
can probably give it to me, and
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00:07:19,669 --> 00:07:20,749
I can see how it's being used.
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00:07:20,749 --> 00:07:23,576
But right from then and there, I
don't know how it's being used.
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But if I go to a dive shop for ICARE,
like, Key Dive, which is one of ICARE's
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dive shops that funds it, and I say,
"Hey, I'm giving you this two bucks.
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I don't mind giving it to you,
'cause it's part of the dive
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00:07:32,666 --> 00:07:33,976
package, but what's it going to?
167
00:07:33,996 --> 00:07:37,056
Can you show me?" Like, Oh, you're doing
coral restoration. That's kinda cool.
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00:07:37,056 --> 00:07:39,166
Like, can you take me through it?" And,
like, Mike will take you through it.
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His staff will take you through
it, and they'll talk about it, and
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00:07:40,976 --> 00:07:42,736
they'll talk about the monitoring
and everything like that.
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That is powerful.
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That is transparency at its core.
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That is science.
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That's conservation.
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00:07:49,461 --> 00:07:52,711
And I guess like the real test of
whether the transparency was genuine
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came during a 2023 global bleaching event
which we covered in Monday's episode.
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ICARE kept publishing its survival
numbers straight through it rather
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than pausing reporting or going
quiet until the conditions improve.
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00:08:02,941 --> 00:08:05,851
So not every outplant survives,
and ICARE doesn't treat it
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as a failure to explain away.
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Coral living on a real reef faces
storms, disease, and heat regardless
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00:08:12,748 --> 00:08:14,478
of how carefully it was planted.
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So some loss is simply like, to be
honest, it's the honest cost of doing
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the work in the ocean rather than a lab.
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Now the more restoration that's done,
the more frags are out there, probably
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the more survival that will happen, the
more resilient it can get, the connection
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will be better, and that's great.
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00:08:27,444 --> 00:08:31,594
But the payoff in Mike's own framing,
so full transparency about outcomes
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00:08:31,614 --> 00:08:36,008
good and bad, is what gives the
donors and dive customers a reason
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00:08:36,008 --> 00:08:39,881
to trust ICARE with more support
over time because they can see their
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specific coral's actual fate rather
than just like some marketing summary.
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00:08:44,334 --> 00:08:47,124
And I think again, that helps
when you have a co-founder who is
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a scientist, a coral scientist.
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00:08:48,991 --> 00:08:52,661
Now this is a real world example
of exactly the kind of standardized
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universal metric tracking.
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00:08:54,568 --> 00:08:55,098
That's what we need.
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That NOAA and the Coral Restoration
Consortium's own monitoring guide
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recommends as the field standard.
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00:09:00,408 --> 00:09:03,278
Except ICARE was doing it way
before it was even a standard.
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00:09:03,668 --> 00:09:07,248
Like this isn't just ICARE being
unusually diligent for its own sake.
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00:09:07,298 --> 00:09:10,508
Independent field-wide research
shows monitoring like ICARE's
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00:09:10,528 --> 00:09:12,098
is the exception, not the norm.
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00:09:12,478 --> 00:09:14,488
So across coral restoration generally.
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00:09:14,931 --> 00:09:19,901
The most comprehensive look at this
is a 2020 systematic review in a
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00:09:19,931 --> 00:09:21,541
open source journal called PLOS ONE.
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00:09:21,844 --> 00:09:26,294
Which it analyzed coral restoration
projects worldwide, and roughly 60% of
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the projects reviewed were monitored
for less than 18 months total, and
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the median monitoring period across
all of them was just 12 months.
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Like nowhere near ICARE's built-in
three-year check-in that they have.
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About 45% of the projects measured
different metrics than the ecological
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goals that they had actually set going
in, meaning like a large share of the
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00:09:45,764 --> 00:09:49,494
field can't clearly show whether it
achieved what it set out to do, and
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00:09:49,494 --> 00:09:50,954
this could be just in project planning.
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00:09:51,078 --> 00:09:54,148
Not to say that the people who
are in charge of this did so
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'cause it skewed the results.
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00:09:55,408 --> 00:09:57,948
All I'm saying is it's good to
have a plan and stick to it.
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00:09:58,248 --> 00:10:02,168
Like how survival itself gets measured
and reported varies so much from
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00:10:02,168 --> 00:10:06,348
project to project that outcomes are
often not meaningfully compared across
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00:10:06,348 --> 00:10:10,258
the field, and cost reporting is
almost entirely absent industry-wide.
220
00:10:10,588 --> 00:10:14,328
So funders usually have no independent
way to judge value for money.
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00:10:14,677 --> 00:10:18,947
Now, in the review's own language, it
found little to no scientific input
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00:10:18,947 --> 00:10:22,627
or detailed monitoring common enough
across surveyed projects to describe
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00:10:22,627 --> 00:10:24,657
it as a pattern and not an exception.
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00:10:25,057 --> 00:10:28,897
Now, a second paper and more pointed
that is worth citing in this is
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00:10:28,947 --> 00:10:32,167
from in Conservation Letters in
September 2025, Algier and Griffith.
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00:10:32,427 --> 00:10:37,114
It focuses on artificial reefs and coral
restoration specifically and argues
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00:10:37,174 --> 00:10:41,684
that funding for marine restoration
is currently outpacing the underlying
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00:10:41,684 --> 00:10:46,607
science, producing a wave of hastily
planned project that risk accelerating
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00:10:46,617 --> 00:10:49,057
harm to the very reefs they meant to help.
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The paper frames this directly as
greenwashing risk, meaning projects
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00:10:54,223 --> 00:10:57,263
that read as conservation success
stories without the monitoring
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behind them to support that claim.
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And it calls for real oversight and
accountability standards in the field
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00:11:02,843 --> 00:11:04,473
rather than good intentions alone.
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00:11:04,866 --> 00:11:06,846
It's a matter of, like, what is truthful?
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00:11:07,203 --> 00:11:11,263
How can we make sure that we can
compare the metrics from one coral
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00:11:11,263 --> 00:11:12,423
restoration site to the next?
238
00:11:12,423 --> 00:11:14,813
It's not a competition
between the two sites.
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It's what's working and what's not.
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And that what do you learn from that?
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You learn how to do something better.
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You learn how every each and
every site could be unique.
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One country site is not gonna be the
same as the next country site because
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they have different conditions, different
species, all that kind of stuff.
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But when you can do that worldwide and
put together, oh, now you're talking.
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Now you're talking about a large
database where you can share information.
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I can see conferences being put in
to talk about coral restoration.
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And to increase knowledge and technology
transfer and sharing of information
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to increase the success rate.
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None of this is about naming
or blaming any specific group.
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00:11:52,446 --> 00:11:56,536
It's field-wide, peer-reviewed research
describing a structural problem.
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00:11:56,976 --> 00:11:59,436
Planting coral and photographing is easy.
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Checking in on it years afterward
and reporting the losses, honestly,
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like, alongside the wins is hard.
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00:12:05,473 --> 00:12:09,520
That's exactly the gap that ICARE
chooses to close from day one, and
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I thought that was really cool.
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The same gap both of these papers
say most of the field hasn't done.
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Again, I don't want to, like, name
and shame any other organization.
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00:12:18,293 --> 00:12:23,263
What I want to like highlight here is that
the data matters, the metrics matter, and
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00:12:23,263 --> 00:12:27,943
having uniform or standardized metrics
is so important to the science and to the
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00:12:27,953 --> 00:12:31,323
legitimacy of the conservation success.
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00:12:31,740 --> 00:12:33,773
We know it's not gonna
be completely successful.
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Anybody in their right mind knows it's
not gonna be completely successful.
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00:12:37,080 --> 00:12:40,910
But what we have to do is we have to
understand that we can learn from each
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00:12:40,910 --> 00:12:42,300
other, and we can increase the close.
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00:12:42,300 --> 00:12:45,053
But if we are working
separately, it's very difficult.
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This is like what's the beauty of science.
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00:12:46,763 --> 00:12:49,353
Actually, sometimes in science
there's competition, there's silos.
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00:12:49,526 --> 00:12:52,776
But when business practitioners take
it and you see one person doing one way
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00:12:52,776 --> 00:12:54,506
and another person doing another way,
another person-- They don't have to
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follow scientific standards, to be honest.
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They're just doing this as a way to
increase their business, and they're
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00:12:59,716 --> 00:13:00,936
gonna do what they need to do.
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00:13:01,242 --> 00:13:04,285
And some people might take
certain standardizations.
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00:13:04,325 --> 00:13:06,755
They might talk to one scientist who
says that, or they might talk to another
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00:13:06,755 --> 00:13:09,012
scientist, or may not talk to anybody
and just say, "Hey, I'm just gonna
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00:13:09,042 --> 00:13:10,652
look at these types of measurements."
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00:13:10,652 --> 00:13:13,405
I don't even know what the measurements
are, to be honest, not offhand.
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00:13:13,618 --> 00:13:17,458
But it would be great to have these
standard metrics so that you can compare,
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00:13:17,468 --> 00:13:20,858
not to say one is better than the
other, but how we can help each other
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to ensure that these reefs are growing.
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It is not a competition.
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It is survival of coral
reefs as we know it.
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00:13:27,862 --> 00:13:29,622
That's what's at stake here.
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00:13:30,008 --> 00:13:32,798
And, like, looking at this, it costs a lot
of money to do this type of monitoring.
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00:13:33,155 --> 00:13:33,815
It's not easy.
287
00:13:34,212 --> 00:13:36,822
It takes a lot of time and a lot
of effort, and that costs money
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'cause you need resources to do it.
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And Mike describes, like, a generally
uncertain funding environment at both
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the federal and Florida state levels.
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Remember, he's in Florida.
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Tied to an upcoming change in state
administration, saying that the current
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administration has been incredibly
supportive, but that funding has already
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been cut for 2028, calling the situation
very uncomfortable for everyone in
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Florida involved in restoration work.
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And it tracks, 'cause with real current
reporting, Florida's 2023 executive order
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promised to restore 25% of the state's
roughly 350-mile reef track by 2050.
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The state allocated 28.5 million for the
program's initial phase running 2023 to
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2026, with an original plan for roughly
25 million a year in follow-on funding.
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As of March 2026, neither the Florida's
House nor the Senate budget proposal for
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the 2026 and 2027 fiscal year included
continued funding for the program's
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second phase, leaving more than a dozen
research organizations, universities,
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aquariums, and nonprofits needing to
shuffle funding or risk losing staff.
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So, like, where's the funding?
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Where is it?
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Why are they not understanding
that this is important to the
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economy of the Florida in general?
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This is exactly why ICARE is diversified,
like mostly visitor funding model,
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and its radical transparency about
results matter more than they would in
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a world of stable government funding.
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A funding source Mike doesn't
control just got less certain.
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A funding source built on trust
and receipts is the one he
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spent years building on purpose.
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That's where we're looking at here.
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We're looking at making
sure funding is available.
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Through constant source funding where
things are not going up and down.
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He gets constant visits from divers.
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They pay him on a regular basis.
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The Keys are one of the best
places to dive in the US.
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And so he's gonna get that.
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$2 extra on a $100 dive is nothing.
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That is guaranteed as long as people
keep coming, and if he continues to put
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out the monitoring, people are gonna
keep coming, and that is important.
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That is what's needed.
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00:15:31,786 --> 00:15:34,576
And I think that's like super
important to how things are going.
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So as we look at what this framing of this
is, is the fact that 100% of the animals
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or the outcrops that are being planted
for corals are monitored, gives the donors
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00:15:46,063 --> 00:15:50,103
and individual divers that pay money for
these corals to be restored, gives them
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an idea of how successful this is done.
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And knowing that the industry of coral
restoration is not working off the same
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standardized effects is troublesome.
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Not for the competition part, like
of one area doing it better than the
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other, but for the advancement of
restoration science for coral reefs.
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It is up to us to make sure that
the coral reefs are restored.
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It's not up to anybody else.
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The people is where it goes.
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And unfortunately, the people used to have
power in government, where government
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00:16:16,436 --> 00:16:19,146
would fund this kind of stuff that's
important to not only the economy,
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but also the safety of the coastline.
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00:16:21,286 --> 00:16:24,596
And that seems like that, with a
lot of politicians, whatever side of
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the aisle you're on, is just kinda
goes out the window these days.
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00:16:27,616 --> 00:16:30,276
Nobody's talking about climate
change, or not many people, and not
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00:16:30,276 --> 00:16:32,906
many people are acting fast enough
to do it in terms of government.
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And so, we need to do it ourselves.
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00:16:35,196 --> 00:16:38,299
And sometimes businesses are the best
way to go forward because there's
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constant stream of revenue that's coming
in, and that's an important aspect.
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That is a very important aspect.
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So, like, if you find a way to donate
through, like, purchasing products,
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00:16:47,502 --> 00:16:49,582
like if you have to spend an extra two
bucks or anything, I'd love to know
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if you would do that kind of stuff.
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Let me know.
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Hit me up.
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If you're on Spotify, leave me a comment.
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00:16:54,396 --> 00:16:57,406
If you are listening to this on
your favorite podcast app and you
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00:16:57,406 --> 00:17:00,746
wanna get in touch, you can do
so by going to the show notes.
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00:17:00,836 --> 00:17:03,332
You can DM me on Instagram,
TikTok, Facebook.
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00:17:03,332 --> 00:17:04,392
I'm on all those platforms.
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I'd love to hear from you.
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So yeah, think about that.
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Love to hear from you.
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That's the end of the episode.
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Thank you so much for watching
this episode of the How to
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Protect the Ocean podcast.
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I am your host, Andrew Lewin.
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Have a great day.
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We'll talk to you next
time, and happy conservation.
