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Coral reefs cover less than 1% of the ocean floor. They support 25% of all marine species. They protect the coastlines of 100 countries. They provide food and income for more than 500 million people. And in the last fifty years, half of them have been lost.
The reef crisis is not a future problem. It is happening now. And the response to it — if it is going to work — must be grounded in science, honest about its current stage, and genuinely connected to the communities whose understanding and support it depends on.
That is what Coral Futures is building. Not with promises, but with propagation tanks, school visits and open methods.
Every coral we propagate, every school we visit, every volunteer we train, every protocol we document — all of it is conservation. Not preparation for conservation. Not a precursor to conservation. The research, the education and the community engagement are themselves conservation actions, executed with the seriousness and rigour that reef recovery demands.
We are at Phase 1. We are honest about what that means. We are not yet deploying coral to degraded reefs. We are building the knowledge, the capacity and the community relationships that will make us genuinely useful when we do.
Here is what our conservation work looks like in 2026:
- Propagating and studying living coral in our Somerset facility — developing the husbandry protocols that field restoration requires.
- Building community understanding of reef ecosystems through free events at schools and community venues across South Somerset.
- Documenting every method we develop in open-access formats — so that what we learn here can benefit reef conservation globally.
- Forming genuine partnerships with local schools, community groups and research institutions — the relationships that will determine the quality of our future conservation work.
- Governing ourselves rigorously — because conservation organisations that lack proper governance and transparency undermine the credibility of the entire field.
As our research matures, our capacity grows and our community partnerships deepen, we aim to move from foundational science into direct conservation practice. In time, this means:
Reef restoration partnerships. Working alongside established field conservation organisations to apply our validated propagation protocols to real-world reef restoration — contributing propagated, documented, responsibly sourced coral to sites where restoration is scientifically appropriate.
Community-led conservation. Supporting the training and capacity building of local reef managers and conservation practitioners in reef-dependent regions, so that conservation is led by the people who depend on those reefs most — not imposed from the outside.
Open-access conservation science. Publishing our methods, data and protocols freely — contributing to the international body of coral conservation knowledge that organisations of all sizes and in all regions can build on.
Long-term genetic conservation. Contributing to international efforts to preserve coral genetic diversity — including, in the longer term, open-access gene banking that supports both conservation and the scientific understanding of coral resilience.
We name these ambitions clearly as goals, not current activities. We are at the beginning of this work. But the beginning is where everything that follows is determined — and we are building it with the rigour, transparency and community commitment that will make the later stages meaningful.
Every donation to Phase 1 funds this conservation mission — through education, through research and through the organisational integrity that makes long-term impact possible.
To support Phase 1: [Donate →]
To learn about our research: [Research & Propagation →]
To learn about our education work: [Education & Outreach →]