A teenager’s 4-H project helped spark a coral restoration revolution in the Florida Keys—how Ken Nedimyer turned broken coral fragments into thousands of new reef colonies

A simple father-daughter 4-H project in the Florida Keys grew into a groundbreaking coral restoration effort. Ken Nedimyer’s experiment with broken staghorn coral fragments eventually led to coral tree nurseries, thousands of new coral colonies and a restoration model now used on reefs around the world.