Bahamas Coral Vita Project Wins 1.3 Million Dollars from Prince William
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A Bahamian group that restores depleted coral reefs, won Prince William’s environmental award with nearly 1.3 million dollars in prize money.
The big picture
The Earthshot Prize is an Oscar-like award founded by Prince William and designed to inspire innovative solutions to environmental problems.
Coral Vita was founded by Gator Halpern and Sam Teicher, won the Revive Our Oceans category. Via Zoom from the Bahamas, he said, “So surreal. I was tearing up…”
Why it matters
Coral Vita is in Freeport, Grand Bahama and won because of its method called micro-fragmenting, to improve coral growth by tending to them on land then transferring them to depleted underwater reefs.
On land, the corals mature 50 times faster than if they were raised underwater, helps slow-growing species such as brain corals to mature quicker and corals that are more tolerant of warming oceans and susceptible to diseases are resilient when returned to underwater.
