Rescue. Revive. Rebuild.

The Carolinas are home to the northernmost hard-coral reefs on the East Coast. We are the family, and the volunteers, who dive to bring them back.

Become a Reef Keeper See how it works

Coral rescue on the Carolina coast

Most people have no idea there is coral off North Carolina.

Oculina robusta grows on the ledges and wrecks off Wilmington, sixty to a hundred feet down. Storms and anchors break it. Left on the sand, the pieces die. Picked up, staged on a nursery strand and replanted, most of them live. That is the whole job, and no one else was doing it.

412coral fragments rescued and replanted

28strands growing in the nursery

96volunteer dives logged

3generations of one family in the water

What we do

How a broken piece of coral gets a second life.

Every dive does one of these three things. Every gift pays for one of them.

A Coral Rescue Box on the reef, where divers leave broken coral for the nursery

01Rescue

Volunteer divers find broken coral fragments after storms and boat traffic, collect them before they are buried, and bring them to the nursery.

Join a rescue dive →

A nursery tree standing in clear teal water off the Carolina coast

02Revive

Fragments are hung on nursery strands, fifteen to a tree, where they heal and grow until they are strong enough to go back on the reef.

Adopt a strand →

Two volunteer divers working over a Carolina reef ledge

03Rebuild

Healthy coral is cemented back onto mapped reef structure, natural and artificial, where sonar and dive surveys say it will hold.

See the reef maps →

The Carolina Reef Foundation dive crew on the boat with the foundation banner — The crew, morning of a rescue dive

Our story

A father, a son, and now the grandkids.

John Harden Sr. wanted to follow Jacques Cousteau. Twenty years after his first dives he took his son back to the Florida reefs he remembered and found them gone. On the drive home his son said the sentence this foundation is built on.

"Why don't we just do it at home in the Carolinas?"John Harden II

Today the granddaughter and grandson are certified and diving, volunteers drive sixteen hours from Ontario to join a rescue, and the reefs off Wilmington have a crew that comes back for them every season.

Read the whole story

Reef Keepers membership

Keep a coral alive every month.

One strand holds fifteen rescued fragments and costs $150 to rescue and replant. So ten dollars is one coral. Pick your pace, cancel any time.

Reef Keeper

$10a month

One rescued coral fragment a month.

Reef Keeper decal
Your name on the Members wall
Impact line on every receipt

Join as a Reef Keeper

Most chosen

Coral Guardian

$25a month

A full strand of fifteen fragments every six months.

Everything in Reef Keeper
Adopt a Coral certificate each year
First look at every dive recap

Join as a Coral Guardian

Reef Builder

$50a month

Four strands a year.

Everything in Coral Guardian
Priority spot on volunteer dives
Annual member dive and the shirt

Join as a Reef Builder

Founding Circle
For businesses and families, from $1,000 a year. Name a nursery tree or a Patriots Reef element. Talk to John

Flagship project

Patriots Reef

An underwater memorial off the Carolina coast: a Twin Towers monument and a 9/11 memorial joined by a dive trail, with a coral rescue nursery growing around them. A place to remember, and a living reef that gives coral and fish a home.

See the project plan