February 24, 2026
The first time I laid eyes on a coral reef was in the Florida Keys in 2012 after I had just learned to scuba dive. I remember hovering above the reef in awe trying to take in the colors of coral and sponges, the fish moving through them, and the realization that an entire world existed beneath the surface.
Over time, that sense of wonder became tangled with something harder to name: the slow ache of environmental grief. I have returned to reefs in different places and conditions, and felt the emotional whiplash of knowing what healthy coral ecosystems can be, and seeing what many have become under the pressure of extreme heat events, pollution, disease, and storms. There were moments when I avoided returning to certain sites because I did not want to see what had changed. But as a science communicator, I know that looking away accomplishes nothing.
This winter, I returned to Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary with a different purpose: to join Iconic Reef Guardians, a program that trains snorkelers and divers to help monitor coral reefs and support restoration efforts through NOAA’s Mission: Iconic Reefs initiative.
I spent time learning from the people leading this work across the Keys: NOAA’s stewardship team, Blue Star dive operators, and participants who showed up ready to learn, survey, and contribute. What I heard again and again was simple: Hope does not come from pretending the problem is not real. It comes from showing up anyway and doing something concrete, together.
Why NOAA Built Iconic Reef Guardians
Mission: Iconic Reefs is a NOAA-led, partner-driven effort to restore structure, function, and resiliency to nearly three million square feet of coral reef in Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary over the next two decades. Launched in 2019, the initiative represents a proactive shift in NOAA’s approach to coral reef conservation. It is designed to address the ongoing decline of a reef system that provides critical ecosystem services, supports a multi-billion-dollar tourism economy, and sustains tens of thousands of jobs each year.
But a restoration effort this large requires far more than coral nurseries and outplanting alone. As Chandler Wright, Mission: Iconic Reefs stewardship manager, explained, “Mission Iconic Reefs is a massive undertaking, and NOAA can’t do it alone. Iconic Reef Guardians helps us harness the power of the dive community to increase monitoring and get more eyes in the water, which is essential for restoration at this scale.”
Restoration isn’t static. Reefs change week to week, season to season, and year to year. Storms, heat stress, disease outbreaks, and recovery events can all happen faster than a small staff of scientists can document alone across 4,539 square miles of waters. Iconic Reef Guardians was designed to close that gap by training the people already in the water to observe carefully and report consistently.
“This isn’t just outreach for outreach’s sake. It’s capacity-building,” said Wright.
The Coral Health Experience: Training Citizen Scientists on the Water
The Coral Health Experience doesn’t feel like a typical dive trip. Before entering the water, participants complete training that reshapes how they will move, look, and think underwater. The goal isn’t to cover distance or chase spectacle, but to slow down, pay attention, and observe patterns on the reef.
That difference becomes apparent once the dive begins. Divers hover longer and resist the urge to move on quickly. Instead of scanning for marine megafauna such as sea turtles or manta rays, divers focus on coral condition, color, and structure—learning to see the reef as a living system rather than just scenery in the background.
For Patti Mlyniec, owner and operator of Southpoint Divers in Key West, that shift is exactly why her shop became an early adopter of the Coral Health Experience.
“We’re on the reef every day—every morning and every afternoon—so reef health isn’t theoretical for us. It’s personal and professional,” she said. “The Coral Health Experience gave us a way to move beyond just talking about reef decline and actively involve people in understanding what’s happening underwater.”
Mlyniec explained that traditional recreational dives often prioritize movement over observation. “A typical dive is people just swimming over the reef … The Coral Health Experience will actually slow the diver down so they pay attention to the coral. They’ll actually notice the coral, the condition it is in, and not just swim over it.”
That shift, she said, changes how divers relate to the reef long after the dive ends. “A lot of the divers actually tell me that it’s their most memorable and educational dive that they have ever had.”
What Happens to the Data?
A key promise of citizen science (sometimes called “community science”) is that participants aren’t collecting information just for fun—their observations matter. Iconic Reef Guardians data is uploaded into a state-wide monitoring system used by sanctuary managers and restoration partners—the Southeast Florida Action Network (SEAFAN) database.
As Wright explained, the data collected during the Coral Health Experience is used directly by Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary. “It’s uploaded to the SEAFAN database that was created by the Florida Department of Environmental Protection where sanctuary managers, restoration practitioners, and researchers can see it right away,” she said. This near-real-time data availability allows sanctuary managers and scientists to respond quickly to things like bleaching, disease, or other prominent changes on the reef. If a diver uploads a significant observation to the database, “Our team is able to hop on the boats and investigate what's happening,” Wright explained
What begins as notes on an underwater slate becomes part of a living dataset, one that informs both immediate response and long-term management. For participants, that connection is tangible proof that their time underwater contributes to something larger than a single dive.
“Win-Win”: Why Participants Sign Up
Iconic Reef Guardians is designed for visitors and Keys residents alike, particularly for people who care deeply about the ocean but are not scientists by profession. Two of the participants I dove with, Jodie Schwirtz and Cooper Willis, articulated why the program resonates so strongly with that audience.
Willis, a Key West resident who works for the U.S. Coast Guard, dives regularly but had never participated in a citizen science experience before, and said it won’t be his last. He described the appeal as immediate and practical. “I got to have fun scuba diving and still feel like I was making an impact and helping the environment. It felt like a win-win.”
For Schwirtz, a well-traveled diver from Texas who was visiting for the Key West Half Marathon, the experience carried a different weight. She described the emotional contrast of surveying stressed reef areas alongside young, healthy corals that had been successfully outplanted from nurseries.
“It wasn’t that long ago that nobody was sure how we were going to save reefs. Being able to see that this is working gives me hope.”
That hope, she emphasized, is grounded in realism about the scale of the challenge and the need for broad participation. “It’s not gonna be easy, but there is a way for us to undo the damage. There’s no way there are enough scientists out there that can collect data on all the reefs. The only way to get enough data is if there’s a community effort.”
For divers like Willis and Schwirtz, Iconic Reef Guardians offers a meaningful middle ground between concern and action. As Schwirtz put it, “I can’t quit my job and go be a marine biologist, but I can help. If I can do a couple of dives per year where I can contribute, I’m happy to do that.”
For participants who are just discovering what it means to contribute to reef restoration, the experience can feel empowering and hopeful. For divers who have spent decades watching the reefs change, Iconic Reef Guardians represents a long-awaited way to turn passion into action.
From Sanctuary Origins to Daily Stewardship
Few people have witnessed the arc of the Florida Keys reef as closely, or for as long, as Bob Holston. He began diving in 1969 and arrived in the Keys in the early 1970s, where he and his partner, Cece Roycraft, owned a local dive shop. Together, they helped nominate Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary in the late 1980s, and Holston later served on the first Sanctuary Advisory Council. Today, he is semi-retired but continues to train dive shop staff through FINZ Dive Center in Key West, helping prepare the next generation of operators and instructors leading Iconic Reef Guardians programs.
Holston has seen the reef at its most abundant and witnessed its decline firsthand. When he speaks about restoration today, it’s with realism shaped by decades underwater, not nostalgia or denial.
He expressed that “Watching the changes over more than 50 years has been hard. There were times when it was honestly depressing. But this program gives me hope that we can start to solve some of those problems.”
That hope, Holston explained, comes from seeing scientists and sanctuary managers working side-by-side with dive operators and volunteer divers, because those who spend the most time in the water often see important changes first. “Divers are like the canary in the coal mine. We see what’s happening before the general public does, because we’re out there every day.”
What makes Iconic Reef Guardians different, in Holston’s view, is that it gives structure to those observations. Instead of informal conversations ending at the dock, divers are trained, observations are standardized, and what people see underwater becomes information that can guide real restoration and management decisions. For Bob and Cece, the program represents a continuation and evolution of the community-driven stewardship that has underpinned reef protection in the Keys since they arrived in 1971.
Holston sees the program as a way to bring the dive tourism industry in the Keys together. “It’s preservation through education. It gives people a purpose to come here, and then to go back and tell other people about their experience. We don’t just want people to know the reefs are struggling. We want them to know they can be part of restoring them.”
Blue Star Operators: Leaders in Conservation
Iconic Reef Guardians is delivered through Blue Star partner dive operators—local businesses that have committed to a NOAA partnership centered on education, stewardship, and responsible recreation on the water. These operators serve as the bridge between large-scale restoration efforts and the people who experience the reef firsthand.
In Key Largo, Pirates Cove Watersports is among the operators offering the Coral Health Experience at sites they visit regularly, including Horseshoe Reef. Liber Garrido, a lead Iconic Reef Guardian dive professional with more than 26 years of diving experience and a background in coral conservation, has seen the program resonate particularly strongly with student groups.
Garrido told me that some schools now return two or three times per year to participate, and others are exploring ways to incorporate the Coral Health Experience into their scuba curricula on a more permanent basis. For these students, reef monitoring and stewardship becomes part of learning to dive.
For dive operators, Garrido emphasized, the value of the program extends well beyond education alone. It offers a way to shift how visitors understand the reef and their role in its future. “Once you engage them in something productive, something that is good for the environment, you can really see their minds change,” he said. After the experience, he added, “Participants begin asking more thoughtful questions, such as ‘what kind of sunscreen can I use to protect the coral?’”
The Coral Nursery: Where Restoration Begins
Although weather prevented us from visiting the coral nursery on this trip, it remains a central part of the Iconic Reef Guardians story—and one I’ve experienced firsthand before. Swimming through rows of coral trees suspended in the water column, surrounded by endangered species growing overhead and below, offers a rare sense of scale. It makes clear just how much effort restoration requires, and how deliberate that work must be to succeed.
Michael Creese, owner and operator of Island Ventures in Key Largo, sees that reaction consistently from the visitors he brings to the Coral Restoration Foundation’s Tavernier Coral Tree™ Nursery. “Everybody is always impressed by the sheer size and volume of the nursery and the amount of work it takes to keep it maintained,” he told me.
For Creese, the nursery is more than a visual spectacle. It is often the moment when reef decline becomes tangible—and when restoration starts to feel possible. He hopes more divers visiting the Florida Keys will take the opportunity to see the work up close and understand what’s involved.
“Come to the largest coral nursery in the world,” Creese said. “See the coral trees and the work that’s going on, and start your journey in conservation.”
While the Coral Nursery Tour is a passive, observational experience, Chandler Wright noted that NOAA hopes to expand its programs in the future to include an Active Coral Nursery Experience where divers will be trained on nursery maintenance activities, such as cleaning biofoul from the coral trees.
Why Your Participation Matters
Florida’s Coral Reef is more than an ecosystem; it is a foundation for the Keys’ economy, culture, and sense of place. As Kara Franker, President and CEO of Visit Florida Keys explained, “When our reefs are healthy, they sustain both our natural environment and the tourism-based economy that depends on it.”
Each year, more than 700,000 divers and snorkelers enter the waters of Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary, drawn by the beauty and biodiversity of the reef. But Franker says the way visitors want to engage with that environment is evolving. “We’re seeing growing interest from visitors who want to better understand the Florida Keys marine environment and take part in experiences that support conservation outcomes,” she explained. “Many travelers are seeking opportunities that combine education with action, particularly those that contribute to coral reef restoration, monitoring, and responsible use of marine resources.”
That shift is exactly where programs like Iconic Reef Guardians fit. According to Franker, hands-on experiences help transform a single vacation into something longer lasting. “Through guided education and hands-on participation, visitors gain a greater appreciation for the complexity and importance of coral ecosystems,” she said. “That sense of connection often leads to repeat visits, continued engagement, and long-term support for conservation.”
From the stewardship side, Chandler Wright sees that transformation happen every day on the water. “Beyond just a fun dive, Iconic Reef Guardians gives people a sense of ownership and responsibility for what’s happening on the reef,” she said. “When divers understand what they’re seeing and why it matters, they leave as stewards, not just visitors.”
When participation shifts from passive recreation to purposeful involvement, stewardship becomes something larger than any single dive or trip. It becomes shared, repeatable, and scalable—an approach that benefits both the reef and the community that depends on it.
Returning to the Reef With Renewed Hope
Coming back to the Florida Keys, I felt the familiar mix of awe and heaviness. But this time, I also felt something else: the steadiness of being surrounded by people who aren’t looking away.
Thanks to Iconic Reef Guardians, individuals do not have to carry the weight of reef decline alone. The program invites divers and snorkelers into a community, giving them a role in the long-term effort to restore and protect coral reefs in Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary.
This is the place where hope transforms into action.
Rachel Plunkett is the content manager and senior writer/editor for NOAA’s Office of National Marine Sanctuaries