Farming Future Coral Reefs with Sam Teicher, Coral Vita

Welcome back to Planet & Purpose—a bi-weekly LinkedIn Newsletter featuring professional insights and personal experiences from ocean and climate ecopreneurs, investors, and advocates brought to you by Daniela V. Fernandez , Founder & CEO of Sustainable Ocean Alliance (SOA).?

Today, I’m joined by Sam Teicher , Co-Founder & Chief Reef Officer of Coral Vita .

In our discussion, Sam shares why a for-profit business model for coral restoration is needed to sustain this threatened ecosystem, highlights Coral Vita’s environmental and social impact to date, and unpacks newly introduced funding mechanisms to propel the market for coral restoration.

We also explore Sam’s educational and professional background, offering readers tips on public speaking, insights into successful fundraising, and more to help early career professionals interested in contributing to the ocean space and sustainable blue economy.

Dive in below and as always, stay tuned for upcoming editions!

Daniela: Welcome to Planet & Purpose, Sam!

Sam: Thank you so much, Daniela. I appreciate the opportunity to share more with your readers about Coral Vita and the commercial approach we’ve taken to scaling coral restoration.

Daniela: Let’s dive right into your for-profit solution. Can you explain Coral Vita in a nutshell?

Sam: At Coral Vita, we grow resilient corals to restore dying coral reefs.

Leveraging open-source science like micro-fragmentation, we accelerate coral growth rates while strengthening their resilience to climate-related threats like warming ocean temperatures through managed stress (assisted evolution).

Translation? Our corals mature in months and years instead of decades and centuries.?

From our single, centralized land-based facility, we can supply an entire region’s or country’s coral reefs—so our mission-driven, for-profit business model can help fund entire ecosystem-wide impact.

We ‘sell’ restoration as a service to developers, insurers, and governments that recognize the valuable benefits that coral reefs provide. Coral Vita’s commercial, vertically integrated coral farms also double as tourism attractions and education centers while simultaneously developing technologies that can be licensed out to other coral farmers and deliver better restoration outcomes.

Daniela: Why did you approach coral restoration from a mission-driven, commercial mindset?

Sam: For decades, the field has been full of amazing practitioners who have showcased how— just like we can grow and plant trees for reforestation—we can grow and plant corals for reef restoration to help revitalize the health of our ocean. Most models today rely on underwater, ocean-based nurseries that are low-tech, and grow a limited subset of existing species (primarily the fast-growing corals).

Unfortunately with this model, there's not much one can do to strengthen coral resilience or promote biodiversity to threats like a warming ocean. And coral nurseries in the ocean don't scale. Can you imagine setting up and maintaining an underwater garden on every coral reef that needs to be restored? It's a lovely day at the office, but given the global scale of the problem, it just is not practical.?

Last but not least, they're largely funded by grants and donations. Amazing NGOs, researchers, and local communities are pushing this work forward—but there are only so many grants out there.?

So scaling, traditional technology, the funding model? All of that, given the threats we face, is not sufficient.

Daniela: When did you first discover this problem and how did you come to your solution?

Sam: Earlier in my career, I served as the Lead Environmental Project Manager for an NGO called ELI Africa. A grant from the United Nations enabled us to grow a few thousand corals in a traditional underwater ocean nursery in Mauritius, a country that needs to be growing a few million corals a year to restore and sustain its reefs. I'm still eternally grateful to the UN for that and for working with those communities and groups—but the funding soon expired and that was the end of the project.?

Shortly after that experience, I was studying Environmental Policy & Business at Yale University, where I crossed paths and became friends with my eventual co-founder Gator Halpern , who was in Environmental Science and Academia. In talking, we concluded our respective sectors unfortunately weren't solving the major environmental issues that matter most to the planet? (and personally to us) effectively at scale or rapidly enough.?

I’ve said this before, but I didn't think I was going to be a coral farmer or entrepreneur. But, I had been certified as a scuba diver at thirteen and Gator grew up at the beach in California—so we were both passionate about the ocean and were personally witnessing the rapid decline of marine ecosystems and coral reefs firsthand.

That led to us having this back porch sort of idea: “Could a for-profit business transform how we restore reefs and keep them alive for future generations?” And the conversation we’re having today stems back to winning a $1,000 grant for that exact idea nearly a decade ago.

Daniela: We share that experience of being college students with a big idea for the ocean! And a big idea is clearly needed. Let’s talk about the speed at which we’re losing reefs globally…

Sam: Since the 1950s, we've lost half the world's living coral reefs. Our planet is currently on track to lose over 90% by 2050. This is unprecedented. Within a single human lifespan, we can see one of the world's most incredible and important ecosystems disappearing right in front of our eyes.

Full stop—the best thing to do for corals is to stop killing them. We need to solve climate change, pollution, overfishing, and habitat destruction. But that's clearly not happening fast enough.?

They're dying, it's a tragedy, and it's also a socioeconomic catastrophe. Because beyond being magical, inspiring, and wondrous, corals are incredibly important for humanity.?

The latest estimates are that coral reefs generate $2.7 trillion a year, power tourism economies, protect coastlines from storms, sustain fisheries, and have informed medicines that are already on the market. Importantly, 25% of all life in the ocean also depends on this one ecosystem, together with nearly one billion people around the world.

Daniela: There are SO many reasons we need to act quickly and scale action for coral reefs, which is why Coral Vita was a great fit for Sustainable Ocean Alliance’s Ocean Solutions Accelerator program in 2019, and why we’re so proud to have you as members of our Ecopreneur Network today!?

Now, please share the success you’ve found as an ocean startup with this unique business model.

Sam: Today, Coral Vita is more than that back porch idea—it’s a reality.?

We have contracts with the Government of the Bahamas and the Grand Bahama Port Authority where we have an operational farm, are being marketed as one of the premier ecotourism destinations in Grand Bahama, and were selected as one of the first initiatives financed by the new Global Fund for Coral Reefs.

We’ve had the pleasure of restoring a ‘Corona Beer’ reef and had the honor of winning the inaugural ‘Revive our Oceans’ Earthshot Prize. More recently, we’ve launched a pilot facility in Dubai and we were hired by Saudi Arabia's leading university to operate the first phase of their new coral farm, which eventually will be the biggest coral restoration project in the world.

It has been ten years since we started this journey. In that time, we've raised multiple investment rounds and are now getting ready for our Series A to start scaling even more around the world.

Daniela: What you have accomplished in ten years is admirable and incredible.?

So if you were pitching a potential investor, what would that conversation look like?

Sam: I’d begin by explaining the methods we’re using that set us apart.?

Land-based coral farming is unique to our business model and gives us the ability to control conditions in our tanks.

We can scale growth by promoting natural healing processes from within corals (akin to human scar tissue), adjust for the exact conditions that help corals thrive (we liken it to taking them to the spa), or stress-harden the corals (basically taking them to the gym) by mimicking projected ocean conditions on our warming planet.

This technique has proven itself. Even amidst the mass ocean temperature spikes we saw in 2023 that killed a lot of coral around the world (and we are now seeing again in the Southern Hemisphere in 2024), Coral Vita-grown corals withstood this unprecedented stress far beyond natural corals. In one area where 100% of natural corals died, about 30% of our corals survived. That’s both heartbreaking—and hopeful. I want to get our number up to 90% survival. We can continue to improve survivorship by identifying slower-to-bleach species and cross-breeding these species with naturally resilient genotypes.

Another proof point I’d share? At one of our restoration sites in the Bahamas, we have seen survivorship ranging on average from 30% to 75%, and as high as 99% of the corals we grew. After about a year, there was a twofold increase in fish populations. For perspective, in the Bahamas and the Caribbean, if you have 30% to 50% survivorship after one year, that's considered a successful project.?

Daniela: Beyond the impressive environmental impact, what social impact would you point to?

Sam: Core to our model is engaging in a community-based approach.

When Hurricane Dorian hit the Bahamas in 2019, we immediately sprung into action for the local community, engaging in rapid rescue efforts and supplying critical goods and essentials. Five years later, we have continued with long-term rebuilding and relief efforts.

We’re using our coral farms as education centers for students and offering tours in the Bahamas and Dubai for school groups, fishers, community members, and government officials to visit. We hire locally (like our coral restoration specialists Alannah Vellacott and Nicholas von Albedyhll ), and partner with local NGOs to support related initiatives like mangrove restoration. We also make it possible for any individual or corporation who wants to support our work to “Adopt a Coral.” A big part of our work is empowering local communities and we can’t wait to see who we’ll work with next.

Daniela: Speaking of empowerment, what early career advice would you give to help others who are beginning their journey in the impact startup space??

Sam: My advice would be to really just remember that anything is possible. It doesn't mean it's always going to work, or that ultimately it’s the path you should pursue, but there really aren't any ‘bad’ ideas.

If you end up doing it through entrepreneurship? Great. And there are many other ways to help the ocean and our climate—from advocacy and policymaking to volunteering and changing corporations from the inside.

Ask friends for help, build community, and have fun while doing it as best you can.?

Put yourself out there, raise your hand, and ask questions at events. Introduce yourself and when you do, always say your name and one line about what you're interested in or what you're working on so people remember you.

Daniela: You’re fantastic at communicating your work to get people interested. Any tips on the best (most concise) ways you’ve found to do that?

Sam: A very niche tool someone taught me early on in an accelerator program is the ‘8-8-8 Rule’. This is something that I think is useful for startups, but also really for anyone in life whether you're going to academia, if you're public speaking, or anything you're trying to do.

Imagine you have to give an eight-minute pitch (with the slides, with the intonation, and all the things you want to say). Now you have to give that pitch in four minutes, and now two minutes, one minute, 30 seconds, 15 seconds, down to eight seconds.

When you have to give your whole eight-minute pitch in eight seconds, you suddenly figure out what is the most important thing to say and what's the best way to say it.

And then build it from eight seconds back out to 15 seconds, 30 seconds, one, two, four, and eventually eight minutes, and see how much your pitch has changed.

It is a really useful tool to figure out the best way to communicate what you're trying to do.

Daniela: You learned this advice in the context of pitching investors. Based on your experience, what else does a founder need to know about building those relationships?

Sam: A possibly silly but largely true piece of advice for fundraising is to remember the cliches. One is, “You ask for money, you get advice. You ask for advice, you get money.” Also, that “you miss 100% of the shots you don't take.” By putting yourself out there, the worst you're going to get is a ‘No’. But, if you don't put yourself out there, that's effectively the same thing. I’ve had a lot of cold emails that led to nowhere but a couple that led to investments or meaningful relationships.?

And then, treat fundraising almost like dating. The point of the first date is really to get a second or third date. You're rarely, rarely, rarely gonna get an investor to invest in you on the first meeting. You want them to be interested and excited enough to have another meeting.

So don't oversell, be genuine, and let your passion shine through.

Daniela: Speaking of, your passion for preserving, restoring, and conserving coral is becoming an international priority. The COP28 launch of The Coral Reef Breakthrough—an initiative of the International Coral Reef Initiative (ICRI) in partnership with the Global Fund for Coral Reefs (GFCR)—is evidence of that.

For anyone who may have missed this major news, the Initiative aims to: double marine protected areas for corals, stop drivers of loss, bolster resilience, accelerate restoration, and secure $12 billion USD from public/private sources—all by 2030.

What are your thoughts on this development and what would you like to see in the future?

Sam: It's incredibly important. I’m very excited to see what efforts like the Coral Reef Breakthrough can unlock.?

This Initiative, much like the Mangrove Breakthrough, represents a critical recognition of the inherent socioeconomic values provided by marine ecosystems and the need to fund ecosystem-scaled impact.

When we started Coral Vita, we were one of the only entities taking a commercially-minded approach to scale restoration via a revenue-generating model. Now, we’re one of the few initiatives that the GFCR has stated they see as a ‘bankable’ restoration project. We live in a world driven by capital, so this and efforts like it will be key for driving more funding and recognition to entities well beyond (and hopefully inclusive of) Coral Vita.

My hope is that this can have a multiplier effect. Already, in the past few years, we've seen a lot of developments driven by amazing people in this space helping to create a restoration market.

Daniela: Please share a bit more about the various developments you’ve mentioned!

Sam: The GFCR, in addition to partnering on the Coral Reef Breakthrough, gives grants, loans, and investments to reef-positive initiatives. Our project is receiving funding from them and we’ve been invited to lead workshops on that front. Now, we're exploring ways to go beyond our initial work with GFCR, partners in the Bahamas, and around the world.?

There's another entity that the G20 leads that was pioneered by Saudi Arabia called CORDAP, a global R&D accelerator allocating $200 million for coral restoration and conservation. We’re also part of one of the first projects receiving CORDAP funding, in partnership with the Wildlife Conservation Society and the University of Queensland.

Taken together, these initiatives are driving funding and raising awareness that value, in addition to the inherent wonder, beauty, and importance of nature and biodiversity, is something that we should be funding to protect because it's what's essential.?

At the end of the day, humanity relies on nature a lot more than nature relies on us.?

Daniela: Very true. To ensure the continued benefits nature provides humanity, investments across the sustainable blue economy have to continue growing. Many funding mechanisms were announced at COP28, so momentum is growing!?

For our part, SOA and Seabird Ventures are proud to contribute by supporting Coral Vita and other for-profit startups in scaling their impact. Thank you, Sam, for taking the time to share your work with Planet & Purpose readers, and for the innovation you and Gator are bringing to the coral restoration space!

Sam: We’re grateful for all SOA does to accelerate startups like us, and are proud to be in the SOA community as we all work together to contribute to restoring ocean health in this lifetime!

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VISIT CORAL VITA IN PERSON

Tour the world-famous Coral Vita coral farm in Grand Bahama and Dubai!?

Tours in Grand Bahama are on Monday, Thursday, and Saturday starting at 10am.

Tours in Dubai are Monday-Friday from 12-4pm by appointment only.

OPPORTUNITIES IN SOA’S NETWORK

Investment Opportunities with the Ecopreneur Network

PlanBlue , Ocean Twist Biotechnology , and microTERRA are some of the startups in SOA’s Ecopreneur Network that are actively fundraising to develop new, emerging technologies within the ocean innovation sector.

If you are a mission-driven investor interested in connecting with and supporting any of these startups or would like to learn about other companies in our network that are fundraising, please email Camila Vega at [email protected].

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