A coral restoration program built on science, powered by community.
Reef Response’s mission is to stimulate coral reef ecosystem health through coral restoration, promote community involvement through citizen science, and ensure best practices through scientific research.
Grow the number and variety of reef-building corals across the U.S. Virgin Islands.
Expand community participation in coral reef conservation and research.
Collect scientific data that improves the efficacy of coral restoration practices.
After Hurricanes Irma and Maria wiped out most of our nursery corals in 2017, Reef Response co-founders Alex Gutting and Kristen Ewen built a citizen science program to help rebuild. Our first community dive, with Red Hook Divers in August 2018, brought together a crew made up entirely of USVI residents who contributed more than 200 person-hours.
Working alongside our scientific divers, citizen scientists cleaned nursery structures, monitored coral growth and health, and collected data that shaped how we restore reefs. Their work let us care for far more corals than our team could have managed alone.
Our in-water volunteer program is paused for now, and we’re working to bring it back. In the meantime, you can still add to the same monitoring effort by reporting what you see on your dives and snorkels.
Reef Response, along with our colleagues and collaborators, consistently monitors the health of coral reefs around St. Thomas. But we can’t do this all by ourselves.
If you notice anything unusual on your snorkel or dive, we would appreciate if you take a moment to fill out a coral health report survey. This is crucial to inform us of where disease mitigation is needed. In addition, this information will be referenced in scoping future restoration sites.
If you have an underwater camera, you can attach up to ten photos to your report. Pictures help us identify the species and what is affecting it before anyone gets back in the water.
Seen bleaching, disease, or damage? Tell us where and what you saw.
Opens our Coral Health Reporting Form in a new tab, hosted on ArcGIS Survey123.
Drag the slider to see the same coral, a lobed star coral (Orbicella annularis), healthy and then after bleaching.
When the water gets too warm, corals expel the algae living in their tissue — the algae that give them their colour and most of their food. What’s left is a white, starving coral that can recover if temperatures drop, or die if they don’t. Lobed star coral is listed as endangered, and it’s a focus of the microfragmentation work in our land-based nursery.
It takes years of training to diagnose coral health reliably, but recognizing a few warning signs and reporting them helps us target disease response and choose future restoration sites.
If you spot any of these on a dive or snorkel, note where you were and submit a coral health report.
Look for bands or patches of bright white, freshly exposed skeleton right next to darker colored, healthy tissue, often advancing quickly across a colony. SCTLD reached St. Thomas in 2019 and hits brain, star, and pillar corals especially hard.
Bleached coral turns pale, white, or mottled, but the tissue is still alive — the polyps are intact and the skeleton shows through. It’s a stress response to high water temperatures, and corals can recover if conditions improve.
Small, scattered white patches or bite marks are usually predation, not disease: fireworms, parrotfish, and coral snails all feed on coral tissue. Catch one in the act and the culprit is obvious; otherwise, these scars stay small and don’t spread as an advancing band.
A pale yellow blotch or band spreading slowly across a colony, leaving bare skeleton behind it, is Caribbean yellow-band disease — it hits star corals hardest and can take years to kill a colony. Watch too for black band, dark spots, white plague, and corals being overgrown by boring sponges, tunicates, or anemones.
For more conditions and 13 susceptible species, download the SCTLD & Coral Disease ID Cards.
Scientists, divers, and students restoring reefs across the U.S. Virgin Islands.
Reef Response Director · Research Professor, UVI
Coral Aquarist
Coral Restoration Specialist
Education and Outreach Coordinator
Marine Life Restoration Specialist
Marine Disease Specialist
Marine Disease Specialist
Disease Treatment Specialist
Reef Response Faculty · Donor Relations Specialist
Coral Reproduction Specialist
Acropora Monitoring Program Coordinator
Co-founder
Alex co-founded Reef Response (formerly VI Reef Response) as a graduate intern under Dr. Marilyn Brandt at UVI. She and Kristen Ewen led efforts to rebuild the coral nursery at Flat Cay after it was destroyed in the 2017 hurricanes, and created Reef Response’s citizen science program. Alex is now the Coral Conservation Coordinator for The Nature Conservancy in St. Croix, working to strengthen collaborations between the two coral restoration programs.
Co-founder
Kristen co-founded Reef Response (formerly VI Reef Response) as a graduate intern under Dr. Marilyn Brandt at UVI. She was integral in rebuilding the Flat Cay nursery following hurricanes Irma and Maria. She, along with Alex Gutting, developed the citizen science component of Reef Response, focusing on including recreational divers in coral nursery maintenance. Kristen is now a Biological Scientist Technician for the National Park Service in St. Croix, USVI.
Adam was a vital team member, building our temporary land-based coral nursery system and helping establish our in-water nursery at Great St. James. Adam currently works as a Biologist for the Environmental Protection Agency in Gulf Breeze, Florida.
Kathryn stepped into the Reef Response Coordinator role during the turbulence of the COVID-19 pandemic. Her efforts helped grow our organization and took Reef Response to new heights. She is currently pursuing a PhD in coral restoration at the University of Technology Sydney.
Rachel brought her expertise in coral spawning and husbandry to the team. She helped us establish and standardize our husbandry protocols and grow our internship program, and coordinated several restoration projects and experiments. She returned to Nova Southeastern University to focus on coral sexual reproduction.
Natasha stepped into the role of Acropora Monitoring Coordinator during the exceptionally turbulent 2023–2025 global mass bleaching event. Her work quantifying elkhorn coral mass mortality and surviving populations will be pivotal to our long-term restoration goals. Natasha remains in the USVI with The Nature Conservancy in St. Croix.
Dan’s husbandry expertise and gifted photography and videography combined to help propel Reef Response toward the established restoration organization we are today. He stepped back to follow his passion for conservation photography and filmmaking, and while still residing on St. Thomas, continues to stay involved when opportunities align.
Nicholas, a USVI native, has taken his talents to coordinate the St. Thomas East End Reserves (STEER), a marine protected area managed by the Department of Planning and Natural Resources, Division of Parks and Protected Areas. He is still completing his master’s thesis at UVI, and his research on coral bleaching continues with Reef Response.
Report what you see on the water, partner with us, or support the work directly.
