Marine Innovation Center Punta Cana

Thanks to the continued support of our donors, grants and partners, our Marine Innovation Center has undergone a remarkable transformation since we moved to our new home in Playa Blanca.

Our original facility was designed at a much smaller scale, with a wet lab operating across three independent recirculating systems and a small external nursery Together, these systems allowed us to maintain our coral fragments and build the foundation for our restoration efforts.

Today, the Center operates at a completely different scale.

The upgraded laboratory still includes seven core tanks, but now supports a more advanced and controlled environment. We have added a dedicated quarantine area, a 12-tank experimental system with intelligent monitoring for real-time data collection, and in the future will include a specialized module for coral sexual reproduction from the Coral Spawning Institute, as well as an auto-spawning unit based on technology designed by the Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS).

The most visible change is in our external nursery. What was once an 8-tank system has expanded to 32 tanks, increasing capacity from the initial 7,000 total fragments to 25,100 today. Our ultimate dream is to be able to expand to 64 tanks, aiming towards an incredible 46,000 fragment capacity. So far, we have set up the space for this future expansion in our outside nursery area with the hopes that we will be able to build towards this goal over time.

This shift—from a small, independent system to a scalable, research-driven facility—marks an important milestone for us. It means we can propagate more corals, test more solutions, and prepare for restoration at a much larger scale than before.

There is still more to build, and more to learn, but the progress so far reflects what sustained support makes possible.