Coral Restoration Gets a Boost with Opening of Center for Marine Innovation in Dominican Republic
TNC and partners opened the Center for Marine Innovation to support marine monitoring, research, coral restoration and active field programs.
Fundación Punta Cana, in collaboration with TNC and other partners, inaugurated a state-of-the-art Center for Marine Innovation (CIM 2.0) in Punta Cana, Dominican Republic during an elegant ceremony on April 22—Earth Day. The center is designed to advance research, environmental education, and the restoration of coral reef ecosystems throughout the Caribbean.
The Center features a specialized laboratory with 32 tanks—and capacity to expand to 64—supporting coral restoration, marine monitoring, and the reproduction of key reef species. In addition to the controlled laboratory environment, the facility supports active field programs in the adjacent marine sanctuary, allowing scientists and technicians to move rapidly from research to real-world application.
The Center opening brought together environmental, business, and philanthropic partners including Grupo Punta Cana, the Fundación Dominicana de Estudios Marinos (FUNDEMAR), TNC, and Oceankind, as well as the Dominican Republic’s Minister of Environment and Natural Resources, Armando Paíno Henríquez.
Coral reef restoration across the Caribbean has long faced a fundamental contradiction: conventional gardening techniques depend on extracting fragments from wild populations that are themselves in decline. The new Center was designed to confront this challenge by deploying tools such as machine learning for coral health monitoring, molecular biology for disease detection and prevention, assisted evolution, and sexual propagation techniques to breed more resilient corals. The goal is not simply to restore reefs, but to do so at a speed and scale commensurate with the rate of loss.
Elizabeth Shaver, Caribbean Coral Conservation Manager, who spoke at the inauguration, noted that in a context of warming climates, coral restoration demands innovation, coordination, and attention to scale, all supported by sustainable funding models. “This innovative coral farm is a world-leading demonstration of how innovative technology, applied science, and forward-thinking business strategies can enable coral restoration at scales that were simply not possible before,” she said. “The solutions being developed here are not just local successes—they provide a playbook for raising the bar for coral conservation across the Caribbean.”
“Fundación Punta Cana has been restoring corals, training young scientists, working with fishing communities, and running environmental education programs for over thirty years. That work did not begin with this building,” said Jake Kheel, Vice President, Fundación Punta Cana. “What the Center for Marine Innovation gives us is a more powerful platform with better tools, more partners, and greater reach.”
The Center is an anchor institution of the Dominican Republic Marine Innovation Hub, a national platform that unites Fundación Puntacana, FUNDEMAR, and TNC around a shared mission of applied research and scaled reef restoration. The Hub operates two world-class facilities—in Punta Cana and FUNDEMAR’s laboratory in Bayahibe—and is focused on developing the legal and financial architecture to sustain its work beyond any single grant funding cycle.
The Center for Marine Innovation was made possible through the vision and investment of Grupo Punta Cana, and numerous private donors from the Punta Cana Resort community, as well as the scientific collaboration of TNC, FUNDEMAR, and a network of international partners.
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