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Co-founder, Chief Reef Officer
Sam Teicher co-founded Coral Vita, a social enterprise that grows resilient corals up to 50x faster to restore dying reefs.
Coral reefs sustain up to one billion people’s livelihoods and 25% of marine life while generating ~$30 billion annually through tourism, fisheries, and coastal protection. But half of reefs are dead and over 90% are on track to die by 2050. Coral Vita grows corals in months instead of decades while strengthening their resiliency to climate change threats. By selling coral restoration as a service to reef-dependent customers, it aims to scale reef restoration globally and preserve these critical ecosystems for future generations.
Sam previously worked on climate resiliency initiatives at the Obama White House and for the Global Island Partnership. He is an inaugural Earthshot Prize Winner, a Forbes 30 Under 30 Social Entrepreneur, co-authored Sustainable Development Goal 14: Life Below Water, launched Coral Vita out of his master’s program at Yale, and has been in love with the ocean since becoming a scuba diver during childhood.
The right amount of stress at the right time. That’s all it requires to trigger coral to grow anywhere from 25—50x it’s natural rate as it would in the “wild.” In the practice of coral farming, this is called microfragmenting. …