How dying coral reefs brought Prince William and a Wilmington native together

Joe Oliver knew from an early age he loved the water. 

Although his family lived just north of Wilmington in the small community of Castle Hayne, Oliver spent most of his summers at his uncle’s house on Wrightsville Beach. 

“I guess it was a pretty normal North Carolina coastal water kid experience,” he said, ticking off all the water sports and other activities he took part in.

But did Oliver, 37, ever think the lure of the ocean would lead him to rubbing shoulders with British royalty?

“Never, no way,” he said laughing. “To be on a call with the future King of England had never been in the wheelhouse of something I thought I'd do. But to have him interested in what we’re trying to do to help save, change the world, that’s pretty amazing.” 

Oliver, a 2006 marine biology graduate from the University of North Carolina Wilmington, is the director of restoration operations at Coral Vita, a Bahamas-based company that aims to restore damaged reefs by growing and transplanting resilient corals.

Last month the group was honored as one of the first winners of the Earthshot Prize, an award given by the Royal Fund of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge – better known as Prince William and Kate Middleton. The award aims to recognize five groups a year for the next ten years that are tackling some of the world’s thorniest environmental problems. 

“Coral Vita, which grows coral on land to replant in oceans, gives new life to dying ecosystems. Its methods grow coral up to 50 times faster than traditional methods and improves resilience to the impact of climate change," states Coral Vita's Earthshot award announcement.

Along with the prestige of the royal recognition comes $1.3 million in prize money, which Oliver admits will help the small company pay some of its overhead as it focuses on expanding its reef-recovery efforts.

But there’s a lot more to the award than that, he added.

“Obviously the money is good, but what helps out even better is how it’s going to help us spread our message and network," Oliver said. "It’s just going to augment our ability to do what we do even better.”

'Proof the system works'

Oliver’s path to trading small talk with Prince William started well before he stepped onto the UNCW campus. 

While he jokingly said he couldn’t keep a cactus alive, Oliver said he was surprisingly successful in growing corals in his home aquariums.

Along with being a bit of a beach bum, he also fed his marine curiosity by participating in UNCW's MarineQuest program. Oliver credits the school's youth outreach program, which he ended up working at after graduating, as helping nurture his desire to pursue a marine-oriented career.

“I am proof the system works," he said.

After graduating from UNCW and stops in Curacao in the Caribbean and Guam in the South Pacific, Oliver ended up as the third employee at upstart Coral Vita in Grand Bahama.

Reeling coral reefs

So why focus on growing coral?

Oliver said coral reefs are the rain forests of the ocean, providing habitat that supports nearly 25% of all marine life.

"If you like seafood, especially tasty stuff like lobster, octopus, or grouper, many of those species spend all or critical parts of their lives around coral reefs," he said.

Then there's the less visible benefits of reefs, Oliver added, like how they act as natural speed bumps, reducing wave energy by up to 97% and protecting vulnerable shorelines from erosion during storm surge events.

But according to the Coral Vita website half of the world's coral reefs have died in just the past few decades due to a host of factors, and climate change and direct human impacts is expected to boost that number to 90% by 2050.

Oliver said Coral Vita is working to help the reefs rebound by collecting live coral fragments and splitting them up into "postage stamp-sized pieces." He said separating the corals, which Oliver called micro-fragmentation, stimulates the coral to grow back more quickly. The growing fragments are then recombined, where they mesh back together.

“So what would normally take a hundred years or more to grow naturally, we can hopefully do in 10," Oliver said.

Using land-based aquafarms also allows Coral Vista to test different corals to see which ones might be the most resilient for a specific reef-restoration project before — once mature enough — they are replanted in the ocean, he added.

Although it's been a few weeks since the Earthshot Prize announcement, Oliver said it's still a bit surreal to he and his coworkers that they actually received the recognition from Prince William. 

But they know this is just the beginning as they and others working on coral restoration look into ramping up their efforts — in short because that's the help the world's reefs, already under siege on so many fronts, need.

“To win this is amazing not just for us as a company, but for everybody who does what we do because it casts a bigger and brighter light on the challenges facing our world and that there are solutions out there,” Oliver said. 

The other organizations to win 2021 Earthshot prizes were: 

• Protect and Restore Nature Winner: Costa Rica. The Central American country plans to take its successful effort to protect and grow its rural rain forests to urban areas.  
• Clean Our Air Winner: Vidyut Mohan of India. Created a small machine that attaches to tractors and converts crop residues into sellable bioproducts, like fuel and fertilizer.  
• Build a Waste-Free World Winner: Milan. The Italian city has set up food waste hubs that collect and distribute unwanted food from supermarkets and other businesses to the city’s neediest citizens.  
• Fix Our Climate Winner: Enapter. The company’s technology turns renewable energy into emission-free hydrogen gas, which is then used to power vehicles and heat homes.  

Reporter Gareth McGrath can be reached at GMcGrath@Gannett.com or @GarethMcGrathSN on Twitter. This story was produced with financial support from 1Earth Fund and the Prentice Foundation. The USA TODAY Network maintains full editorial control of the work.