18-year-old Asa Miller won 2025 Barron Prize for restoring Cuba's coral reefs

Asa Miller, a young conservationist from New York, has helped restore threatened coral reefs in Cuba through ¡Viva el Vivero!, a campaign he created to support under-resourced reef restoration projects. He was named a 2025 winner of the Gloria Barron Prize for Young Heroes at 18, among 25 young leaders honoured that year across the United States and Canada. His work centres on the Laguna de Maya Marine Protected Area in Matanzas, about 60 miles east of Havana, where scientists and divers have been restoring coral since 2019. His campaign’s name, ¡Viva el Vivero!, translates as Long Live the Nursery.Asa Miller’s grandmother’s stories of Cuban beaches inspired his coral reef restoration workAccording to the Barron Prize, Asa’s love of marine biology comes from his Cuban grandmother’s stories of white sandy beaches and turquoise water. He learned to scuba dive and film underwater at an early age, then found out that Cuba’s reefs are threatened by rising ocean temperatures and coral bleaching.Determined to help, he contacted the scientists and divers working at the protected area. His campaign provides such projects with training, manpower, record-keeping, and supplies. To prepare, he spent weeks in Florida earning dive certifications in coral reef conservation and took courses in coral reef restoration at the Nature Conservancy in Virginia.In Matanzas, Asa Miller mapped the work and helped…