Visit Florida 2018 - 16

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Ocean Reef Club
Carysfort Hall carrying on the Carysfort name
Countless Amenities
to Explore
In addition to state-of-theart meeting space and
America's only living coral
reef in its backyard, Ocean
Reef Club also has the
distinction of having two
championship 18-hole
golf courses, 10 tennis
courts, dual oceanfront
pools, a salon and spa, a
private airstrip, and myriad
restaurants and lounges.
The Reef's 175-slip marina
provides access to worldclass fishing, snorkeling, or
kayaking through mangroves
and bird rookeries.

Ocean Reef Club, the private
club at the northernmost tip of
Key Largo, is home to Carysfort
Hall, its newest facility which
offers beautiful, modern
meeting space designed to
accommodate groups of up to
500. It features a 5,688-squarefoot ballroom, five meeting

rooms and the new Cooking
School, which now holds
cooking demonstrations for up
to 100 attendees. All meeting
rooms have covered patios
that are perfect for outside
functions that would like to take
advantage of the great Key
Largo weather.
Carysfort Hall takes its
name after the Carysfort Reef,
one of the largest, most mature
reefs in the Florida Keys. In
turn, the Carysfort Reef got
his name from the storied ship
HMS Carysfort, a 28-gun
British frigate that ran aground
on the reef in 1770.

Ocean Reef now has a partnership
with the nonprofit Coral
Restoration Foundation, and
groups can participate in hands-on
restoration programs.
16 | prevuemeetings.com

Putting Life Back into
the Ocean
Carysfort Reef, like many
reefs in the Keys, has seen its
population of coral decimated
by more than 90 percent as
part of a larger worldwide
decline since the 1970s due to
environmental stressors. For this
reason, Ocean Reef announced
a groundbreaking partnership
with the Coral Restoration
Foundation (CRF), a nonprofit
conservation organization
dedicated to restoring
threatened coral species. CRF
is undertaking the first-ever
complete restoration of a coral
reef in the world-Carysfort
Reef, which lies just five miles
from the Ocean Reef shoreline.
Staghorn and elkhorn
coral can grow and reproduce
through fragmentation: if a
branch falls off, it can reattach
to the rock and grow a new
colony. With this knowledge,

Ken Nedimyer, founder and
president of CRF, pioneered the
method of growing corals in
offshore underwater nurseries
until they are large enough to
be outplanted on the reef.

Hands-On Team Building
With this new partnership,
groups attending meetings at
Ocean Reef Club can be part
of the process. Attendees can
embark on a snorkeling trip to
the nursery to see how the coral
is grown. Adventurous groups
can be trained and scuba
dive to help outplant the coral
on the reef. Either way, it is a
great way to instill corporate
responsibility and team building
skills all in one trip.
CONTACT:
Michelle Simpson
T: 305-367-2611
E: msimpson@oceanreef.com

FloridaMeetings.com
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Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Visit Florida 2018
