St. Regis Vommuli
Many hands make light work!
During June, we created 7 new coral frames of various sizes. A total of 25 coral frames were checked as part of our 6-monthly monitoring, involving cleaning and repairing, and uploading new photographs to our website for our kind sponsors 🙏.
In total, we conducted 20 maintenance snorkels/dives, and inspected all 201 of our coral frames around Vommuli.
To see the progress of your frame, please visit our dedicated St Regis monitoring page where we upload new photos every 6 months or so. You can Sponsor your very own complete coral frame, or Adopt a community-frame coral fragment here.
🪸Dive Centre Site – Although this site is one of our deepest (at an average 4.5m depth) coral paling of our coral frames was observed here first, caused by the seasonally elevated sea surface temperatures (SST). At the start of May, ~70% of the frames presented bleaching, but by the end of June we recorded a severe decline of 50% mortality plus 50% bleached corals. Resilient colonies (primarily Acropora digitifera) have been used for the replacement of dead fragments.
Out on the natural reefs, we have sadly observed wild mature table corals with 100% bleaching levels, all the way down to depths of 20m. Despite this, some nearby wild colonies were found unbleached, and some colonies that were bleached in April were recovering by the end of June.
🪸 Adopt-A-Coral Site – Our heathiest site for both wild colonies and our Reefscapers coral frames. Bleaching levels on our frames remained at 15% this month, but mortality doubled to 30%. This site is home to our older frames (minimum 10 months old), and the growing colonies are more resilient than freshly transplanted coral fragments. Significantly, the wild colonies experienced much higher levels of bleaching than our frames.
🪸 Whale Bar Site – We have observed the most severe changes at this site. With only 10% bleaching in April, the frames presented 70% mortality by the end of June. Despite the good growing conditions here that yielded healthy coral growth earlier this year, the high mortality is due to most of the frames being less than 3 months old. This vulnerability of early-stage fragments has had a drastic effect on their health. Once again, the wild coral colonies on reefs close to this site have shown more severe levels of bleaching (although thankfully, mortality is low so far).
🎙️ Marine Talks – We held 2 group Evening Talks this month for guests, plus 14 in-person marine sessions, along with 5 Kids’ Club sessions for both ‘Shark Yoga’ and ‘Sea turtle beach’ (enjoyed by a total of 19 children).
In commemoration of World Oceans Day, we performed two reef-cleaning sessions with the kind support of staff and guests. There was also a special coral awareness session given to the kids, plus a coral frame building demonstration with guests during a Managers’ cocktail party.
🤿 Marine Biology Excursions – During June, we conducted 2 dolphin cruises and one coral garden snorkel, for a total of 19 ocean-loving guests. We logged our megafauna sightings, including numerous blacktip and white tip reef sharks.
⏯️ Social media – One of our St Regis reels posted on Reefscapers Instagram clocked up 35K views, alongside 4 Instagram stories for Oceans Day.
Sheraton Full Moon
During June, we built 7 new coral frames, and monitored (cleaned, repaired, photographed) a total of 21 coral frames. We have slowed our routine frame monitoring to continue our focus on the ongoing effects of the marine heatwave (1,247 corals monitored for bleaching).
To see the progress of your frame, please visit our dedicated Sheraton monitoring page where we upload new photos every 6 months or so.
Coral Propagation Sites
Summary of our reef regeneration sites around the island. We have paused all recycling work, as newly transplanted coral fragments are particularly vulnerable to both elevated temperatures and predation.
Bleaching surveys continued this month, repeating the transects conducted at the end of May. A total of 1,247 coral colonies were surveyed using the MMRI bleaching score system. The increased levels of coral mortality were clearly seen across all sites.
- Blue Hole – We are seeing increased stress levels (fluorescing) and some mortality on our tunnel frame. Some buried frames were lifted from the shifting sands with help from our Reefscapers colleagues Kathryn and Sofia, from Four Seasons Kuda Huraa.
478 coral colonies are being surveyed at his site for bleaching. Since early March, bleaching has now reduced but mortality has increased to 64%. - Water Villas – Many frames need recycling, especially the newer fragments with small vulnerable coral fragments. Removal of algae and dead fragments will continue into July. A total of 696 coral colonies are being surveyed for bleaching, with mortality increasing to 77%.
- Dive Centre & Boat Garden – Many corals are currently bleached, so we are hoping these will start to recover, especially those colonies being shaded by large table corals. From our transect bleaching surveys, mortality has increased to 29%.
Some good news at the Boat Garden site, as frames here at 10-12m depth are showing little signs of bleaching and remain largely healthy. We will continue to plant new frames here. We also GPS re-mapped this site, cleaning and re-arranging frames as we went, with help from our Kuda Huraa colleagues.
Bleaching score key: (1) No bleaching, (2) 1-10% of colony bleaching, (3) 11-50% bleaching, (4) 51-99% bleaching, (5) 100% bleached, (6) Dead.
Marine Life
🤿 Snorkelling Excursions – 6 excursions were conducted this month (one ‘Reef’ plus 5 ‘Safari’), enjoyed by a total of 19 resort guests for an average duration of 47 minutes. Green turtles are re-visiting our seagrass site, and a hawksbill turtle was spotted at the Dive Centre pyramids. It is great to see more turtles appearing around the island, and there have been guest sightings of turtles at the water bungalows.
🐬 Dolphin Cruises – Only 1 dolphin cruise this month, plus a single pod of 20 Spinner dolphins was sighted between 2 snorkelling sites. In addition, a pod of bottlenose dolphins visited the Sheraton Dive Centre lagoon!
🎙️ Marine Talks – In total this month, 24 guests enjoyed 6 marine talks, averaging 28 minutes duration. This included a sea turtle talk, and overall we received great feedback from guests regarding the World Ocean Day activities.
Marine Education & Awareness Activities
🌏 World Ocean Day (8 June) was commemorated with various marine activities, including the creation of a medium-sized coral frame at Anchorage, where guests helped to transplant the 65 coral fragments.
♻️ EcoSort Challenge is our new marine pollution awareness game, aiming to engage and educate guests on trash items that can end up in our oceans. We have now officially added this event to our activity calendar (Wednesdays at 2pm at Anchorage). During June, a total of 21 guests participated, for average engagement times of 20 minutes.
👨👩👧👦 Kids Club Field Trip was enjoyed this month by 14 children plus 2 parents. We talk about building our Reefscapers reefs from coral frames, and discuss the attachment and growth of corals. We maintain a fun and educational conversation with hands-on demos and an enthusiastic Q&A session.
🚸 Villa School students visited this month, for a presentation about the coral restoration efforts by Reefscapers and the projects at Sheraton.
🤝 Familiarisation – Sheraton hosted Mr Neeraj Govil, Marriott International’s Asia-Pacific COO, covering 570 properties across the region. I had the privilege of meeting him to discuss our Reefscapers coral restoration project, and we transplanted a new coral frame.
I was also delighted to host photographer Paul Pasytsch to build a coral frame, and assist with posts and videos for Reefscapers and Sheraton social media, showcasing our coral restoration site at the Dive Centre.
▶️ Social Media content shared during June included 5 posts, 27 stories and 6 reels. We reached a total of 200k accounts this month (+6%) and gained 1,150 followers, taking our total to almost 34k people.
