St. Regis Vommuli
During July, we created 10 new coral frames of various sizes. A total of 15 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 18 maintenance snorkels/dives, and inspected all 214 of our coral frames around Vommuli, replacing many bleached and dead corals with new fragments as we went along.
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 – On our frames, coral mortality increased by 5% during July, but recovery is also up 10% as previously bleached corals regain their zooxanthellae and a healthy colouration (especially in A. digitifera, A, humilis, A. gemmifera). We placed this month’s new frames at the Dive site, and will monitor closely for bleaching over the coming weeks.
🪸 Adopt-A-Coral Site – Coral mortality levels remain the same, and recovery of bleached corals was recorded to have improved by 10% on last month. From our surveys, the wild reef is showing an average of 60% mortality, with higher rates closer to shore.
🪸 Whale Bar Site – Coral mortality continued to increase by 5% at our most badly affected site. Only the oldest 1-year frames have survived, while the rest have presented mortality rates ranging from 50-100%. The wild reef has widespread bleaching and mortality down to 15m deep.
🪸JJA Wild Reef – We are deeply saddened to report that our richest biodiverse site on the island has experienced a 100% loss of all corals down to 3m depth. The house reef features an inner reef and reef crest approximately 15m from the wave-breakers to the back reef, reaching a depth of 25m. This inner reef, a shallow site with a maximum depth of 3m, previously boasted the highest coverage of healthy corals on the island.
But starting in May this year, bleaching rates of 40% were recorded, increasing to 100% during June. By early July, it was clear that the reef was not recovering, with a complete loss of all the corals. Sadly, the plentiful and beautiful mature table corals in the area proved to be highly susceptible to elevated ocean temperatures and subsequent bleaching. By contrast, the non-tabulate corals down to depths of 10-20m were not as severely impacted.
🎙️ Marine Talks – We held 3 sessions this month for a total of 6 enthusiastic guests. There were also 6 sessions at the Kids’ Club (“Shark Yoga” and “Sea Turtle Beach”) with 24 children enjoying the activities. We conducted special sessions for ‘Sharks and Rays Awareness Day’ (14 July) and ‘Coral Reef Awareness Week’ when the children helped to build coral frames.
🤿 Marine Biology Excursions – During July, we held 2 dolphin cruises and 1 coral garden guided snorkel, for a total of 24 guests. The most commonly sighted megafauna was the white tip reef shark, and we were excited to spot several rarely-seen species around the island. These included multiple guest sightings of a pygmy devil ray (Mobula kuhlii), and a total of 5 whalesharks spotted in Mhaadheli (close to Vommuli island) which are rare across the whole atoll.
⏯️ Social media – We posted 2 reels on Reefscapers Instagram, with engagement exceeding 10K views, and we conducted an interview for the Russian market.
Sheraton Full Moon
Healthy corals at our Dive Centre site
Some of our frames are bouncing back to health
During July, we built 12 new coral frames, and monitored (cleaned, repaired, photographed) a total of 5 coral frames. We have slowed our routine frame monitoring to continue our focus on the ongoing effects of the marine heatwave (1,247 corals were each monitored twice for health: bleaching, mortality, recovery).
To see the progress of your frame, please visit our dedicated Sheraton monitoring page where we upload new photos every 6 months or so.
Sri Lankan rabbit fish checking out our coral frames
Gradually, we are retransplanting dead colonies with new coral fragments (this is our Blue Hole site)
Coral Propagation Sites
Bleaching surveys continued this month, repeating the transects conducted at the end of May. A total of 1,247 coral colonies were each surveyed twice, using the MMRI bleaching score system. Mortality has increased, but some recovery from bleaching has been seen around the island.
- Blue Hole – We have collected some healthy but damaged corals (eaten by triggerfish) to rebuild frames. We have been monitoring the healthy or slightly bleached coral carefully, and removing any diseased corals. Reducing mortality rates especially after the bleaching is a priority. Any dead frames were lifted. Of the 478 coral colonies being surveyed at this site, the fully healthy corals represent only 7% of the total, with mortality increasing to 76%.
- Water Villas – Some frames have been remade using broken healthy corals, and a lot of maintenance work was carried out to remove dead fragments from frames. We also started re-tagging frames to make it easier to ID corals going forward, both for sponsors and during our spawning season research. Of the 696 coral colonies under CoralWatch, only 10% of corals remain unaffected, and mortality has increased to 83%.
- Dive Centre & Boat Garden – Coral health remains steady, and although a lot of damage has been done, we are hopeful that conditions can only improve from now. Nonetheless, marine life is still very abundant, and makes for a good snorkelling spot for guests. Of the 73 colonies being surveyed, 12% of corals show no signs of bleaching, and mortality is now up to 47%. The Boat Garden frames continue to do well, with a little mortality possibly due to differences in substrates.
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.
- Lagoon – Bleaching surveys were not conducted here as we used the dive centre pyramids. Based on a site-visit this month, we have unfortunately lost most of this coral. Out of four coral pyramids, there are only about 5 colonies left alive.
- Gili’s – This site is hard-to-access and only monitored infrequently, as it is located further out from the resort. We visited the site during July, and we are pleased to confirm that the corals have very much recovered since the initial paling observed in May! There are still some signs of coral bleaching at the 5m depths, but the various species of Acropora remain largely unaffected. We plan to expand this site in future months, and hope corals will continue to grow well here.
Gili’s site: despite some bleaching, many corals remain healthy
We plan to expand the Gili’s site throughout this year
Marine Life
🤿 Snorkelling Excursions – throughout July, we conducted 12 guest excursions and held 49 guest activities. A total of 10 guests joined us for the ‘Maldivian Journey’ snorkelling activity, plus we conducted 1 ‘Reef Snorkelling’ trip and 5 ‘Snorkelling Safaris’. Megafauna sightings around the Dive Centre & Pyramid sites included nurse sharks, whitetip reefsharks and green turtles.
🐬 Dolphin Cruises – we conducted 6 dolphin cruises this month, with multiple sightings of spinner dolphins which always put on a great show for our delighted guests!
🎙️ Marine Talks – A total of 36 guests attended marine talks, with average duration of 42 minutes. An additional four talks were delivered for staff training purposes.
Are you ready for our EcoSort Challenge ?? 🤯
Our Reefscapers teams met up for the MMSS at the MNU in Malé
Marine Education & Awareness Activities
♻️ EcoSort Challenge – continues to be popular and receive great feedback! A total of 36 curious guests enjoyed the activity this month, averaging an increased duration of 49 minutes, with high levels of engagement.
👨👩👧👦 Kids Club Field Trip – 36 kids joined for marine field trips, lasting an average of 35 minutes each. With the invaluable input and assistance from our resort colleagues in Recreation, we have been improving this activity to keep the kids engaged and to maintain their interest throughout.
🤝 Familiarisation – We hosted four trips this month, including a journalist video interview where we described our coral restoration project and discussed global climate change. They had never snorkelled before, but after some reassurance and coaching they went on to enjoy swimming around our coral restoration sites (and even returned the next day!)
– Internship – We hosted Ilaan for 2 weeks, learning about our coral restoration techniques and engaging with guest activities… a great help!
– We invited some newly-hired resort colleagues from Guest Services to join us in building an Adopt-a-Coral frame and learn about our coral propagation work. The activity was fun and successful, and will be useful for spreading the word of our restoration work with newly arrived resort guests.
– We were also delighted to host fashion model Sirikit (and her partner), the new ‘godmother’ of our partnership with The Coral Planters. The popular social media couple joined us for a week at the Sheraton to learn about and to promote our work on social media platforms.
🔬 Research – we were invited to an event at the Ritz-Carlton, along with other Marriott-based marine biologists. It was an excellent opportunity to present our coral spawning research and share knowledge around our extended team of colleagues. This was followed by popular interactive discussion hosted by renowned international climate activist, Saad Amer, about all things plastic-waste and climate-change.
👩🏫 Maldives Marine Science Symposium #5 (24-25 July): a bi-annual science conference, held at Maldives National University (MNU) in Malé, to provide a platform for Maldives-based scientists to present their marine research. Our Reefscapers teams came together to showcase our spawning research, and we enjoyed meeting other local and international marine biologists based around the Maldives, for discussions and potential future collaborations.
▶️ Social Media during July included 4 posts, 10 stories and 6 reels. Our most popular reel (with Proshot) reached 20k accounts, and our followers increased to almost 34k total, by month-end.
SIRIKIT our social media partner
Ilaan’s marine internship was a great addition to the team!
