St. Regis Vommuli
During August, we created 10 new coral frames of various sizes, kindly sponsored by guests (3), the resort (5), and online (2). A total of 13 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 224 of our coral frames around Vommuli, replacing many bleached and dead corals with new fragments as we went along.
Sofía, assistant coral biologist from Kuda Huraa, visited us this month. She helped with four maintenance visits to two restoration sites, helping recover coral frames impacted by the coral bleaching. Some 40% of these frames had to be replaced by up to 100% of their fragments due to the high coral mortality across all sites.
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.
After the mass bleaching, a few of our coral frames have regained their colouration and are slowly recovering
Healthy corals = healthy, biodiverse marine ecosystem
Healthy coral colonies on the reef
🪸Dive Centre Site – There is an encouraging increase in healthy coral coverage, rising from 10% (July) to 30% this month. Some corals are slowly recovering, particularly: Acropora digitifera, A. humilis, A. gemmifera. Bleaching coverage has also slightly reduced by 5% to 30%, but mortality continues to rise (+5% since July). Last month’s new frames are healthy, and we will continue to monitor the new frames added this month.
🪸 Adopt-A-Coral Site – There is a significant recovery in healthy coral coverage, up 25% to 60% since July. Bleaching decreased 10% to 35%, as fewer corals are experiencing environmental stresses. But mortality was up 10% to 30%, as the most vulnerable corals failed to recover.
🪸 Whale Bar Site – Healthy coral coverage is up 5% to 10%, with older frames demonstrating resilience despite ongoing stress. Bleaching coverage remains the same as July at 20%, suggesting that the environmental pressures (ocean temperatures) are no longer escalating. But mortality at this most severely affected site remains high (and steady) at 70%. Only the oldest frames (1 year old), continue to show resilience, and the wild colonies around this site are also struggling, with signs of bleaching persisting down to depths of 15m.
🎙️ Marine Talks
During August, we conducted 2 Evening Talk sessions for guests, plus 8 sessions at the Kids Club, featuring “Shark Yoga” and “Sea Turtle Beach” (attended by 27 children, photos below). Additionally, two coral frames were built with the children during our Coral Awareness sessions, an activity we plan to expand on in the future.
Two presentations were given for the 12 newly-hired resort staff colleagues, which covered coral awareness, Reefscapers coral restoration, and Maldivian marine life.
A virtual session was held for 6 students from New Jersey, USA, where we answered questions about coral restoration and conservation efforts. The session aimed to help the students develop ideas for this year’s Robotics FLL challenge. Additionally, we hosted five FAM (Familiarization) trips this month, for a total of 20 visiting travel agents for guest-markets around the world.
🤿 Marine Biology Excursions
We conducted 2 ‘Dolphin Cruises’ and one ‘Turtle Quest’ this month, enjoyed by a total of 27 guests. Eagle rays were the most commonly sighted megafauna species, followed by resident hawksbill turtles.
Coral frame maintenance
recovering Reefscapers coral frames
Sheraton Full Moon
Our Reefscapers coral frames can be relocated quite easily (when young!)
Coral frame of Acropora aspera with macroalgae
During August, we built 14 new coral frames, kindly sponsored by guests (3), the Resort (8), and online (3). In addition, we monitored (cleaned, repaired, photographed) a total of 14 existing coral frames, mainly at the Dive Centre site by using broken healthy coral from the dive centre pyramids.
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
Bleaching surveys continued this month, repeating the transects started back in May, covering a total of 1,247 coral colonies. Mortality continues to increase slightly, and some recovered colonies are showing signs of disease and predation. Recovery from the bleaching is being increasingly observed around the island.
- Blue Hole – Following the last few months we have continued to collect broken healthy coral from this site to remake frames. Many frames were also lifted from the sand and readjusted in the blue hole. 478 coral colonies are being surveyed for bleaching at this site. Since early March, our transects reveal that mortality rates have increased from 1% to 78%.
- Water Villas – Huge progress has been made, removing dead colonies from frames. We began re-building sponsored frames using triggerfish-damaged coral from the blue hole, however, we noticed the fragments paling a lot. We have paused our transplanting at 1m depth while we will see how these fragments progress over the coming weeks. We may also relocate some of these frames to deeper water over the next month.
696 coral colonies are being surveyed here for bleaching. Since early March, our transects reveal an increase in mortality from 1% to 84%. - Dive Centre & Boat Garden – A total of 12 scuba maintenance dives were carried out this month, to repair the coral frames at this site. Many large colonies on the pyramids, which died from the bleaching event over the last few months, have now fallen off. We removed any fallen colonies as they were damaging the surrounding healthy corals. Some healthy colonies had also fallen, so we simply reattached these. We also observed a large coral frame was slowly being covered in macroalgae (Padina), so we rescued the healthy corals and relocated them to the pyramids. Much of the remaining frame underneath was dead (with lots of corallivorous Drupella snails).
73 coral colonies at his site are being surveyed for bleaching. Since early March, mortality has increased from 0% to 55% here. Frames are currently being added to the boat garden site which is expanding very well, and we are continuing to lift any buried frames from the sand. Excitingly, many eagle rays have been spotted around this site.
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 – In total during August, 25 guests joined for our Maldivian Journey snorkelling, averaging 6 guests per trip for 66 minutes’ duration. We also conducted two Reef Snorkelling trips and four Snorkelling Safaris. We were pleased to sight 2 green turtles and 1 hawksbill at the dive centre restoration site, plus juvenile nurse sharks visited both the blue hole & water villas sites.
🐬 Dolphin Cruises – we conducted 6 dolphin cruises this month, with multiple spinner dolphins sighted on every trip, much to the delight of our excited guests!
🎙️ Marine Talks – A total of 53 guests attended marine talks, with an average duration of 37 minutes. An additional four talks were delivered for staff training purposes.
Our coral frames provide a safe resting spot for nurse sharks
Healthy corals teaming with marine life, at our Dive Centre site
Marine biodiversity living in and around our coral frames
Wild green turtle spotted on the reef close to our Dive Centre site
Marine Education & Awareness Activities
♻️ EcoSort Challenge – activities are going well, with a total of 45 guests attending this month, for an average duration of 44 minutes.
👨👩👧👦 Kids Club Field Trip – 40 children joined for marine field trips, lasting an average of 44 minutes each. Many thanks to invaluable assistance from our resort colleagues at the Dive Centre.
▶️ Social Media activities during August included 5 new posts, 13 stories and 9 reels. Our highest reaching post (~25k accounts) was created to increase awareness to the possible reintroduction of long-line fishing in the Maldives. Many organisations around the Maldives came together in a national campaign, which seems to have helped encourage the Maldivian Government to officially pause the re-introduction of long-line fishing!
This month, our Reefscapers teams came together virtually, to discuss our social media strategies for the rest of the year, and to share a new social media planner for improved structure and collaboration.
August means our Kids Club is at capacity!
Inspiring the next generation of marine biologists
