Marriott Team Diaries: September 2024

St. Regis Vommuli

During September, we created 20 new coral frames of various sizes, kindly sponsored by guests, the resort, and online, and conducted 20 in-person coral propagation sessions with guests. A total of 60 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. Approximately 50% of the monitored frames needed up to 60% of their coral fragments replacing, due to the high mortality following this year’s global mass coral bleaching event.

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.

200th frame celebration 🎉 We celebrated the milestone of completing our 200th coral frame with a special coral-awareness session and a snorkelling trip for 12 students from our neighboring island, Rinbudhoo. Together with the students and resort guests, we built the frame during an event at the Whale Bar.

🪸 Adopt-A-Coral Site – Healthy coral coverage is now reaching 80% (a notable +20% increase since August). The corals are growing well again now that sea surface temperatures have returned to a normal range. Most fragments at this site are digitate species, which have shown a higher recovery rate. Some heat stress persists, with coral mortality dropping to below 10%.

🪸 Whale Bar Site – There are clearly observable improvements in coral health, with healthy coral coverage increasing by +25% from last month. The numbers of bleached colonies has decreased, but mortality remains high at 50% (down from last month). Younger coral frames and wild colonies remain vulnerable, and the progress seen in older frames will require careful observation and mainteneance to ensure that the positive trends continue.

🪸Dive Centre Site – Healthy coral coverage has showed a significant recovery, increasing to 70% (up from August’s 30%). Many corals are rebounding from previous stresses, and the restoration efforts are starting to yield positive results. Levels of bleaching (10%) and mortality (20%) have decreased significantly, and although mortality remains a concern, this reduction is an encouraging sign that fewer corals are succumbing to bleaching.

Frames SR0079, 80 & 81 – These three 14-month-old large coral frames (built in July 2023) were placed at the same depth (2m) at the Dive Site, but transplanted with different coral species, leading to varied responses during the bleaching event. The different recovery rates underline the importance of propagating a variety of coral species, to maximise the potential heat resilience of artificial reefs. Digitate species (SR0080) demonstrated the greatest capacity for recovery, while table corals (SR0079) suffered the highest mortality.

Sea Turtle Rescue

An adult female Olive Ridley Turtle was discovered floating in the waters of Dhaalu Atoll by the Water Solutions team during a survey expedition. We were contacted to help them build a safe transport box and to provide temporary housing until transportation was available. Upon arrival, there was minor bleeding on the tip of her front flipper. After some initial signs of stress, her overall behaviour calmed when placed in a tank, and her regular breathing stabilised. The turtle remained active throughout he night, swimming slowly around the tank. At midday on 21 September, we successfully sent her on to Vilureef via seaplane transfer, for professional treatment.

🎙️ Marine Talks – A total of three Evening Talk sessions was given with five guests participating. At the Kids Club, we conducted six sessions, featuring “Shark Yoga” and “Sea Turtle Beach,” which were attended by 15 children. Additionally, three coral frames were built with the children during our Coral Awareness sessions.

🤿 Marine Biology Excursions – Two dolphin cruises and one turtle quest were attended by the Marine Biologist in September, a total of 10 guests attended this activities. In addition, megafauna was logged from sighting during maintenance visits to the different sites of the island. The most common species sighted this month was whitetip reef shark, followed by eagle rays.

📱 Social Media and Marketing – One story and two reels were created for social media of Reefscapers, showing engagement reaching in total 52.1K views, 3.7K likes and 396 shares. We also hosted six FAM (Familiarization) trips this month, where 39 travel agents from the Brazil, UK, and Russia markets participated in the coral adoption program.