St. Regis Vommuli
This month, we created 6 new coral frames of various sizes, kindly sponsored by guests, the resort, and online, and conducted 35 in-person coral propagation sessions with guests. A total of 35 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 19 maintenance snorkels/dives, and inspected all 262 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.
🪸 Adopt-A-Coral Site – As we conclude 2024, marking this year as one of significant coral bleaching events, we note that the most intense stress period occurred from April to August. During this time, healthy corals declined sharply from 95% to 45%, while bleaching peaked at 55%, and mortality rose to 30%. From September onwards, the site exhibited steady recovery, with healthy corals reaching a maximum of 70% and bleaching reducing to 0% by November.
🪸Dive Centre Site – Healthy corals dropped drastically from 60% in April to just 0% by June, while bleaching peaked at 80% in May. Mortality rose sharply during this time, reaching 50% by August. From September onwards, there were signs of gradual recovery, with healthy corals increasing to 49% by December, and bleaching reducing to 0%. Mortality remains high, stabilising at 51%.
🪸 Whale Bar Site – Experienced the most severe bleaching and mortality. Healthy corals plummeted from 90% in April to just 5% by May, as bleaching peaked at 60% and mortality rose sharply to 70% by August. From September onwards, recovery was slow but steady, with healthy corals increasing to 30% by December, and bleaching reducing to 0%. Mortality remains high at 70%, underscoring the long-lasting impacts of the mass global coral bleaching event.
🎙️ Marine Talks – A total of four Evening Talk sessions were held, with 12 guests participating. At the Kids Club, we conducted seven sessions featuring activities like “Shark Yoga” and “Sea Turtle Beach,” attended by 23 children. Additionally, during the festive season, we collaborated with the Kids Club to create special marine awareness sessions, including classes on whale and dolphin sounds, a coral Christmas tree activity, and a New Year’s ocean conservation resolutions workshop.
🤿 Marine Biology Excursions – Two dolphin cruises, two coral garden snorkels and one turtle quest were conducted in December, enjoyed by a total of 31 guests. The most common megafauna species sighted this month was the blacktip reef shark, followed by eagle rays. We were also excited to spot green turtles our house reef.
![REEFSCAPERS at St Regis [SR 2024.recap] - healthy frames](https://reefscapers.com/reefscapers.com/main/seamain/uploads/REEFSCAPERS-at-St-Regis-SR-2024.recap-2-healthy-frames-800.jpg "REEFSCAPERS at St Regis [SR 2024.recap] - healthy frames")
2024 RECAP REPORT
Highlights from our 2024 recap report (available here) include our coral frame monitoring time sequence in 2 healthy REEFSCAPERS coral frames.
We regularly clean and maintain our frames, and take monitoring photos every 6 months to share with our kind sponsors for them to track the coral health and growth over time.
Human-induced climate change caused a global marine heatwave followed by another mass coral bleaching event. Water temperatures exceeded 32°C (April-June 2024), causing heat stress in all corals.
The greatest loss was at the JJA site, where 97% of wild corals were lost (photo). Our restoration frames showed resilience, and recovery of bleached corals reached 60% at some sites, surpassing natural reef recovery (chart, our Adopt-A-Coral site). Adaptive strategies like using heat-resistant coral species and optimising frame placements will be crucial moving forward.
Sheraton Full Moon
This month, we built 10 new coral frames, which in total added 414 new coral fragments to the reef. We ended the year planting frame SH729. We also monitored (cleaned, repaired, photographed) a total of 63 existing coral frames across all our sites, and uploaded the photos to our website for our kind sponsors.
During 2024, we planted a total of 162 frames (7,316 fragments); this excludes recycled frames after the bleaching event.
To see the progress of your own frame, please visit our dedicated Sheraton monitoring page where we upload new photos every 6 months or so.
Coral Propagation Sites
- Blue Hole & Water Villas – Recycling of frames was low this month due to a number of large titan triggerfish nesting in the area – they were acting very territorial and can be aggressive towards snorkellers.
- Boat Garden – Two maintenance dives were completed to clean and monitor frames. We have also planted some of the dive centre Acropora muricata at this site to see how it grows.
- Gili’s – All frames continue to do very well, needing very little maintenance. Monitoring will continue into Jan-Feb.
- Dive Centre – A total of 14 scuba maintenance dives were carried out this month (plus 2 at eagle ray rock). The dive centre continues to remain our focal point of restoration since the bleaching this year. A lot of work has been completed, removing dead coral, replanting new coral fragments, recycling frames, cleaning the macroalgae growing on Acropora muricata, and removing corallivorous species from both frames and pyramids.
Predation
A total of 146 Drupella snails and one cushion star were removed in December. From August to December this year, we have removed two Crown of Thorns, 297 Drupella and the one cushion star form our coral structures.
![Reefscapers Maldives - A. secale bundling [Hegarty-Kelly]](https://reefscapers.com/reefscapers.com/main/seamain/uploads/Reefscapers-Maldives-SH-2024.12-15-A.-secale-bundling-Hegarty-Kelly-800-300x300.jpg)
Coral Spawning Research
🗓️ New Moon (1 Dec): we conducted night dives at the Dive Centre over this period, to monitor for coral spawning. No spawning was observed.
🗓️ Full Moon (15 Dec): again, we conducted night dives at the Dive Centre over this period. We had already completed gamete checks, and we were confident that colonies of Acropora tenuis contained pigmented eggs. Sure enough, a series of ‘loss-of-gamete’ checks confirmed spawning had occurred in 3 colonies of A.tenuis.
Marine Life
🤿 Snorkelling Excursions – 6 ‘Snorkelling Safaris’ were joined this month, and we conducted 12 private snorkelling sessions. 48 guests joined us for the ‘Maldivian Journey’ this month, averaging 69 minutes duration. Megafauna sightings included hawksbill turtles and stingrays at the dive centre.
🐬 Dolphin Cruises – 5 dolphin cruises were attended, and we sighted spinner dolphins on each trip.
🎙️ Marine Talks – A total of 28 guests attended marine talks this month over 8 talks, lasting 37 minutes on average.
Marine Education & Awareness Activities
♻️ EcoSort Challenge – 28 guests enjoyed our educational awareness game this month, averaging 48 minutes duration.
👨👩👧👦 Kids Club Field Trip – We had 17 children join the marine field trip, averaging 38 minutes. The families over the festive period were very interested in our coral adoption programme.
🪸 Hosted Visits – This month, we hosted 3 FAM trips. New sign boards have been created by the carpentry team, to help direct guests towards our marine biology department and the coral garden.
📱 Social Media – this month we shared 5 posts, 36 stories and 9 reels, reaching a total of 92k accounts. A collaborative reel with Four Seasons Maldives showcased a day in the life of a marine biologist at Landaa Giraavaru, and was our top performer with 17k reach and 26k plays (and counting).
During 2024, the Reefscapers Instagram account gained over 4,000 followers, ending the year on 35,100 followers. The Sheraton team played a large role in this growth, creating engaging content as well as creating/organising our popular ‘meet the team’ series of posts. Multiple reels have been viewed over 100k times, and we hope to continue gaining followers in 2025.
