St. Regis Vommuli
This month, we created 4 new coral frames of various sizes, kindly sponsored by guests, the resort, and online. A total of 23 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 16 maintenance snorkels/dives, and inspected all of our coral frames around Vommuli island.
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 – At this site and in the surrounding house reef areas, some adult triggerfish were spotted nesting (which hasn’t been reported before), and we identified some coral colonies presenting triggerfish bite damage, uncommon for our restoration sites.
🪸 Whale Bar Site – frames have shown a great improvement! After last year’s mass mortality (up to 70%), the surviving corals have fully recovered and are growing well. In addition, we were pleased to observe new wild colonies of Acropora hyacinthus along the borders of the house reef.
🪸Dive Centre Site – We are planning to relocate most of the frames from this site due to frequent boat traffic, prioritising both diver safety during maintenance and the structural integrity of the frames. The new site will be AAC, where we aim to establish a designated path leading to all frames. We are also assessing the sand patch near the Dive Centre entrance, which is ~1.5m deep and experiences high erosion. To evaluate its suitability, we will test this location with five small frames to monitor their adaptation.
Three large frames from the Dive Centre have been relocated to the arrival jetty, as a display for guests. This improved visibility of our coral restoration project will be useful during the arrival briefings, and can also serve as a starting point for future guided snorkelling.
🎙️ Marine Talks – A total of four Evening Talk sessions were held, with 9 guests attending. At the Kids’ Club, we conducted eight sessions featuring activities like “Shark Yoga” and a new session of “Whales and dolphins yoga,” attended by 26 children. Additionally, we built a Kids Club coral frame to mark the Chinese New Year festivities.
We also conducted 2 training sessions for the resort’s new hires, as an introduction to our coral restoration efforts and marine conservation initiatives. Participants learned about the techniques of coral propagation and monitoring, as well as the importance of reducing human impacts on marine environments. By equipping new staff with this knowledge, we encourage greater awareness and engagement in conservation efforts across different resort departments, and promote a collective commitment to protecting our marine ecosystem.
📱 Socials – Our “meet the team” post and coral frame reel clocked up 17K views between them.
🤿 Marine Biology Excursions – We conducted two Dolphin Cruises and two Turtle Quest excursions, with a total of 17 guests participating. Megafauna sightings included blacktip and whitetip reef sharks, but unusually no sea turtles were spotted around our island this month (except at the nearby reef).
Sheraton Full Moon
This month, we built 13 new coral frames, including a special Sheraton-sponsored frame to commemorate the New Year, dedicated to ‘a sustainable start to 2025!’ In addition, we also monitored (cleaned, repaired, photographed) a total of 37 existing coral frames across all our sites, and uploaded the photos to our website for our kind sponsors. We continue to replace any dead corals due to bleaching, adding a total of 1500 new fragments to our recycled frames.
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.
A sustainable start to 2025!
Coral Propagation Sites
January has been a very productive month, with many successful maintenance dives completed. The coral pyramids at the Dive Centre have had a lot of work done, with the newly planted corals doing well.
- Blue Hole & Water Villas – Over the last few weeks, the seasonally shifting sands have been negatively affecting this site. A large section of sand collapsed, which buried some of our frames, necessitating a major lifting project from our team. This site is getting smaller due to the fast sand movement, so we are in the process of relocating the most vulnerable frames.
- Boat Garden – Five scuba dives were completed for our maintenance and monitoring tasks. Frames were lifted, cleaned off and recycled where necessary.
- Dive Centre – Post-bleaching, removal of dead corals has continued on the pyramids, with 6 scuba dives this month. Branching coral is still being removed from the pyramids and moved away from the site. We will continue this work in the coming weeks, and hope to see some positive results from our on-going coral restoration efforts.
Marine Life
🤿 Snorkelling Excursions – Seven snorkelling excursions were joined this month all which were Snorkelling Safari’s. This month we had an increase in turtle sighting across many sites around the island. Many turtles are being spotted at the sea grass site from land so species cannot always be identified. 15 green turtles and 25 unknown turtle species turtles were seen in January.
🐬 Dolphin Cruises – Three dolphin cruises were attended in January 2025, with sightings on all cruises.
🎙️ Marine Talks – A total of 56 guests attended 15 marine talks this month, averaging 35 minutes duration
Marine Education & Awareness Activities
♻️ EcoSort Challenge – Five EcoSort challenges were carried out this month. We had a total of 18 guests attend over the month with an average of 4. The average duration was 45 minutes. One event was cancelled due to the Chinese New Year activity calendar. However an extra activity was added on the 8th for the festive calendar.
👨👩👧👦 Kids Club Field Trip – We had 34 kids join the marine field trip with an average of 9 people. The average duration was 31 minutes. Increased numbers derived from high occupancy this month and many kids in-house. One activity was cancelled due to the Chinese New Year calendar.
📺 Promotion – Our promotional video has been updated on the tv which is Anchorage poolside and marketing material for Valentine’s day has been put together. In addition, we attended 2 management cocktail events held for guests, to informally chat about our work.
📱 Social Media – Content shared during January included 7 posts, 2 stories and 6 reels. Our top reel reached 14k people and was played 22k times.
