St. Regis Vommuli
This month, we created 7 new coral frames of various sizes, kindly sponsored by guests, the resort, and online. A total of 31 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 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 – Two years since starting this site, we now have 150+ coral frames, including our oldest from back in February 2023. These frames have shown the highest survival rate and best resilience to last year’s coral bleaching event. With relocated frames from the Dive Centre, we are building a guided route to help guests find our restoration site from the lagoon. For the initial batch of 15 frames, relocation was performed both by speedboat and by hand. We aim to complete the relocation of all small frames over the coming weeks, further enhancing visibility and accessibility.
🪸 Arrival Jetty Site – all relocated frames have now successfully established in our new restoration site. No signs of bleaching were observed in the coral colonies. This month, two additional large frames were moved to the site, including one built with a guest.
🪸Dive Centre Site – we observed high macroalgae coverage at this site, requiring extensive maintenance efforts to remove it along with any marine debris. More than half the frames from the channel have now been successfully relocated, mainly along the house reef side.
🎙️ Marine Talks – We held 3 Evening Talks this month, for a total of 6 interested guests. At the Kids’ Club, 8 educational sessions included “Shark Yoga” and “Whales & Dolphins Yoga,” attended by 26 enthusiastic children. We also built a coral frame heart for Valentine’s Day. In addition, 2 training sessions were conducted for the resort’s new starters, introducing them to our coral restoration initiatives and marine conservation work.
In related exciting news, our new dedicated office space is now being constructed! The floor plans are finalised, and construction officially started this month. This will create new marine workspaces for our awareness sessions and coral adoption programs.
📱 Socials – collectively our Instagram post/s and stories reached more than 8K views this month.
🤿 Marine Biology Excursions – We attended two Dolphin Cruises and one Turtle Quest excursion, enjoyed by 13 participating guests. Megafauna sightings included 2 separate pods of dolphins swimming along our house reef … exciting! Other megafauna species included pygmy devil rays, blacktip and whitetip reef sharks, and our resident sea turtle.
Sheraton Full Moon
This month, we built 3 new coral frames, and also monitored (cleaned, repaired, photographed) a total of 20 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 ~800 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.
This month’s Coral Rescue & Relocation Project was a massive team effort (see below)
Coral Propagation Sites
Many thanks to Eman, our floating (!) Reefscapers and Coral Planters expert, for assisting Katie with daily maintenance tasks during his three-week from January into February. Plus, we extend our gratitude to the resort for facilitating his visit and being so accommodating.
- Blue Hole & Water Villas – Due to the seasonal shift in ocean currents, fast sand movement continues to impact the Blue Hole entrance. Several frames were quickly buried, but have been lifted and relocated to an area with more rubble. Frames are being remapped on QGIS accordingly. Additional maintenance was carried out at the Water Villas, where several frames were cleared and recycled with new coral fragments.
- Boat Garden – Two scuba dives were conducted for frame maintenance and monitoring.
- Dive Centre – Major maintenance efforts at this site, with 6 separate scuba sessions that included the removal of dead branching coral from the pyramids, along witha general site clean-up.
Marine Life
🤿 Snorkelling Excursions – 4 snorkelling excursions were joined during February. Megafauna sightings included blacktip reef sharks, turtles, and even a rarely-spotted guitar shark.
🐬 Dolphin Cruises – Six dolphin cruises were attended this month, and we sighted pods of Spinners on them all.
🎙️ Marine Talks – Eighteen marine talks were attended by 64 guests, with many guests joining multiple sessions. The average talk duration was 39 minutes.
Marine Education & Awareness Activities
♻️ EcoSort Challenge – Four EcoSort challenges were held, attracting a total of 30 participants. The average session lasted 34 minutes, and now starts at the new time of 2:30pm.
👨👩👧👦 Kids Club Field Trip – 4 marine field trips were hosted, attended by 28 enthusiastic children, each lasting 35 minutes on average.
📺 Promotion – we hosted 1 FAM trip, and attended 2 management cocktail events.
📱 Social Media – on Instagram (and Facebook) we helped with 7 posts, 12 stories, and 4 reels. Top-performing posts reached 10k people although overall engagement was slightly down on the month. Our Reefscapers Instagram account gained +358 new followers, leading to a total of 35,176.
Coral Rescue & Relocation
This month, we have also been very busy with a large-scale coral rescue and relocation project. Our teams transported ~800 mature coral colonies (weighing 5 tonnes) from Fushi Dhiggaaru Faru to Sheraton Maldives as part of the Ras Malé Project (saving corals at risk due to ongoing government land reclamation).
On 19 February, we used a local cargo boat, underwater cages, and floating devices to facilitate the six-hour transportation process. Once back at the resort, corals were unloaded and placed at site via freediving and scuba diving. We have since been securing the coral onto the existing pyramid structures at the Dive Centre. Early monitoring indicates the relocated corals are adapting well, and guests have provided positive feedback about the restoration site.
Special thanks to our Reefscapers team and Sheraton colleagues for making this project a success, and for ‘Mesmerizing Maldives’ who professionally photographed the proceedings (above – click to enlarge).
