St. Regis Vommuli
This month, we created 8 new coral frames of various sizes, kindly sponsored by guests, the resort, and online. 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 7 maintenance snorkels/dives, and inspected all of our coral frames around Vommuli island.
To check the progress of your frame, please visit our dedicated St Regis monitoring page where we upload new photos every 6 months or so.
Coral Frame Relocation & Maintenance
It’s the seasonally hottest part of the year for ocean temperatures, but despite the current coral bleaching alert, no signs of bleaching or paling were observed. Mild paling was recorded at the Whale Bar site, particularly on some branching coral species, but no significant bleaching was seen in surrounding wild colonies.
Minor macroalgae growth was recorded; however, most maintenance efforts focused on unburying frames due to increased sedimentation. A total of 43 coral frames have now been relocated from the Dive Centre and Arrival Jetty sites.
This month, two marketing snorkelling visits were conducted, during which participants explored the newly established coral frame path from the shore to the coral garden, and captured media content for promotional use. In the coming months, we plan to continue extending this path and install a buoy at its starting point to enhance guest accessibility and visibility.
Due to upcoming resort activities scheduled for June–July, the Dive Centre and Arrival Jetty sites will temporarily be without coral frames. The remaining frames from the Dive Centre are planned to be relocated to the Whale Bar site.
🎙️ Marine Talks – A total of two evening talk sessions were held this month, with four guests participating. At the Kids Club, six sessions were conducted, featuring “Shark Yoga” and “Whales and Dolphins Yoga,” with a total of 13 children attending. We also hosted a Children’s Day celebration with Hulhudheli School, with over 100 students participating in a marine awareness workshop.
📱 Socials – Three reels and one post were published on Reefscapers’ social media channels this month. Additionally, we were featured in two interviews conducted by the resort’s Marketing Department. A special coral adoption activity was also provided for Mr. George Fleck, St. Regis Senior VP and Global Brand Leader.
🤿 Marine Biology Excursions – In May, one Dolphin Cruise and one Turtle Quest excursion were attended, with a total of eight guests participating. Megafauna sightings this month included both blacktip reef sharks and whitetip reef sharks, along with stingrays, eagle rays, and hawksbill turtles.
Sheraton Full Moon
This month, we built 17 new coral frames (adding ~1070 coral fragments to the reef), plus we also monitored (cleaned, repaired, photographed) a total of 37 existing coral frames across all our sites, uploading the photos to our website for our kind sponsors. We actively replace any dead corals, adding a total of ~700 new fragments to our existing 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.
Coral Propagation Sites
We continued further maintenance at the Dive Centre this month. Frames on either side of the pyramids were lifted and cleaned of algae and sand. This site is also beginning to expand to the left side towards Eagle Ray Rock as the project has been growing a lot over the last few months.
More frames were moved while scuba diving to the Eagle Rock site (in front of Jetty 101) as there is space and opportunity to develop this small area. We look forward to seeing the progress of these frames in the coming months.
A total of 23 Drupella snails were removed from the dive centre coral site. These were mostly found in the branching coral at the base of the pyramids.
Research: Coral Spawning in the Maldives
Full Moon (12 May 2025): Via loss of gametes, we identified 2 colonies of Acropora that had spawned during this period. Interestingly, they were both split-spawners from April.
Our new research paper was published ! Entitled ‘Synchrony on the reef: how environmental factors shape coral spawning patterns in Acropora corals in the Maldives’. This is a huge achievement for the project as it contributes to further understanding of coral spawning patterns in Maldives. The data was collected across Reefscapers sites, including the Sheraton Maldives, during night dives. We would like to thank all at Reefscapers for making this happen, those at the Sheraton who helped us during research season, and also to the joint-authors of this paper > https://peerj.com/articles/19447/
Marine Life
🤿 Snorkelling Excursions – Four Snorkelling Safari Excursions were joined this month across 3 different sites. We recorded 45 megafauna sightings, mainly blacktip reef sharks and spotted eagle rays.
🐬 Dolphin Cruises – Two dolphin cruises were attended, with Spinner dolphins sighted.
🎙️ Marine Talks – A total of 37 guests attended 9 marine talks this month, with an average duration of 37 minutes. A special talk was also conducted on World Tuna Day.
Marine Education & Awareness Activities
♻️ EcoSort Challenge – Four EcoSort challenges were carried out this month, enjoyed by a total of 20 guests.
👨👩👧👦 Kids Club – We hosted four Marine Field trips for kids club this month. We had 56 people join, and the activity went on for an average of 41 minutes. We had many kids who were very interested in marine life, and we continue to receive very positive feedback.
On 23 May, we commemorated World Turtle Day, working with our Kids Club resort colleagues to carry out turtle shell making and a turtle-themed scavenger hunt. The kids learned all about the sea turtles we have in our waters, along with turtle nesting education
📱 Social Media – Content shared during May included 3 posts, 6 stories and 8 reels. Popular reels included a cowtail stingray swimming through a coral restoration site, which clocked up ~22k views. We gained +366 new followers bringing our total to ~35k.
