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 25 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 12 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.
🪸 Maintenance & Monitoring
This month, we were visited by Reefscapers cofounder Thomas Le Berre, for professional consultation and hands-on assistance with our coral restoration work. He assessed the state of the reef, damaged last month by mechanical construction equipment. We surveyed the broken coral colonies at the Dive Centre site, as well as our damaged coral frames at the Whale Bar. One area near the overwater villas was identified as a potential new restoration site. Encouragingly, many small coral recruits were found growing there following last year’s global coral bleaching event, making it an ideal location for adding new frames. In the coming months, we will establish this new restoration site and enhance coral cover in the whole area.
As construction activities continue, wild coral colonies and frames are being relocated to safeguard them from damage. This month, 30 wild colonies were moved from the Beach Villas ahead of the wave-breaker construction. In addition, the coral frames originally located in front of Alba Beach were relocated closer to the Whale Bar site before sand pumping operations began.
🪸 Adopt-A-Coral Site
Our AAC site is located away from construction activities, and has continued to show positive coral growth. Mild macroalgae growth was found at the beginning of the month, but it was successfully removed during our maintenance work and did not persist. All newly built coral frames have been placed at this site. Looking ahead to next month, construction is expected to begin close to the AAC site. Frames located closer to the wave-breakers will be relocated to safer positions. Additionally, new marking buoys will be installed to clearly delineate boundaries and ensure that barges and construction machinery remain outside the designated limits of the site.
🎙️ Marine Talks – A total of two Evening Talk sessions were held this month, with six guests participating. At the Kids Club, one session was conducted featuring Shark Yoga, with a total of 5 children attending.
📱 Socials – Two guided snorkelling trips were held for our new resort colleagues in Sales and F&B departments. Three reels were posted this month on Reefscapers’ social media, reaching 53+K views so far.
🤿 Marine Biology Excursions – In August, two Dolphin Cruises and two coral garden excursions were attended, with a total of 16 guests participating. Megafauna sightings were recorded during routine maintenance visits around the island, including several sightings of our resident hawksbill sea turtle.
Sheraton Full Moon
This month, we built 12 new coral frames (adding ~540 coral fragments to the reef), plus we also monitored (cleaned, repaired, photographed) a total of 48 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 further total of ~1175 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
At our Dive Centre site, coral frames on both sides of the pyramids were lifted and cleaned of algae. There was extra build-up of algae by mid-August which resulted in the frames needing a lot of maintenance. Additionally, we began a sixth line of coral frames on the left side of the pyramids to expand the coral garden.
We continue to repopulate frames at the Water Villas & Blue Hole sites; the completed frames are showing excellent rates of attachment and growth. We are re-tagging any frames that we encounter without ID numbers, via scheduled SCUBA dives where necessary, to lift and manoeuvre the frames.
Marine Life
🤿 Snorkelling Excursions – We joined six Snorkelling Safaris and one Reef Snorkelling trip this month, plus an additional five guided guest snorkels were requested. Megafauna sightings included a blacktip reef shark and spotted eagle rays, along with the guest-sighting of a large lemon shark swimming at our Blue Hole coral site.
🐬 Dolphin Cruises – We attended seven dolphin cruises, and sighted Spinner dolphins on each trip.
🎙️ Marine Talks – A total of 61 guests attended 11 marine presentations, averaging 36 minutes duration. On 30 August, we celebrated International Whale Shark Day with an afternoon craft session where we invited guests to paint their own whale sharks. This was followed by an educational marine talk at Anchorage Bar and an interactive trivia night with the help from our Recreation team colleagues.
Marine Education & Awareness Activities
♻️ EcoSort Challenge – Four EcoSort activities this month, enjoyed by a total of 17 guests.
👨👩👧👦 Kids Club – We hosted four Marine Field trips for 22 people from kids club, averaging 30 minutes duration.
📱 Social Media – Content shared during August included 4 posts, 18 stories and 4 reels. The post with the most engagement featured 2 years of coral restoration, clocking up 30k views. Overall, we reached 51k accounts while our followers continue to hover around the 35k mark.
