St. Regis Vommuli
This month, Hazel is on a well-deserved vacation, but don’t worry … she will be back next month!
Sheraton Full Moon
This month, we built 9 new coral frames (adding ~450 coral fragments to the reef), kindly sponsored by guests and the resort, and we ended the month by planting frame number SH908. We monitored (cleaned, repaired, photographed) a total of 78 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 ~1000 new fragments to our existing frames. We continue to spot any corallivorous species, removing 8 Drupella snails this month.
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 – the frames we moved around at this site last month (vulnerable to sand movement) are doing well. This has streamlined our workflow and increased the ability to continue repopulation here. We continue to retag frames and monitor.
Dive Centre – we have been observing some damage to our corals on both frames and pyramids due to titan triggerfish. Many colonies have been broken, however, we are able to use these broken fragments to repopulate in other locations.
Coral Reproduction Research
March and April are 2 of the best months of the year to observe coral spawning (see our research page), so we prioritised night dives around the full moon and new moon periods, looking for the tell-tale signs of the mass-releasing of gametes (eggs and sperm).
– Full Moon (3 March): despite 11 nights of enthusiastic monitoring, we did not record any spawnings over this period.
– New Moon (19 March): following 6 nights of monitoring, we successfully observed spawning in one colony of Acropora.
Our frame corals are sometimes grazed by titan triggerfish
Gametes ‘bundling’ in Acropora corals, soon to be released during spawning
Marine Life
🎙️ Marine Talks – A total of 16 guests attended marine talks this month over seven sessions, averaging 48 minutes duration. A special marine talk was also held in celebration of International Dolphin Day, providing an additional opportunity to engage guests on marine conservation topics.
🐬 Dolphin Cruises – Three dolphin cruises were attended, with Spinner dolphins successfully sighted on each.
🤿 Snorkelling Excursions – a total of 9 snorkelling safari excursions were joined this month. We also conducted 3 guided private guest snorkels on request of the dive centre. In total for the month, we recorded sightings of 147 megafauna, mostly blacktip reef sharks, whitetip reef sharks, and pink whiptail rays. We were also pleased to spot: porcupine ray, cowtail stingray, spotted eagle ray, and a nurse shark.
Marine Education & Awareness Activities
♻️ EcoSort Challenge – Four EcoSort challenges were carried out this month, averaging 30 minutes duration. We will be working on a new activity over the coming months for this time slot.
👨👩👧👦 Kids Club – We hosted four Marine Field Trips for kids club, averaging 25 minutes. We are also very close to launching the Junior Marine Biologist activity which we hope can be finalised next month.
📱 Instagram – during March, our extended team created 4 posts, 5 reels, and 11 stories. The best performer was a post featuring the release of rehabilitated turtle ‘Kottu’ back to the ocean, which clocked up 7000 views.
