Three Months Among the Corals: My Time with Reefscapers!
by Finn McConnell
It is slightly strange to think that three months ago I was arriving at The St. Regis Maldives Vommuli Resort to join the Reefscapers team, not really knowing what the summer ahead was going to look like. Now, as I get ready to leave, I am looking back at three months spent almost permanently in or around the ocean, hundreds of coral frames, plenty of amazing snorkels, some unforgettable wildlife encounters, and many people I am going to find very difficult to say goodbye to.
Coming into my Reefscapers internship, I was lucky enough to have already spent plenty of time learning about coral reefs at university. I understood coral bleaching, restoration and resilience in theory, but actually working with the same restoration sites almost every day has given me a completely different appreciation of what all of those things look like underwater. One of the best examples of that journey has been our Adopt-A-Coral site in the lagoon. When I first arrived at Vommuli, I remember looking across the site and, although it was incredibly beautiful, I realised just how much work there was to do. Sadly, the corals were still showing the effects of the bleaching that had occurred earlier in April, and unfortunately there were a lot of dead fragments remaining across the frames. Over the next three months, I slowly worked my way through them. Frame by frame, dead coral was removed, tags were cleaned, healthy fragments were given space to continue growing, and the maps were gradually updated.
Truthfully, it was not necessarily the most glamorous part of coral restoration, but nonetheless I loved doing it, and reaching the end of that site’s maintenance has probably been one of the most satisfying moments of my internship. The difference between what I saw when I first arrived and what I am proud to be leaving behind is huge. Seeing that change happen gradually has also taught me that coral restoration is about so much more than attaching coral fragments to a frame and putting it in the ocean. A coral frame is really only the beginning. The health of a coral does not exist separately from everything happening around it. Water movement, depth, sediment, the position of a frame and the conditions at each site can all influence how successfully those corals grow. Regular monitoring and maintenance are therefore just as much a part of restoration as the initial transplantation itself.
At the same time as maintaining the older sites, it has been really exciting to watch something completely new begin. Just outside the Dive Centre, a new coral restoration site has started to take shape during my internship. Ten new frames have already been positioned there during my time at Vommuli, and across the three months I have personally transplanted 13 coral frames. It may sound a little bit cringe, but there is truly something special about knowing that those frames are only at the very beginning of their story. I have watched much more established frames around the island become complex coral structures surrounded by fish and other marine life, so, in an ideal world, I would one day love to come back in a few years and see what those same frames outside the Dive Centre have become.
Working between all of these sites has probably left me with more questions about corals than I arrived with, although, as a marine biology student, I think that is probably a good thing. Some fragments seem to establish incredibly quickly, while others struggle. Corals only a short distance apart can have completely different outcomes. Some survive periods of environmental stress when neighbouring colonies do not. I have found myself becoming more and more interested in why.
Why do some corals cope better? Why does restoration seem more successful in certain places? What can the corals that survive major disturbances tell us about how reefs might respond to future change?
Those questions feel even more important when thinking about what could be ahead. El Niño is currently strengthening, with forecasts suggesting a very strong event through late 2026 and into early 2027. This does not mean another bleaching event in the Maldives is inevitable, but with ocean temperatures continuing to rise, the next warm period will understandably be watched very closely. Having arrived at Vommuli shortly after the April bleaching and then spent months physically removing some of its aftermath, the possibility of future heat stress makes the work happening here feel particularly important.
Coral restoration cannot remove the underlying threat of climate change, and it cannot replace the need to protect natural reefs. What it can do, however, is vital: it supports damaged reef areas, maintains and propagates living coral, rebuilds habitats and, importantly, allows us to keep learning. Monitoring which corals survive, which recover and which locations perform best helps make future restoration increasingly informed by what we are actually seeing in the water.
Alongside the coral work, I was also lucky enough to have the freedom to develop a project of my own. During my internship, I created a new turtle identification and monitoring project for Vommuli, including a database, sightings log and viewer where individual turtles and their encounter histories can be recorded and compared. By the end of my time here, 31 individual turtles had already been identified around Vommuli and neighbouring islands. Seeing something that started as an idea become a functioning project that can continue after I leave has been another part of the internship I am really proud of. Hopefully, as more sightings are added, it will begin to tell us more about which turtles regularly use the reefs around Vommuli and where they are being seen over time.
As I head back to Southampton to begin the final year of my integrated master’s degree in marine biology, I think the biggest thing I will take away from Reefscapers is a completely different understanding of what restoration actually means. It is not a finished product. There is no point where a frame goes into the water and the job is done. It is transplanting, monitoring, maintaining, adapting, responding when things go wrong and learning from what happens next. Above all, it is working with an ecosystem that is constantly changing.
For now, the frames I have worked on will stay here and, hopefully, continue growing without me. The new Dive Centre site will develop; the lagoon will keep changing and new turtles will hopefully keep appearing in the database. I will just have to keep an eye on all of them from slightly colder waters back in Southampton.
A huge thank you to everyone at The St. Regis Maldives Vommuli Resort and the wider Reefscapers team for making the last three months something I will genuinely never forget.
Thanks for reading.
Finn McConnell
