Be sure to read our monthly updates from Marine Savers – direct from our resident teams at
the Marine Discovery Centres at Landaa & Kuda Huraa – our long-term partnership with Four Seasons Resorts Maldives.
Landaa Giraavaru
At Landaa during June, we transplanted 19 new coral frames, kindly sponsored by guests (4), the Resort (15), and online (0), adding ~930 new coral fragments to the reef. Frames were planted at “Plankton”, a site located near Charlie’s Head, where they will be frequently seen by divers. We also monitored (cleaned, repaired, photographed) 227 sponsored frames, mainly at our Dive Site and Coral Trail.
To see the progress of your own frame, please visit our dedicated Four Seasons monitoring page where we upload new photos every 6 months or so.
World Environment Week – Celebrating our 6000th Frame
This month, we planted the 6,000th coral frame at Landaa Giraavaru. To mark this incredible milestone, a special Managers’ Cocktails event was held, with all guests invited to participate in building the frame. The event took place outside the Marine Discovery Centre, allowing for the frame to be easily planted on the reef shortly afterwards.
We were especially fortunate to celebrate this achievement during World Environment Week, with the frame being built on World Ocean Day – a powerful reminder of the importance of protecting and restoring our marine ecosystems. This frame represents over two decades of collaboration between our marine team and Four Seasons Landaa Giraavaru. Throughout this time, we have transplanted more than 250,000 coral fragments onto the surrounding reefs. Many of these branching fragments take about three years to reach sexual maturity. As such, hundreds (if not thousands) of the corals now thriving across the reef may be the result of our ongoing restoration efforts.
Our coral frames not only give damaged reefs a second chance to recover but also help boost biodiversity, increase reef resilience, and safeguard the future of marine life that depends on these ecosystems.
As part of our celebrations, we also organized an ocean clean-up around the staff beach and supply jetty area. Our clean-up team included three scuba divers and a group of enthusiastic volunteer free divers from various departments. This was a heartwarming display of camaraderie and shared commitment during Environment Week. We successfully removed a substantial amount of marine debris, ranging from plastic waste to discarded fishing lines, helping to reduce the threats posed to coral reefs and marine life. Clean-up initiatives like these are a vital part of our ongoing conservation work and highlight the importance of collective action in protecting our ocean environment. By taking part in hands-on efforts like this, team members not only support marine health but also strengthen their personal connection to the reef. Each piece of rubbish removed is a small victory for our underwater world.
Recycling & Retransplanting
As part of our ongoing reef restoration strategy following the global coral bleaching event last year, we have begun recycling older coral frames to maximize space, resources, and coral survival. Frames that are completely bare or covered in dead corals are being carefully removed and stacked for recycling. Hopefully, in a few months, the frames will be shipped back to Fulhadhoo where the task of recycling the frames will get underway.
For frames that still hold a few healthy, non-encrusting coral colonies, we gently detach these viable fragments and retransplant them onto healthier, more stable frames where they have a better chance of thriving. This process allows us to consolidate living coral, reduce overcrowding in degraded areas, and ensure that every viable fragment continues to contribute to reef recovery and biodiversity.
This first phase of recycling and retransplanting is occurring between the two jetties and in front of Al Barakat. Any frames recycled are usually shallower than 6m, so shallow enough to free dive down and move shoreward.
Kuda Huraa
At Kuda Huraa this month, our coral experts transplanted 8 new frames, kindly sponsored by guests (3), the Resort (2), and online (3). In addition, we monitored and repopulated 50 growing coral frames.
To see the progress of your frame, please visit our dedicated Four Seasons monitoring page where we upload new photos every 6 months or so.
Coral Predators
This month, we encountered the lowest numbers of predators recorded so far this year. However, we have not been able to visit the house reef much at all, which explains this apparent decrease in predation. At the more accessible sites around the island, we also have not encountered many predators, so it does appear that populations may have also decreased.
Reef Maintenance
We have been continuing our maintenance work at Maw’s Rock, having cleaned and repopulated around 50 frames in this area. We have also been cleaning frames as many are facing an overgrowth of sponge. It’s important that we control the spread of sponges on the house reef to protect the thermally tolerant corals which survived the bleaching event last year. Once this area is fully repopulated, we will remap and monitor it before moving on to repopulating the Reef Crest.
Artificial Intelligence Training
We have restarted our AI4Corals project, working on training our bespoke AI models to better recognise the coral fragments on our frames. We have started drawing boxes around coral fragments and colonies in 200 photos to train these systems to identify coral species and coral health on monitored frames. This work will lead into having AI recognise the growth of colonies in monitoring pictures, as well as being able to identify whether colonies are healthy, bleached, or dead.
