Four Seasons Team Diaries: December 2025

At Landaa this month, we transplanted 22 new coral frames, adding ~1400+ new coral fragments to the reef. New guest frames were outplanted mainly at our “Coral Trail” and “Jetty” sites for guest snorkelling. We also monitored (cleaned, repaired, photographed) ~160 coral frames.

We have started relocating natural coral colonies that are starting to get buried in the shifting sand by Al Barakat to coral frames to increase their chance of survival. The frames give the corals increased height and reduces the risk of being smothered by sand. These frames are being outplanted on the 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.

Xmas Day Frame

To mark the festive season, we constructed a special Parrot frame on Christmas Day with the help of guests and the Landaa Dive Team. We began prepping the frame on Christmas Eve by placing the cable ties to mark each fragment location. The frame was then moved to its new home on the House Reef (6m deep) by 2 of our Reefscapers team who chose to freedive.
13 guests joined our 45-minute dive on Christmas Day, led by 4 of our team plus 3 Dive colleagues. The Parrot frame added 176 fragments of coral to Landaa’s reef and will be frequently seen by divers, located alongside the wedding arch and our other Xmas frames from previous years.

Coral Spawning

December Full Moon period – we were excited to witness a multi-species coral spawning event around Landaa, marking a significant ecological milestone for the local reef system. Our team documented the spawning of several massive, encrusting and branching coral species, highlighting the broad participation across various coral morphologies and the understanding of their specific spawning times. In total, we observed 48 different coral colonies (8 species, 7 genera) with some split-spawning over multiple days. The species most frequently observed spawning was Montipora monasteriata.

Most of the spawning coral species that we observed were wild colonies of massive and encrusting species, along with 3 colonies of branching Acropora spawning on our Reefscapers coral frames. Following 2024’s mass bleaching event, the spawning data collected by our team this year provides hope for coral reefs’ increasing resilience and ability to recover from rising ocean sea temperatures. The synchronised spawning of colonies from different species provides robust data for what to expect in the following years in terms of coral spawning and changing climates.

Back in November, we had witnessed a colony of Lobophyllia spawn for the first time, during one of our sunset monitoring jumps. This month, our luck continued as we were able to record 4 spawning colonies of Lobophyllia, providing vital new information on the spawning patterns of this species.

Annual Spawning Trends

This month marked the third consecutive December that Reefscapers has collected coral spawning data from massive, encrusting and branching corals, uncovering annual spawning trends. By tracking coral spawning annually, our coral restoration project is able to gain better insights into overall coral reef health and reproduction patterns. A greater diversity of coral species were observed spawning this season, but some of the massive colonies observed spawning this year were repeat spawners from 2024, which indicates improved reproductive health since the 2024 bleaching event.

Coral Settlement

In November, we successfully settled Acropora tenuis larvae in our Fish Lab tanks. This month, we are pleased to report that the coral juveniles have been growing extremely well! Their tentacles are now visible with the naked eye, and polyps that were separated are fusing, starting to form colonies. The colour of the polyps provided by the Zooxanthellae algae indicates that the polyps are now self-sufficient, as the algae provides ~90% of the corals’ nutrients!

We feed each tank 80ml of blended brine shrimp daily. After the polyps established themselves on the various substrates, we introduced a fragment of Acropora tenuis to each tank to allow the Zooxanthellae to colonise the new recruits. The algae provide the coral polyps with their colour.

Some recruits have started the asexual reproduction process of budding, where the initial singular polyp grows more polyps genetically identical to the first one, forming the start of a juvenile coral colony. The polyps that settled on empty Drupella snail shells have been growing faster. We also introduced different herbivores (sea hares, sea urchins, bubble snails) into the coral tanks to observe the effects on algal growth (and subsequently coral growth).

At Kuda Huraa this month, our coral experts transplanted 5 new frames, and monitored and repopulated 124 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.

We celebrated the festive season by building two special coral frames. On Christmas Eve morning, we constructed our disco ball coral frame with the help of many in-house guests.
We are truly grateful to everyone who helped build the frame and support our mission to restore the reefs around Kuda Huraa. The frame is populated with 84 fragments of Acropora digitifera, A. humilis, A. gemmifera, and Pocillopora verrucosa. These species feature digitate and upright branching growth forms that we hope will grow well on the frame and accentuate its spherical shape as they develop.

With help from the dive centre, we built a Christmas tree coral frame and offered guests the unique experience to scuba dive and decorate it with coral fragments while underwater. This frame was populated with coral fragments (A. muricata, P. verrucosa) and placed at the Pyramids site on the House Reef, along with the Christmas tree frames from previous years. This site is regularly visited by the dive centre, and we hope this frame will flourish and be a lovely feature for guests to enjoy during their dives.

Reef Maintenance

This month we completed maintenance at all four of our restoration sites. With the recent shift in wind direction, access to the House Reef has significantly improved, as the island now provides greater shelter from the wind on the sunset side. We witnessed and documented spawning in Acropora tenuis. At the Water Villas site we continued culling corallivorous organisms, while at the Blue Hole we lifted frames, and cleaned frames at the Channel restoration site. We also celebrated the festive period by building this year’s festive coral frame and Christmas tree frame.

Noah’s Rock Maintenance – Over the past month, the house reef restoration site has seen significant progress. Noah’s Rock is now fully maintained and monitored, with all frames updated with current monitoring photos. Due to ongoing sand pumping around the island, sediment accumulation on frames has increased dramatically and many frames at this site require fortnightly lifting to prevent burial.

Maw’s Rock Maintenance – Following the completion of monitoring at Noah’s Rock, we shifted our efforts to Maw’s Rock, where we have made good progress. A total of 70 frames at this site have been repopulated and monitored. Additionally, approximately 20 frames have been hammered and cleared of dead coral. Once repopulation and monitoring are finished, we will proceed with remapping and retagging these frames.

Pyramid Frames – Like the frames at Noah’s rock, the frames at the pyramid site on House Reef are also prone to burial from sediment. We lifted all these frames and have started repopulating this site too. We will remap this site post-repopulation.

Coral Predators

Corallivorous organisms continue to exert considerable pressure on coral health by feeding directly on live tissue, thereby weakening colonies and slowing reef recovery. We’ve ramped up our monitoring and removal efforts across all our restoration sites, and also the surrounding reefs, resulting in the collection of 2,100 coral predators. Two targeted cull dives were conducted at the Water Villas site in response to high densities of Drupella snails. Additional removals were made during routine monitoring and maintenance dives, as well as during coral spawning night dives in other restoration sites.

The assemblage being dominated by Drupella spp. indicates sustained predation-pressure on restored corals. Other corallivores recorded this month included six Drupella cornus, eight Coralliophila erosa, and eight Coralliophila costularis from the House Reef and Water Villas sites. Additionally, one Culcita schmideliana (cushion starfish) was removed from the House Reef, and one Acanthaster planci (crown-of-thorns starfish) was collected from the Back Jetty area, reinforcing the need for continued and proactive coral predator management.

Coral Spawning

Across both the December full-moon and new-moon periods, we clocked up a total of 24hrs of coral spawning monitoring. Our team completed 15 night-dives, with spawning recorded in 17 coral colonies, representing 2 different Acropora species over three different nights. Based on gravid checks, we inferred that two colonies of Acropora spp had spawned (though actual numbers were likely higher).