Four Seasons Team Diaries: March 2026

At Landaa this month, we transplanted 18 new coral frames,  kindly sponsored by guests (5), the Resort (13), and online (0), adding ~762 new coral fragments to the reef. New frames were outplanted mainly at our House Reef Dive Site and under the guest water villas. We also monitored (cleaned, repaired, photographed) ~167 coral frames, mainly at the House Reef Dive Site and Seawall.

Seawall Frames

We carried out a large recycling project near the seawall, as some frames had started to sink into the sand (due to the seasonally shifting currents). The existing fragments of Acropora aspera were not growing well, most likely due to the current coming in from outside the seawall being too strong for this fragile branching species of coral. This patch of frames consists of 37 Medium frames, sponsored in 2025. We started a rigorous recycling project to lift, reattach new coral fragments to the frames, and move the frames to sit on top of rubble substrate to reduce the rate of sinking. The fragments of Acropora with digitate growth forms were growing well with the high current, so we attached more corals of this growth form to ensure optimal growth. This project was completed in six sessions with lots of help from the team. Once recycled, these frames were monitored and uploaded for sponsors to see. We aim to populate the seawall area with the frames and naturally occurring coral recruits growing on the wall, with a visible increase in biodiversity and marine life.

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.

Bissie’s Reef Project

At the start of the month, we carried out a frame-lifting operation across Bissie’s reef. As the frames sit on a sandy substrate at 8m depth, several had begun to sink into the sediment over time, reducing water flow around the fragments and limiting growth on the bottom frame bars. We went through each frame, lifting and propping them on rubble substrate to stabilise them and improve conditions for new coral fragments.

Following the maintenance work, we continued restoration activity across all frames at Bissie’s, adding 231 new coral fragments to the reef. We methodically removed any fragments that had either died or had been outcompeted (by algae, tube worms, etc).

Coral Bleaching Monitoring

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the Maldives Marine Research Institute (MMRI) released warnings for widespread coral bleaching events across the Maldives due to the seasonally elevated sea surface temperatures (SSTs). Bleaching is when the symbiotic relationship between coral polyps and the zooxanthellae (microscopic algae) living inside the polyps breaks down as the zooxanthellae start producing compounds toxic to the corals. As a result, the zooxanthellae are expelled from the coral, leaving behind the white calcium carbonate exoskeleton. When the high thermal stress persists, the corals starve as the zooxanthellae provide up to 90% of the nutrients corals require.

To study the effects of coral bleaching, our team tagged 25 coral colonies at 4 different locations around Landaa, with 2 sites on House Reef at 5m and 10m depth, 1 site at the Elephant patch near the spa, and lastly the seawall. We used the Coral Watch Health Chart to record the colours of the coral colonies, along with the size, depth and species of coral. The Health Chart uses a colour gradient of healthy coral and bleached coral, which links to the concentration of zooxanthellae present in the colony. Additionally, there are temperature loggers at House Reef and Elephant to record the sea temperature. Over time, we will continue monitoring the tagged colonies to record the bleaching severity.

Coral Spawning

3 March – Full Moon (FM) period – our teams checked for coral spawning across 5 different nights, and successfully recorded coral spawning in 24 massive and encrusting colonies, mainly Galaxea (photo, below).
19 March – New Moon (NM) period – we jumped for 3 nights, and recorded spawning in a single species of Montipora, the first time Reefscapers has recorded a colony during the March New Moon, and it is a new encrusting colony to add to our database to ensure spawning monitoring in the future!

At Kuda Huraa this month, our coral experts transplanted 8 new frames, and monitored and repopulated 70 growing coral frames, across The Channel, The Water Villas and The Blue Hole sites.
We added the Kids’ Club Frame, an Earth Hour frame, and six guest-sponsored frames to our Pyramid site on House Reef. These frames totalled 319 new fragments consisting of: Acropora tenuis, Acropora muricata, Pocillopora verrucosa. With ocean temperatures rising during this season, we positioned the new frames at depths greater than 6 metres to give them the best chance of survival, and we will continue this deeper outplanting strategy throughout the hottest months until sea surface temperatures decrease again.

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.

Reef Maintenance

The Channel – we continued relocating frames from the northern end of the channel further south, to see if this will improve survival and growth rates. The frames relocated were those recently repopulated with Porites cylindrica. Close monitoring will continue over the coming months to assess the impacts of relocation.

Blue Hole and Water Villas – we continued maintenance and monitoring activities, with all Blue Hole frames now fully up-to-date and photographed. Maintenance at the Water Villas will continue into April. Toward the end of the month, we began to observe signs of paling and bleaching in some corals located in the shallow areas.

Coral Predators

Two targeted cull dives were carried out to manage coral predator populations, supplemented by removals conducted during routine monitoring and maintenance activities across the island’s restoration sites. A total of ten predatory starfish were recorded during this period, including two crown-of-thorns starfish (Acanthaster plancii) removed from Maw’s Rock and the back jetty, along with eight cushion starfish (Culcita schmideliana) collected from multiple House Reef locations.
We also removed a total of 1494 predatory gastropods, mainly Drupella spp. across the Water Villas, House Reef, and Channel sites. Other species recorded included 5 Drupella cornus, 4 Coralliophila erosa, and a single Coralliophila costularis.

Coral Reproduction Programme

March was a big month for night diving, with the team completing over 40 night dives across 20 nights. We observed coral spawning on two of these nights, and recorded spawning in Galaxea sp. for the first time at Kuda Huraa. This expansion of spawning corals into genera other than Acropora is very exciting for the team, so we are looking forward to monitoring this genus in future.