From our scuba diving conservation holiday with whale sharks and coral reefs of the Maldives (http://www.biosphere-expeditions.org/maldives)

And here is another summary of our expedition from our scientists Dr. Jean Luc-Solandt:

Biosphere Expeditions, in collaboration with the Marine Conservation Society, Maldives Marine Research Centre and Carpe Diem had a very successful survey covering the reefs of North Male’ atoll, Maldives from 6-12 September. We trained three people (one UK, two Maldivian) to become EcoDiver trainers, and seven others to be EcoDivers. We re-surveyed sites previously visited before the ‘98 bleaching event. So in some ways we were looking at resilience since that event.

We did patch reef, channel, and outer reef surveys near Summer Island (see map). Patch reefs were most significantly affected (e.g. Deh Giri) that was covered by corallimorphs (Discosoma) carpeting >60% of the seabed. Another (Reethi Rah), where there was a significant COT outbreak, which was concerning, particularly when coupled with the recent disease outbreaks we’ve seen in previous surveys. There also appear to be more coral-eating cushion starfish, and Drupella.

Outer forereef slope reefs appeared to show the greatest uniformity of good health (particularly Madi Gaa). Other more sheltered channel and patch reefs showed good coral cover (and recovery) from the 1998 bleaching event in shallow transects (< 6 m), but not for the deeper transect (most commonly at 10 m). This to me is caused by the provenance of rubble fields from the breakdown over the past 15 years of dead coral from the bleaching event, gravity pulling it down to the slightly deeper, more sheltered waters of the reef slopes. We’ve seen this pattern for years in our data now. I believe it is surprising that there aren’t more reefs that have then moved onto a different stable state (such as Deh Giri) that are dominated by opportunistic colonising lifeforms such as Discosoma. The rubble-strewn areas appear to be poor potential recruitment surfaces in the deeper waters for new corals.

Commercial fish species are worryingly absent over these North Male’ reefs. Herbivorous parrotfish were also not that common.

From our scuba diving conservation holiday with whale sharks and coral reefs of the Maldives