[D]uring the month of September we transplanted 36 new frames here at Landaa Giraavaru, to bring the yearly total to 275 (182 of which were sponsored by our guests). We also monitored and photographed a total 134 frames around the lagoon, where ‘Moon Reef’ is maturing particularly well after just 18 months due to low traffic and strong currents (with coral species Pocillopora showing quickest growth).
Meanwhile at Kuda Huraa, we transplanted 18 new frames into the lagoon and continue to develop the shallow area of the House Reef. We also photographed a total of 141 frames around the island, replacing missing tags, cleaning away any algal growth and swapping out occasional dead fragments with new live ones. Photographs and data are uploaded onto the website (Coral Frame Collection, here) and we continue to make updates and amendments to confirm the validity of our data.
The coral frames in some areas of the lagoons are flourishing so well that the frames are now completely overgrown, and it proves difficult to spot the original ID tags … a problem we are happy to encounter! So to enable us to identify each of our frames we take particular care in ensuring the accuracy of the GPS coordinates and entering these into our database for plotting onto our island maps.
