Hello again, everyone!
Following my successful 3 months as the marine biology intern with Seamarc, I am delighted to have been offered a 3 month extension, so will be posting more blogs for your enjoyment. 🙂
March began with some busy Easter celebrations. The resort is at full capacity, with high turnout for guest activities and snorkelling. On Easter Sunday I assisted with an egg hunt at the kids’ club, helping the little ones find as many eggs as they could. The ‘Easter Bunny’ even paid a visit too!
Within the first week of returning to Kuda Huraa, I was hoping to be able to witness some evidence of coral spawning around the island. Every year, around March/April, the corals around Kuda Huraa undergo an annual ‘mass spawning’ event, whereby eggs and sperm are released en masse into the water column in order to form tiny coral planula larvae. The event occurs in response to numerous environmental cues such as water temperature and the lunar cycle. The timing of this event is highly important as male and female corals cannot move to make reproductive contact.
The spawning is also an intelligent evolutionary strategy (on the corals’ part) as the large numbers of planulae produced compensate for the vast amount of predators in the water column at the time of spawning. If favourable conditions for settlement are present, the larvae find suitable substrate and settle, then undergo metamorphosis to turn into a tiny individual coral polyp, only millimetres in diameter! Evidence of the spawning can sometimes be seen the next day in the form of a thick red slick on the waters’ surface, owing to the red colouration of the coral gametes. Sadly, I did not see any spawning occurring although I organised a presentation about coral reproductive strategies for guests in order to inform them of the event.
My Coral Growth Project
My project is going well, and I will now have 6 months’ worth of measurements by the time I finish, which means the fragments will hopefully show more noticeable growth. All three fragment sizes are showing signs of growth, with the 3cm fragments showing the fastest growth rates (increasing by 0.5cm).
Unfortunately, due to the water temperature increasing drastically this month, we have seen many signs of bleaching around the island. Bleaching is the process whereby corals lose the symbiotic algae (known as zooxanthellae) within their cells, as a result of stress. The ‘stress’ can be caused by a number of factors including high temperature, high light intensity, sedimentation and pollution. Bleaching is a reversible process, so if the stressful conditions do not persist for an extended amount of time, the coral can regain its symbiotic algae and recover. We are carefully monitoring our frames for signs of bleaching at all the sites around the resort. In the coming months, it will be interesting from a scientific perspective to investigate the numbers of coral mortalities, with the hope that both the wild reefs and our frame colonies will be able to recover quickly.
Our frames and some wild house reef colonies have also been largely affected by an increased amount of COTS predation. The Crown-of-Thorns starfish (COTS) eats live coral tissues and in large numbers – like the ones we are seeing around Kuda Huraa – can decimate entire reefs within weeks. We are combating the issue by collecting COTS from around Kuda Huraa as frequently as possible. The dive centre has also been instrumental in organising ‘mass COTS hunts’ over the last month.
Guest Snorkels
I have been leading many of the guest snorkels, which has been incredibly enjoyable and rewarding. The shark and turtle safaris in particular have been incredibly interesting and the other day we spotted a 3m-long nurse shark resting under a rock! I have also had more opportunity to complete some ‘reef health assessment’ dives on the local reefs in the North Male Atoll. Every week, each of the MDC staff (in respective buddy pairs) go on dives in order to make a visual assessment of the health of the reefs in the North Male Atoll. So far I have been to four different sites and have had the opportunity to see some amazing coral formations, in addition to seeing napoleon wrasse, eagle rays, white-tip reef sharks, spinner dolphins, pilot whales, moray eels, lobster and a small porcelain crab.
One experience with some eagle rays at Aquarium dive site has stuck with me in particular. The current that morning was incredibly strong and so once the rays had been spotted, we all latched on to nearby rocks in order to witness the rays hovering in the mid water column. After a few moments the rays drifted toward me and went directly over my head, hovered for a moment and then passed on by. It was truly a magical moment and one that I will not forget in a hurry.
On 30 March, two of our Green Sea Turtles were released on our turtle adventure safari: Tommy and Lalu. Tommy was born on 2 February 2015 and Lalu was born on 17 March 2015. At just over a year old, both turtles had reached a carapace length of more than 30cm and weighed approximately 5kg! They had certainly out-grown our turtle pools and it was time for them to be released onto the beautiful reef of Makoonadhu. With 2 full boats of guests watching, both turtles swam onto the reef, exploring their new environment.
Life on a Maldivian Resort
The island life is continuing to both surprise and impress me and I cannot wait to see what the next 2 months will bring!
I recently volunteered to be an Island Spa model for natural facial treatments, to assist the marketing department in making a promotional video. Things like this are nice to be involved in and have made my time here even more varied and enjoyable.
I hope you have enjoyed reading about my adventures, and I look forward to updating you again soon.
Emily 🙂
Do you want to experience life as a marine biologist
here in the Maldives ?
Head over to our Employment page to read about the different ways you can work with us - full time, apprentice or intern.
And see more from our Interns in their very own words & photos as part of our Diary / Blog series.