Education & Awareness

Four Seasons Maldives Apprenticeship Program

As part of the Four Seasons Maldives Apprenticeship Program, semester 2 of our marine biology module, our apprentices were tasked with reviewing a selection of scientific articles. They were taught the important components that make up an article, and how to evaluate the research. The 6 apprentices have been practising their public presentations skills and creating effective PowerPoint slides on their work to date, including introductions, materials and methods, and their chosen articles (ranging from Maldivian manta ray feeding patterns, to the abundance of Indian Ocean marine life). They will make final presentations to the Marine Savers team at the end of the semester.

We also started recruiting enthusiastic local Maldivian candidates for the Apprenticeship Program 2020. We interviewed 9 applicants, and will be selecting 3 lucky candidates to start their marine education program with us next year.

School Visits

In November, we welcomed 22 students from Eydhafushi School, as part of the Manta Trust’s “Moodhu Madhanisaa” (‘Ocean School’) awareness scheme. The students enjoyed a tour of our facilities, encompassing the Turtle Rescue Centre, fish and aquaculture lab, and a hands-on demonstration of our Reefscapers coral propagation program. We also gave awareness presentations on marine life and conservation efforts in the Maldives.

REEFSCAPERS Coral Propagation Program

New Coral Storage Tanks

Our 4 new fibreglass tanks were delivered this month, and installed with sand-filters and adjustable flow-rate mechanisms. We can now store many more coral fragments, and for longer periods of up to 5 days (less during the warmer months of March-April.) We have also successfully housed some of our clown fish brood stock and sea anemones in the tanks.
Read more coral propagation news in our Reefscapers Diary.

AI / Catamaran

We have ordered some replacement propeller parts, prepared a designated parking area on land, and will be working on a custom-designed trailer for transport to the ocean.

Our deep-learning model has now been trained on almost 400 coral frame photographs, comprising more than 6,000 individual pieces of coral, and is now relatively accurate at detecting and identifying corals. Next, we are using successive image processing algorithms to detect the metal bars, to then extract the shape of the frame for precise positioning of the corals on the structure.
Read more in our Diary and then head to Reefscapers for more photos & videos, and the full project history.

White Fire Exhibit

We were invited to the “White Fire” art exhibit in Malé (21-24 October), created to highlight the importance of banning coral poaching around the Maldives. Our Reefscapers team presented our coral propagation program, with details on the latest technological improvements.

Sea Turtle Conservation

Sea Turtle Enclosure

During October, we installed the new net for our sea turtle enclosure (installed in the lagoon at Landaa) and we were then able to house Tiff there, who soon started to make good progress with her swimming.

During November, we introduced Hailey into the enclosure, and she soon started getting along with Tiff. Hailey proved she was good at diving, and was successfully released back into the ocean on 17 November. Tiff is currently doing well, practising and improving her diving.
On 9 November, we conducted a deep clean of the netting to remove the fast-growing algae, and plan to repeat this monthly to prevent fouling, keeping the enclosure functional and increasing its durability and lifespan.

Read more about our unique turtle enclosure, and how it’s helping in the rehabilitation of our turtle rescue patients.

This time of year has been dubbed ‘sea turtle stranding season’, when we see increased numbers of entangled turtles being carried into Maldivian waters by seasonal oceanic currents from the direction of Sri Lanka, India and Indonesia.

The so-called ‘ghost nets’ consist of discarded fishing gear, usually of the types not seen in the Maldives, where fisherman use traditional pole-and-line methods to catch tuna (as well as fine filament nets to catch their tiny bait fish, commonly sprat and anchovy). These ghost nets attract sea turtles on the search for food; their flippers are easily entangled in the net filaments, causing severe damage and ultimately the death of the animal. It is mainly Olive Ridley turtles that become stranded, a species that is otherwise not normally seen in the Maldives.

See the corkboard (below) for photos and links to our resident turtle patients, which we keep updated with our new arrivals and releases.

At Kuda Huraa, we have:

– 5 Olive Ridley turtles (Lepidochelys olivacea) and 2 Hawksbills (Eretmochelys imbricata) rescued from entanglement in drifting ghost nets, and under treatment in our turtle recovery pools.
– 7 Green turtles (Chelonia mydas) and 6 Hawksbills in the Hatchling Rehabilitation Program (HRP).

And at Landaa:

– We rescued 4 new turtles this month, and released 1 recuperated turtle back into the ocean (Hailey Armand).
– We currently have 10 Olive Ridleys and 1 Green sea turtle in our Rehabilitation Centre.
– We are at maximum capacity, with all pools occupied, so we started using our new coral storage tanks to admit new patients for quarantine (which is working well).

Maldives Sea Turtle ID Project

Turtle photographs are kindly sent to us from members of the public and from fellow marine biologists stationed at other resorts around the Maldives. Submissions consist of close-up photographs of the turtle facial profile, enabling us to outline the unique pattern of scales (scutes) that act like a human fingerprint.

During October-November, we received an impressive 53 submissions from the public around the country to our Maldives national turtle ID project. (THANK YOU!)
Currently, our database contains 1199 Hawksbills, 207 Greens and 56 Olive Ridleys.

[PHOTO: Hawksbill turtle EI1167].

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