How to Help Restore Coral Reefs in the Maldives

I’d been home for six months when the email arrived: “With the help of photosynthetic algae and guard crabs, sufficient sunlight, and the right temperature, Betsy Andrews managed to grow exceptionally well. Almost all of your corals have doubled in size.”

No, this wasn’t some sort of Little Mermaid cosplay. It was an update on the coral colony I’d planted — and tagged with my own name — in the Indian Ocean, just off the beach at Velaa Private Island. My installation is one of many aimed at helping to reverse a die-off that is happening not only in the Maldives, but across the globe.

The coral guardian program at Velaa is one of many urgent reef-restoration projects taking place at resorts across this nation of 1,192 tiny islands. In the Maldives, coral is everything. It supports the fish that people eat. It protects beaches from erosion. It’s the very ground underfoot — and the foundation of the economy. “People from all over the world come to these beautiful reefs to dive and snorkel,” says Agnė Griciūtė, Velaa’s marine biologist. “And, unfortunately, the reef is in trouble.”

I’d gotten a closer look at the situation on my visit to Velaa, when I went out for a series of scuba dives with the resort’s dive master, Marta Pasztorova. We saw massive walls and pinnacles of corals shaped like boulders, fans, and antlers. Schools of blue triggerfish and five-striped bass streamed down their sides. Moray eels and groupers peeked from their crevices. Sharks and rays glided by. Napoleons stopped at grooming stations to have their anvil-shaped heads nibbled on by tiny gobies. And a zillion other colorful, oddball fish went about their business on the reef.

But all of that was at 60 feet down. Closer to shore the picture wasn’t as rosy. “You know what bleaching is?” Griciūtė asked. “Coral is an animal, like humans. When it’s too hot, it dehydrates.” And that’s just as problematic for coral as it would be for people. When overheated, coral expels the colorful single-celled organisms that live on it. These zooxanthellae, as they are called, convert energy from the sun into nutrients for the coral; without them, coral turns white and begins to starve. Bleaching can be periodic, following events such as El Niño, which can create especially hot, dry weather. 

“However, if conditions improve — if temperature and ultraviolet light are reduced — the zooxanthellae return, bringing back the color, and some corals survive,” Griciūtė explained.

Restoration is aimed at multiplying these survivors, since, the theory goes, they must have adapted themselves to the new warmer conditions.

Griciūtė led me out to a table in the sand, where an intern, Henry Garber, had set some zip ties, a bucket of sea water filled with coral fragments, and a rebar frame in the shape of an eagle ray. We tied 15 fragments to the frame. Then we hopped in a boat and motored out to a nursery in 30 feet of water, well removed from the larger reef — and any coral-munching parrot fish or cushion stars. Garber donned a tank and took the frame down to the seabed as Griciūtė and I watched from the surface with snorkel gear on.

The current El Niño, which began in early 2023, has impacted 70 percent of the planet’s coral reefs, in 67 countries. It’s the second such event in a decade; the previous one, from 2014 to 2017, was what spurred Velaa and other Maldives properties to act.

“Resorts have the responsibility to protect their house reef,” said Arnfinn Oines, of the Soneva Foundation, which supports coral restoration at Soneva Fushi. Guests can tour a lab maintained by the nonprofit Coralive, where coral reproduces and grows in controlled conditions before it’s mature enough to be placed in the sea. Offshore is one of the world’s largest underwater nurseries that use mineral accretion technology, or MAT, a weak electrical current that causes limestone to collect on frames, which encourages coral to grow up to three times faster.

At the Four Seasons Resort Maldives at Landaa Giraavaru, the nonprofit Reefscapers has planted more than half a million new corals. Guests can also get involved in projects at resorts such as Sheraton Maldives Full Moon Resort & Spa, Siyam World Maldives, Baros Maldives, and the St. Regis Maldives Vommuli, where Reefscapers just launched a new nursery.

Though pitching in while on vacation may feel like a drop in the bucket, the scientists and advocates I spoke with said every effort matters. “The goal is not just creating more coral cover, but creating opportunities for corals to adapt,” says Coralive founder Ahmad “Aki” Allahgoli. “We have to plant as many corals as possible — and we can’t do that by ourselves.”

Paddling around Velaa’s lagoon, our masks in the water, Griciūtė and I examined other methods her team is trying: stainless-steel ropes hung with growing coral; MAT-wired frames; PVC trays for nurturing soft coral. Then she pointed out some metal adoption tags tucked amid coral hillocks swarming with fish. These robust swaths of reef had grown from fragments like the ones I had planted. 

Back home, flipping through photos of my own colony, I noticed that it’s on the way to similar maturity, as the reef around Velaa is nursed back to health. 

A version of this story first appeared in the November 2024 issue of Travel + Leisure under the headline “Under the Sea.”