Corals

Coral Bleaching in the Maldives.

There is a lot of talk about coral bleaching happening in the Maldives.

I was in Huvadhu Atoll last week and went snorkeling and diving. Had a good look at the reefs and did find coral bleaching on several spots.

As in this picture You see one bleached coral on top of one that is not bleached
There where lots of scattered bleached corals on the reef on different depths and in mostly individual corals I did not see large patches of bleached corals as in 1998.

More like this a bunch of healthy corals and a single bleached coral in there
As this one to....

And this one a big table coral with a bleached branching coral on its base

As you can see this is about 2 meters depth the branching coral is in the table corals shadow.....

I had a temperature gauge and the water temperature was close to 31C (30.7C) in 3 meters depth.
during my period there I had a beautiful sunny day and a day clouded with rain, the rainy season had started and there was a western wind. The locals informed me that there was a few weeks of good weather and calm seas so UV influence might have a part of it as well. But the bleaching is over a wide variation of depth.
In deferent locations.


Overall the reef is healthy and if the temperature drops I believe it will recover fully.