The Baros Coral Sponsorship Initiative

The Marine Centre at Baros Maldives offers a chance for guests to adopt their very own coral, making a unique gift of nature. An underwater frame with transplanted coral chosen by guests will grow forever and contribute to the longevity and beauty of our reef, which is home to a variety of fish and endangered sea creatures.

1. WHERE DO WE GET THE CORALS FROM?

for the transplantation process, we use only corals that won’t survive on the seafloor. These fragments of broken coral occur due to damage to the reef. We use these otherwise redundant but living fragments and transplant them into new habitats for fish, coral and other invertebrates. Our marine biologist will create and dedicate an underwater frame for you or your nominee and attach a customised name tag and transplant corals to it.

2. HOW ARE THE CORAL FRAMES MAINTAINED?

Our Coral Regeneration Project Initiative began in Baros in 2009 and since then we have submerged a total of 365 coral tables. Complete and mature frames are brought to the nursery in The Lighthouse lagoon, where the Marine Centre team routinely maintains them. This involves cleaning the frames of algae and benthic dwellers such as tunicates which inhibit coral growth.

3. HOW DO YOU GET UPDATES ON THE FRAMES YOU SPONSORED?

For two years following the creation and planting of your frame, the Marine Centre Team will send you updates on the growth of your coral frame by email every six months so you can see how your coral ‘babies’ are growing.

Of course, growth rates of corals are highly variable depending on a variety of factors such as species, location on the reef and age of the colony.

4. THE CORAL LINES PROJECT

In 2018 we took a further step into coral preservation by creating a new Coral Lines Nursery in the lagoon around the Over Water Villas. There we rehabilitate coral fragments by nursing them on ropes. The coral fragments are left to develop naturally on the lines for several months. When they have grown to a larger size they are transplanted onto the natural reefs.

With this high-efficiency and low-tech coral reef recovery technique, we hope to speed up the growth of the most vibrant and fastest-growing species of coral, called Acropora.

5. ADOPT A CORAL

If you are interested in adopting your very own coral or as a gift in someone else’s name, we would be delighted to have you on board. Please contact our marine biologist for more information: marine.center@baros.com