Maldives

Clowning Around

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Expedition Log: Maldives – Day 8 Ask anyone to name a fish found on a coral reef, and I almost guarantee most will reply “clownfish!” A fish made famous by Disney/Pixar’s 2003 film Finding Nemo. What most of these people …

Sources of Starfish

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Expedition Log: Maldives – Day 7 One of the most challenging questions we are regularly asked is where the crown of thorns starfish (COTS) come from. A reef can be unaffected for years or even decades and then suddenly thousands …

School’s out in the Maldives

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Expedition Log: Maldives – Day 6 As a fish surveyor it is always exciting, sometimes daunting, to come across schools of fish in the thousands. We have seen huge schools of fish in other areas we surveyed on the Global …

Divers Remove Over 7,000 Deadly Starfish

ANNAPOLIS, MD – During October and November the Khaled bin Sultan Living Oceans Foundation removed more than seven thousand (7,396) coral-eating Crown of Thorns starfish (COTS) from vulnerable reefs in the Maldives. Foundation scientists worked with divers from local resorts …

Collecting Starfish from Sunrise ‘til Sunset

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Expedition Log: Maldives – Day 5 The Living Oceans Foundation SCAR (Starfish Control and Removal) team is working at the Gili Lankanfushi atoll with other marine biologists from the Gili Lankanfushi resort. They have asked for our help removing and …

Scientists say a plague of sea stars is devastating Pacific coral reefs

This article, featured in the Washington Post, puts national public focus on the increasing threat posed to coral reefs by crown-of-thorns starfish (COTS), as highlighted by the Foundation’s Starfish Collection and Removal (SCAR) Team work in the Maldives. Scientists say …

Stopping the Spread

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Expedition Log: Maldives – Day 4 Whenever crown of thorns starfish (COTS) are reported, we never know if they will still be in the same location or how much they have moved. In part, this depends on how quickly a …

An id-eel reef

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Expedition Log: Maldives – Day 3 On every dive we have done around Gili Lankanfushi we have seen dozens of moray eels. We have seen two species so far; the giant moray (Gymnothorax javanicus) and the honeycomb moray (Gymnothorax favagineus). We …

Gili Goes COTS Collecting

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Expedition Log: Maldives – Day 2 In May of this year we began receiving emails from marine biologists based in the Maldives requesting assistance to manage the growing crown of thorns starfish (COTS) populations. Although COTS have been seen here …

Maldives: A Country of Contrast

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Expedition Log: Maldives – Day 1 From the window of our airplane, I gaze in amazement at the expanse of high rise buildings crowded onto the tiny, low lying Indian Ocean island of Male, the capital of Maldives. Home to …