In 2018, after a devastating time for corals in Maldives, our Ocean-Pro Dive Team decided to take matters into their hand and start a coral restoration project on our house reef.

Project Hope started out as a loose idea. Simply tie coral fragments to some fishing line and therefor get them off the sandy bottom. Every time you find a coral fragment, just tie it to the fishing line and watch it grow into a beautiful coral, instead of slowly bleaching on the sandy bottom. The initial couple of fishing lines filled up rather quickly and the growing corals became bigger by the day.

Astonished by how well this loose idea worked it was quickly decided to extend the project. Using different approaches, the dive team created multiple coral nurseries in varying shapes on the house reef. The necessary coral fragments were found on a nearby dive site. A lengthy process of sourcing, fragmenting, transporting and attaching the coral fragments began.

Two years later, many of the small corals from the start are now integrated into the reef and provide valuable shelter for fish and complexity to the reef. The entire nursery with all its structures houses well over 1000 coral fragments that will eventually become beautiful corals on our house reef. Cleaning and maintaining the nursery is key to its success and our guests as well as hotel staff are happy to get involved in Project Hope.