From our #Malawi #citizenscience #wildlifeconservation #expedition with Lilongwe Wildlife Trust > https://blog.biosphere-expeditions.org/2025/09/21/malawi-expedition-achievements/ #biosphereexpeditions #voluntourism #volunteer #volunteering #expeditions #wildlife #conservation #rewilding #lilongwewildlife #lilongwewildlifetrust #elephant #lion #leopard #bigcats #biodiversity #malawi #africa #vwaza #nature #natur #naturschutz #travel #adventure #environment #biodiversity #animals #science (fb)

2024 #expedition report of our #Maldives #citizenscience #scuba #scubadiving #diving #expedition working on #reef #coral #coralreef with Reef Check Foundation Tropical Reef Check Dune Maldives DUNE WORLD > https://biosphereexpeditions.cmail20.com/t/j-e-wuijthk-hyodyekk-q/ #biosphereexpeditions #wildlifeconservation #voluntourism #volunteer #volunteering #expeditions #wildlife #conservation #rewilding #nature #natur #naturschutz #travel #adventure #environment #biodiversity #animals #science Abstract In October 2024, Biosphere Expeditions ran its 12th annual Reef Check survey expedition to the Maldives. International citizen scientists, supervised by a professional coral reef biologist, performed Reef Check surveys for one week at South Male’ atoll at semi-exposed and sheltered sites. We repeated visits to three sites last surveyed in 2022 in this atoll. The expedition was hampered by very strong winds, which scuppered plans to survey three long-term monitoring locations in the southern part of the atoll, as well as Vaavu atoll to the south. A mass coral bleaching event occurred in April and May 2024, following on from the last significant bleaching event in 2022. The Maldives faced eight degree heating weeks (above the long-term average and bleaching threshold temperature of 30 degrees Celsius) in May & June, but it appears from local reports that the 2024 event has had less impact than the 2016 event. Hard corals were affected at the Guraidhoo backreef site by disease in the deeper transect, probably due to increased sedimentation from land reclamation less than 1000 m away, which took place in 2020. The literature has linked increased sedimentation to increased occurrence of white-band disease in Acropora. A similar increase in occurrence of that disease was reported from the Guraidhoo backreef site. Surveys found only one colony affected by brown disease at Guraidhoo banana reef, which is a more exposed site. Predation by Drupella snails was patchy in intensity, but occurred consistently at all sites. At Guraidhoo forereef and Beybe’s sheltered shallow transect, sites with very different exposures and hard coral species, there was considerable Drupella predation, with 14 colonies affected at Guraidhoo and five at Beybe’s. Despite the threats from bleaching and sedimentation from land reclamation (at Guraidhoo sites), coral cover has not changed dramatically since the 2019 surveys (monitored before earthworks commenced). Guraidhoo backreef presented an overall increase in hard coral cover of 3% (28 to 31%). Guraidhoo forereef increased by 5% (20 to 25%), as did Beybe’s (31 to 36%). It is noteworthy that most of the hard corals at Guraidhoo backreef and Beybe’s were reasonably bleaching-tolerant forms (compared to forereefs that are more dominated by branching and digitate Acropora and Pocillopora). Fish populations of the snapper family (particularly humpback snapper Lutjanus gibbus) were recorded at moderate levels, particularly at Bandos house reef in North Male’ atoll. This site (a protected site by virtue of being next to a resort) also had sweetlips at densities higher than at other sites. Other commercially important species were rarely recorded or small in size at all sites, including trevally (almost entirely absent), large emperors and large groupers (none over 50 cm). Other species of snapper that should occur on forereefs were absent from all survey sites (such as the black and white snapper Macolor niger and red snapper Lutjanus bohar). One triton trumpet shell was recorded – only the second reported from our 15 years of Reef Check expeditions. Two lobsters were recorded, one at Bandos house reef and one at shallow Guraidhoo. ‘Rare’ / charismatic animals encountered were black and white tip reef sharks and nurse sharks. A reef manta, six mobular and two eagle rays were recorded at Guradhoo forereef site, which is located just to the south of a reef channel. Overall, key threats to coral reefs (climate breakdown with increased sea surface temperature, seawater acidification, overfishing, sedimentation and inappropriate/unsustainable atoll development, poor water treatment and solid waste accumulation) have remained in place since expeditions began with little sign of national or local (or indeed global) authorities and corporations willing to tackle these. In fact, trajectories are not encouraging and we may be recording the slow decline of coral reefs in the Maldives, as elsewhere in the tropics, where (on only a 1.5 degrees trajectory) 70-90% of all tropical coral reefs worldwide are likely to succumb to climate breakdown by 2050, along according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). In the Maldives, inner backreefs in particular seem doomed to disappear within our lifetimes unless drastic action, which is nowhere to be seen, is taken. Outer forereefs, exposed to colder oceanic waters and upwellings, may fare better in the short and medium-term. The authors were the first to notice this pattern and call it the ‘inner/outer reef dichotomy’. A new paper (Pancrazi et al. 2025), co-authored by the report authors, and heavily relying on Reef Check data collected by the expeditions, has corroborated this dichotomy pattern pre- and post the 2016 bleaching event. The paper illustrates typical trajectories of ‘recovery’ of coral reefs, first recorded in Biosphere Expedition reports: There is poor recovery of diversity of lifeforms and species from most inner (lagoonal) reefs, with only smaller and slow-growing bleaching-tolerant lifeforms persisting in most of the dive locations. This is alarming, because - whilst our observations are from a few (10’s) of sites visited every other year - incidental reports and spot-dives from other locations show similar trends of decline in the diversity of species, lifeforms and the very seascape on which the islands are built. (fb)