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The Maldives has its own species of clownfish, also known as an anemone fish

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There is plenty of sea life left at the Maldives. It's difficult to know the name of all the species. Therefore I made this video, I hope it helps you. What's your favorite fish? http://on.fb.me/unboxingexperience

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This video is about Maldives wildlife shot on the Go Freediving holiday in Nov 2015. It was filmed by Emma Farrell, Paul Syms, Roberto de Lisa, Mandy Gore, Delphine Brise and Ali McConnell. Fish identification was by Roberto de Lisa and it was edited by Emma Farrell.

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Maldives bleaching update - 1st May 2016

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Water temperatures in the Maldives have been much warmer than usual for well over a month now. Find out how the corals are reacting in our latest update.

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The Maldives government has prohibited anchoring, fishing with nets, coral mining, dumping pollutants, and fishing for sharks in the Maldives. The Maldives is very protective of its reefs because the majority of their economy is based on ecotourism. Part of this reef is a Marine Protected Area. Since much of the coral in the Maldives has been suffering from bleaching, coral propagation projects in more suitable location for coral growth are underway.

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Brain corals of the Maldives can live for hundreds of years and grow to gigantic sizes.

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Lionfish are one of the aggressive fish in the maldives. Although they aren't often stumbled upon, divers should fear their sting.

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This is one fish of the Maldives that takes on a physical transformation from leaf-like juveniles hiding in lagoons and mangroves to reef-going adults.

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New projects are underway to propagate coral in the Maldives.

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It seems apt we've arrived in the Maldives on Earth Day. As I dip my white-gloved hands into the bucket of seawater and pick up a piece of naturally broken coral to add to our propagation frame, the enormity of the plight of the reef starts to sink in.

Coral makes up less than 0.1 per cent of the ocean but is home to 25 per cent of marine life. Even though the water was teeming with life - translucent needlefish, butterfly fish, comical unicorn fish and graceful spotted eagle rays - when I snorkelled through gin-clear waters along the house reef before breakfast, COMO Cocoa Island resort resident marine biologist Sherene Tan delivers the bad news: 60 per cent of the reef is dead.
I BROKE THE ONE RULE OF THE MALDIVES WHAT NO ONE TELLS YOU ABOUT THE MALDIVES 5 MYTHS OF A MALDIVES HOLIDAY BUSTED HOW TO ACTUALLY AFFORD A MALDIVES HOLIDAY
After a brutal coral bleaching incident spurred on by El Nino in 1998, a second-coming in 2016 pierced into the otherworldly aqua waters surrounding the Maldives' 1200-something islands during some of summer's hottest days.

By securing these pieces of coral onto the frames and placing them in cool, deep waters, within one to two years the depth of the regrowth of coral and attraction of fish seen on other frames is heartening. The Coral Propagation project started at Cocoa Island in 2012 and this is the 82nd frame being placed back onto the reef.

"It takes about two years to start to see the colour coming back, but about five years to properly reform," Tan says. "But it took millions of years for them to grow in the first place. Our hope is by propagating these, we can help the species survive ... but it's survival of the fittest."

BOOM TIME

Flying over the Maldives, the sheer number and isolation of the ringed atolls becomes clear. Great blobs of turquoise and aqua within an inky blue sea, like water droplets on a watercolour painting.

It's everything I dreamt it would be, romantically leaning palm trees notwithstanding, but I can't help but feel the fragility of its beauty.

A flurry of new resorts popping up means more competition on the pricing front, new airlines coming in mean cheaper flight deals, and the allowance of homestay accommodation has changed the game completely, opening up this paradisiacal landscape to a wider market than the five-star visitors of years past. But it's a bittersweet pill.

While the reality of the Maldives is better than any dream, more people are contributing to the environmental footprint along this pristine garland of islands than ever before.

We fly over a vast majority of them on a 45-minute seaplane flight from Cocoa Island to COMO Maalifushi in the remote Thaa Atoll.

When the resort opened in January 2014 it was the only one in this corner of the archipelago, but construction barges surrounding neighbouring island, Kolhufushi, show it won't be on its own for too much longer. The development by Spanish resort group Gran Melia is slated to open in 2018.

The Maldivian government has recently allowed reclamation to combat rising sea levels, but in dragging sand from places where the reef lives, it has been stirring up more than emotions.

Forty-five years ago this was a land of tiny fishing villages. Once tourism arrived, there were 90 new resorts built across 35 years (from 1972 to 2007) and now, in this latest supercharged spate of development, 50 more will be added in a matter of five years.

RESORTS TO THE RESCUE

As soon as the general manager of Cocoa Island, Benjamin Kreuz, settled into his new island home in 2016 he had one mission clearly on his mind, and it had nothing to do with paint colours or renovation plans for bathrooms; it was a war on plastic.

With the opening up of local islands to tourists - islands without sophisticated waste-management plans like their five-star resort cousins - plastic bottles and other unwanted rubbish started riding the currents and landing up at the feet of blissed-out honeymooners throughout the Maldives. "This is not what you want to be seeing when you're on holidays," Kreuz says.

Transitioning to plastic-free and away from fossil fuels is an ethos that carries through both COMO properties as they support local initiatives to improve the impact on the environment.

"We need to teach people to throw things in the bin, then use this rubbish to be converted into energy."

TRAVELLING CONSCIOUSLY

As we all pitch in to plant a new row of trees into the powdery white sand - another Earth Day activity put on by the resort - I mull over our talk. The Maldives are not an anomaly when it comes to tropical island destinations and the challenges they face.

There are forces at play over which we may not have immediate control, but by understanding what goes into a stay in this island paradise, the holistic nature of COMO comes into focus. Because anyone can splash out on a luxury resort stay, but one that fuses ayurvedic treatments and mindfulness through yoga in the COMO Shambhala spa, raw enzyme-rich cuisine on the COMO Shambhala menu and sustainably caught fresh fish, and the chance to give back to the natural wonder that attracted us here in the first place? That's priceless.

The writer was a guest of COMO Hotels and Resorts.

ESCAPE ROUTE

GETTING THERE

Singapore Airlines operates more than 130 flights a week from six Australian cities with daily flights to Male from their Singapore hub.

COMO Cocoa Island is a 40-minute speedboat ride from the airport while COMO Maalifushi is accessed via a one-hour seaplane flight.

STAYING THERE

COMO Cocoa Island 's 33 barefoot luxury suites and villas start at $1341 a night.

COMO Maalifushi is a little larger and a little more glam, with 65 land and overwater rooms, suites and villas starting at $1140 a night.

All rates are subject to 23.2 per cent tax plus $6 green tax a person per night and include daily breakfast and complimentary yoga.

DOING THERE

You can sponsor a frame from afar or get hands-on during your stay with the Coral Propagation project at Cocoa Island and Maalifushi. Frames start at US$150 for a single frame and updates are provided on the resort websites so you can track the progress of your frame.

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I never expected this at a Maldives resort

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It seems apt we've arrived in the Maldives on Earth Day. As I dip my white-gloved hands into the bucket of seawater and pick up a piece of naturally broken coral to add to our propagation frame, the enormity of the plight of the reef starts to sink in.

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The Maldives have had many coral bleaching events in recent years. El Niños are the main cause.

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However, since 2014 this tropical paradise has been struck by severe coral bleaching, affecting between 60 percent and 90 percent of its coral, depending on the area.

Rising temperatures

Corals become bleached when under stress because of changing conditions, such as rising sea water temperature. This causes the coral to expel the algae living in its tissues, turning white.

The coral is not dead, but it is starving, as the algae provide up to 80 percent of its nutrients. Prolonged higher temperatures can kill the corals completely, with a cascade of negative effects on the many species that depend on them, including the human communities that they support.

Bleaching episodes typically last one year, but the most recent has been going since 2014. Australia's Great Barrier Reef has also been affected, with more than two thirds of it experiencing "shocking" amounts of bleaching.

"In 2014 reefs around the world were hit with one of the worst coral bleaching events on record", said Thomas le Berre, a French coastal oceanographer who is responsible for some of the top environmental projects in the Maldives.

The previously vibrant corals, which help attract over one million tourists a year to the archipelago, have turned into a ghostly shadow of their former self.

Le Berre says part of the blame goes to El Niño, a cyclical weather event that takes place every few years resulting in warmer waters passing through the Pacific and Indian Ocean. Combined with global warming, it has seen water temperature reach new highs of 34 degrees in some area, causing the corals to go beyond their thermal limit, which results in bleaching and sometimes death.

A study conducted by the University of Exeter confirms that, as a result of a strong El Niño in 2016, an increase in surface ocean temperatures has led to a major coral die-off in the Maldives. It has also found that some species of fish, particularly parrotfish, are eroding the reefs more intensely following the bleaching event.

Coral nurseries

According to Le Berre, although bleaching is "quite low on the government's list of priorities" he is working closely with them with them to ensure it is on their agenda. His project, the Reefscapers Coral Reef Restoration programme, aims to make the Maldivian reefs resilient to these changes in temperature and increase their rate of regeneration.

Using metal frames, small branches of coral can be attached and spread out to create 'coral nurseries'.

Corals compete for the nutrients in the immediate environment around them, so by spreading them out they can recover faster. Using this method, researchers here have seen a four-fold increase in growth rates, over an array of about 560 frames.

Lost habitat

Recovery can take a long time. The last severe bleaching event was in 1998 and it took almost 12 years for the reefs to recover.

Worryingly, the bleaching affects not just corals: "Habitat for small fish is also lost," said Shiham Adam, the Maldives' Minister for Fisheries and Agriculture.

"Long nose hawk fish feed exclusively on live corals, and they are now almost gone. Butterfly fish abundance also gone."

The Four Seasons and The Banyan Tree in the Maldives are both leading the charge, with their own team of researchers leading coral recovery programs: "it's very difficult for us to monitor the coral bleaching so it's important for us to work very closely with some of the resorts," sad Thoriq Ibrahim, Minister of the Environment.

But some relief most come from a more global perspective: "The Paris Agreement was a huge milestone for us in progress to minimizing global warming," Ibrahim added.

"This is what we need to happen in order to save our reefs."

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can the maldives save its coral reefs? - cnn

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However, since 2014 this tropical paradise has been struck by severe coral bleaching, affecting between 60 percent and 90 percent of its coral, depending on the area. Rising temperatures Corals become bleached when under stress because of changing conditions, such as rising sea water temperature.

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Currently, El Niños are this reef's biggest threat. These weather patterns have caused several coral bleaching events in the past few years. Reef fisheries and coral mining also used to be threats to the reef, but legislation is now in effect that limits these industries. The introduction of concrete has also helped reduce coral mining.

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The biggest chunk of the Maldives economy is tourism, followed closely by fishing. The gorgeous, clear waters, small coral beaches, and giant reefs make this nation a tourism hotspot. Most of the fishing done here is for tuna by line because fishing by net is illegal here.

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The Maldives are home to the whale shark, a gentle giant.

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The Maldives are a group of islands southwest of Sri Lanka. The coral atolls form islands and reefs in a ring. The size of this ring is about  21,370 km² .
Both hard and soft corals are found in this area, but hard corals are the best observed type of coral there. Many types of sharks and rays live in the area, including whale sharks and eagle rays. The Maldives are also home to dolphins, sea turtles, moray eels (like the giant moray eel), soldierfish, squirrelfish, 3 species of lionfish, many species of goatfish, batfish,  the moorish idol (one of the fish in Finding Nemo), many species of grouper, many species of butterflyfish (such as the raccoon butterflyfish), angelfish (including the emperor angelfish), the Maldivian clownfish, the great barracuda, many species of damselfish, many species of wrasse, a variety of parrotfish, surgeonfish, triggerfish (including the Picasso and Clown triggerfish), many types of pufferfish, and invertebrates such as seastars, urchins, clams, the day octopus, cone snails, the banded cleaner/coral shrimp, and sea cucumbers.
The built up coral creates a huge habitat for many reef species and protects the tiny islands they surround from erosion.