New Marine Discovery Centre opens at the Four Seasons Maldives Kuda Huraa

TheFour Seasons Resort Maldives at Kuda Huraahas just inaugurated the new Marine Discovery Centre (MDC). This educational centre, aside from being a stunningly-beautiful spot for scuba diving in Maldives, helps guests and local school children alike to get involved in protection and preservation programmes for the local and global marine ecosystem.

Image Asher Hung, on Flickr.

Audio-visual presentations on specific areas of conservation close to Kuda Huraa (which include turtles, coral reefs, sharks and dolphins) help visitors understand and get close to the environmental cause. Visiting this new research centre is a fun and exciting way to spend scuba diving holidays in the Maldives, while learning to care for and protect the underwater environment.

The MDC offers plenty of fun and instructive activities for adults and children. The Resort´s Turtle and Shark Safari, Dolphin Watching and Coral Reefscaping are just some of the many wonderful fun options the centre has to offer. The MDC is also the headquarters of the Kuda Velaa Protection Programme, a turtle conservation initiative that works hard to increase awareness of turtle preservation throughout the Maldives.

Image by bbialek905, on Flickr

.Part of this project, called the Kuda Velaa ‘Little Turtles', includes protecting turtle nests from poachers and taking care of green turtle hatchlings until they are big and strong enough to protect themselves in the wild. Island communities collaborate by protecting eggs, and the programme workers raise and take care of newly-born turtles for up to 15 months in order to improve their chances of survival. These hatchlings are kept in land-based pools for the first 9 months, later they are repositioned to larger enclosures in a lagoon where they will begin to feed themselves on sea grasses and become more independent.

When the turtles have grown and become stronger, they are released back into the wild. However, the ‘Little Turtles' work team attach GPS trackers onto each turtle's carapace to track foraging and migration pattern. The Kuda Velaa team is working with the Maldivian Ministry of Fisheries and Agriculture on this project, created to discover the reasons behind the diminishing turtle populations in the local waters. These beautiful creatures, in danger of extinction, are one of the reasons the Maldives is among the most stunning and interesting scuba diving destinations in the world.

Image by randapex, on Flickr.

Another project created to protect and recover the Maldivian submarine ecosystem is Reefscapers. The Four Seasons Resort Maldives at Kuda Huraa has been promoting this propagation programme since 2001, when the resort began working with Maldivian environmental consultancy, Seamrac Pvt. Ltd, to improve coral cover in its lagoon. This project has grown to be one of the most triumphant of its kind in the world, converting formerly empty reef flats into flourishing marine ecosystems.

The Reefscapers team gets all this amazing work done by transplanting coral fragments from the resort's existing reef onto coral frames (produced by a local co-operative). These frames are sponsored by the Four Seasons Resort and their guests, while enjoying scuba diving holidays in Maldives, are also giving back to the submarine environment. What's more, the Reefscapers team has also developed an exciting new coral frame area, called the Green Lagoon, shaped in the form of a giant Green turtle on the island's sunset side.