For the Love of Seagrass, Six Senses Laamu Conservation Project

Tuesday 25th of August 2020

For the Love of Seagrass, Six Senses Laamu Conservation Project

Six Senses Laamu is an atoll utopia which entitles guests to a luxury unlike never before, where sumptuous meets sustainable, with many initiatives taken by the resort to become the protector of the god-blessed natural environment that defines the Maldives. The Maldives Underwater Initiative (MUI) is a multiple award-winning marine conservation initiative taken by the 5-star resort in the Maldives.

Six Senses Laamu conducted the first ever national seagrass monitoring programme in collaboration with Blue Marine Foundation and as part of a survey conducted in 2017 by the resort revealed that over 50% of resorts in the Maldives remove their seagrass meadows. Seagrass meadows are however, a vital habitat for the Maldives, as it helps fight climate change, provides habitats for marine animals, help prevent coral diseases by trapping pollutants from reaching corals and even protect Maldivian islands from erosion by reducing wave energy. However, these benefits have not been made aware of and seagrass meadows are unfortunately misunderstood.

Many resorts remove seagrass meadows from the lagoons of resort islands in order to maintain the ‘picturesque’ turquoise blue waters and white sand beaches that the Maldives is known for. However, a hidden truth behind seagrass meadows is that the ecosystem services that seagrass meadows provide in the fisheries and tourism industries are valued at $19,000 per hectare per year.

New discoveries were made as six different species of seagrass meadows were identified and along with that, the first ever documented discoveries of fish communities in the Maldives, with over 141 different fish species from 31 families, all of which take seagrasses as its nursery habitat.

In 2019, Six Senses Laamu and Blue Marine Foundation (BLUE), launched the #ProtectMaldivesSeagrass campaign which convinced more than 25% of Maldives popular resorts to protect their seagrass meadows. 37 resorts joined the campaign and collectively pledged to protect more than 910,000m² of seagrass around resort islands across the country. The Maldives’ Ministry of Tourism also supported the campaign.