MALDIVES
lilac teem with tiny reef fish darting in and out with the swell, creating the illusion that the corals themselves are breathing. A few metres ahead of me, marine biologist
James Cordery is doing what he calls ‘the lawnmower’. Both arms stretched out in front of him, he grips a metal pole fitted with three GoPro cameras as he swims methodically back and forth across a 10-by-10-metre patch of reef. Every half a second, the three GoPros click into action, capturing thousands of overlapping photographs that will later be stitched together into a 3D model of the reef. In three months, he’ll return to this exact patch of reef to do it all over again. “The whole point is consistency,” he tells me
later. “We’re trying to photograph the reef from exactly the same perspective each time.” I hover just outside the survey plot, trying not
to drift into his path. It feels strangely meditative. While James works, I begin noticing things I’d have otherwise swum straight past: tiny fish no bigger than my fingernail darting in and out of coral crevices; a lionfish peeking its striped head out to inspect me before slipping back into the shadows. About 20 minutes into the dive, James makes
a circle with his fingers — the diver’s sign for ‘OK’ and signal that he’s finished surveying the site. With plenty of air still in our tanks, we swim towards the reef wall. I kick my fins over the 30-metre drop-off and
my stomach lurches. For a split second, it feels as though I’m stepping off a precipice, but instead of falling, I hang weightless in the water, millions of tiny plankton drifting past and into the darkness below. As they disappear into the blue, James points ahead. At first, I can make out only a shadow, but as it glides closer, the shape becomes unmistakable: a reef shark, at least two metres long. Moments later, two large tuna emerge from behind it, their silvery flanks catching the light and flashing like scattered tinsel. By the time we reach the surface, James is
elated — but not because we saw a shark. “Today we surveyed 1,027 coral colonies,” he says, barely taking his regulator out. “That would normally take around seven hours and several divers. We did it in about 20 minutes.” We’re diving Kanuhura Beru, a reef around 15
minutes by boat from Six Senses Kanuhura. It’s one of four sites around the island taking part in the Kanuhura Coral Census, a pioneering reef- monitoring project developed with researchers from Newcastle University and University College London (UCL). Using underwater photogrammetry (combining thousands of overlapping photographs into a precisely measured digital model of the reef), AI and 3D modelling, it allows the resort’s marine biologists to monitor their reefs with the same scientific precision as leading marine institutions. “Before, I’d have to survey the reef using a tape
measure and underwater slate, and then input the data by hand,” says James as we clamber back onto the boat and peel off our fins. Originally from the UK, James recently left a DPhil (PhD) in fish
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behaviour at Oxford University to pursue hands-on coral reef research in the Maldives. Today, he heads up the Coral Census project as Six Senses Kanuhura’s lead resident marine biologist. “Not only are traditional reef surveys extremely time-consuming, but they also allow for a lot of human error and bias.”
A new way of seeing Back at the resort, James plugs the cameras into his laptop and pulls up a remarkably detailed 3D model of the reef we just explored. He’s giddy with excitement. Zooming into one corner of the model, he points to a coral colony no bigger than my thumbnail and suddenly stops. “That wasn’t there three months ago,” he says, leaning closer to the screen with one hand on his chin. Out on the reef, neither of us had noticed the
speck of baby coral. Yet here, James can compare it with images captured three months earlier, measuring not just whether it has survived, but exactly how much it has grown, down to the millimetre. In a rapidly warming ocean, James hopes that understanding exactly which corals survive — and why — will help better inform future conservation efforts. “How do you protect what you don’t
understand?” he says. “We’re not just looking at how the reef is doing as a whole anymore — we’re telling the stories of thousands of corals.” As we finish uploading the images from today’s
dive, coral researcher John Stratford joins us on a video call from UCL, where he’s helping develop the technology behind the Coral Census. Together, he and James adapted it for use at Six Senses Kanuhura, allowing the resort’s marine biologists
From left: The Maldives is home to around 1,200 coral islands built on ancient reef systems; James Cordery is helping transform coral conservation by turning resort dive sites into research hubs Previous pages from left: The Maldives’ waters are among the clearest in the world; Six Senses Kanuhura combines island luxury with marine conservation
“We’re not just looking at how the reef is doing as a whole anymore — we’re telling the stories of thousands of corals”
IMAGES: GETTY; SIX SENSES KANUHUR
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