Winners Gallery

Marine biologist Kaia Ali tends to the coral restoration project at COMO Cocoa. “The Maldives, the flattest country in the world with an average altitude of only just above 1 metre, deserves praise for the efforts it has made to conserve its ocean patrimony,” says Spiers. “Industrial fishing with nets is banned and the country created one of the world’s first national shark sanctuaries. However, the Maldives have suffered greatly at the hands of environmental changes which transcend their borders and strong El Niño events have killed 80 to 90% of all the shallow hard corals. Hope for the future lies in part with efforts to regrow the reef through coral gardening. I visited these structures and can only cross my fingers that they can be part of the solution.”