An island nation in the Indian Ocean about 500 miles off the southern tip of India, the Maldives is the ninth-smallest country in the world, as well as the closest to sea level. Beneath its sparkling azure waters, however, lie its biggest claim to fame: the seventh-largest coral reef system on Earth—and a completely unexplored mesophotic zone. That is, until this past January.
Through the first-ever deep dives to the Maldives’ never-before-seen mesophotic reefs 100-500 feet below the surface, Academy Hope for Reefs researchers, in partnership with collaborators at the Maldives Marine Research Institute (MMRI) and the Maldives Ministry of Fisheries, have discovered several potentially new-to-science species, conducted the first biodiversity surveys of the region’s mesophotic zone, and uncovered unsettling signs of human impacts on these deep ocean ecosystems.