Maldives - Ari Atoll

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Part of the regional summaries: Maldives - Central (Male Atolls / Ari / Vaavu) and Maldives

Country

Maldives

Date(s) visited

2017-05-23
2017-05-24
2017-05-25
2017-05-26

Coordinates

3.7500, 72.8300

Approximate position.

Coral cover

—

not yet measured

Observations

None tagged; see Stressors below

Heat stress

Most recent heat load record

30.1°C 0.0°C-weeks

26 Oct 2026 · Bleaching Watch

5-year thermal stress load

5-year mean max. degree heating weeks (DHW)

2.2°C-weeksⁱ

2021–2025

NOAA Coral Reef Watch — Maldives virtual station

i 5-year mean max. DHW is the mean of the annual maximum DHWs over the five complete years named above, not conditions today.

More info

Maldives (NOAA CRW virtual station)

Site summary

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Ari Atoll has no photographs or cover figure attached to this site. The nearest regional context is a 1997 Reef Check record (44% hard coral, 6.63 km off) that predates both the 1998 and 2016 Maldives mass-bleaching events, so it cannot describe the reef's current condition.

Sea surface temp. (satellite)

29.6°C
mean; range 29.5–29.7°C

satellite sea surface temperature (SST), mean of the 4 trip dates (NOAA Coral Reef Watch, Maldives), not an in-water reading; it is the warmest-pixel (90th percentile) reading in the station area and can run 1–1.5°C above the reef

Site description

Setting

Ari (Alifu) Atoll is one of the larger western atolls of the central Maldives (3.75 N, 72.83 E).

Coral cover

This atoll marker carries no photographs or cover figure of its own: Anderson's Ari Atoll dives of 23-26 May 2017 are on ten site pins of their own (Ari Atoll south tip, Camel Point, Dhega Thila, Dhidhoo Beyru, Dhigga Thila, Dhigurah Arches, Fesdhoo wreck, Fish House (Fish Head), Lux Beyru, and Moofushi Kandu), and the field sheet records 50 crown-of-thorns starfish collected on them.

Stressors

The nearest Reef Check value (44% in 1997) predates the 1998 mass-bleaching event that caused severe Maldivian coral mortality, and the archipelago was hit again in 2016 — both are archipelago-scale context, not observations here. Satellite five-year mean annual maximum heat stress at NOAA Coral Reef Watch's Maldives virtual station: 2.2 degree heating weeks.

Comparisons with other data

Regional context: four independent Reef Check station-year records within 10 km (nine surveys at three stations), spanning 1997-2017, from 14% to 62% hard coral and averaging 37%. The nearest is Namnetti Tila, 6.63 km away, at 44% in 1997. At nearly 7 km, and with the closest record 29 years old, this is background for the surrounding area rather than a measure of this site.

Data & links

Data on this page are from Reef Check Foundation and NOAA Coral Reef Watch, not Coral Reef Diagnostics; Coral Reef Diagnostics has no coral cover estimate of its own at this site.