Maldives - North Male Atoll

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

Country

Maldives

Date(s) visited

2017-05-13
2017-05-14
2017-05-15
2017-05-21
2017-05-22

Coordinates

4.3700, 73.4600

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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North Male Atoll, home to Male and the main airport, has no photographs or cover figure attached to this site, and only a single distant Reef Check record (Banyan Tree House Reef, 8 km off, 33% in 2013, the mean of two surveys) for regional context — predating the Maldives' 2016 basin-wide bleaching event. Our May 2017 dives in the atoll are on their own site pins.

Sea surface temp. (satellite)

30.1°C
mean; range 29.7–30.3°C

satellite sea surface temperature (SST), mean of the 5 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

North Male Atoll is one of the Maldives' central atolls (4.37 N, 73.46 E), the atoll that contains Male and the country's main airport.

Stressors

For context on the wider archipelago rather than this site: Maldivian reefs were hit by basin-wide mass bleaching and mortality in 1998 and again in 2016, and the 2013 Reef Check figure below predates the 2016 event entirely. 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

The regional context is thin: there is exactly one independent Reef Check station-year record within 10 km, at Banyan Tree House Reef 8.12 km away: 33% hard coral cover in 2013, mean of 2 surveys, 5 m and 8 m. A single station eight kilometers off is background, not a measurement of this site, and with one station and two surveys there is little spread to judge it against.

Other notes

This atoll marker carries no photographs or cover figure of its own: Anderson's North Male Atoll dives of 13-15 and 21-22 May 2017 are on their own site pins (Back Faru, Bodu Hithi Thila, the checkout dive, Feydoo Wall, Fish Tank, Georgia's Reef, and Lankan Faru).

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.