Jan 26 - Last full day on the island. Everyone goes out for snorkeling, Odette and I see a spotted boxfish, which we haven’t seen before. Later in the day I do a reef on the windward side and see a spot-fin porcupinefish. Janet sees a lionfish, which are everywhere in the Red Sea but out here it is the only one any of us encounter. She also sees a moray eel, probably a snowflake moray.
You may have heard that the Maldives is threatened by rising ocean levels. It holds the dubious record as being the country with the lowest average elevation in the world, the majority of the land being less than one meter above sea level. Since the 1950’s, ocean levels in the Maldives have been rising at the rate of 0.8-1.6 mm/year. For countries with decent coastal topography, this is insignificant over the course of 70 years. For these islands, however, it is quite significant. Omadhoo looks to be no more than a meter above sea level at its highest point.
/w=3840,quality=90,fit=scale-down)
However, to be fair, there is more than one factor that can contribute to the erosion of the shores on these islands. Production and movement of sand is of great importance. In tropical waters such as these, a great deal of sand it pooped out by parrotfish, who chew on coral for food. A large adult parrotfish can excrete a ton of sand a year. However, despite being protected, they are eaten by island inhabitants (and perhaps also by tourists), so depletion of parrotfish equals less sand to wash up on the beach.
Another factor is the modification of the shores to accommodate commerce. Years ago, Omadhoo had a small, shallow harbor that supported only small vessels. There were probably only certain times of the day (high tide) that a larger boat could attempt to land. To be able to bring in larger boats (including the speedboat tourists like us rode on) at all times, they deepened the harbor by removing a lot of sand. Omadhoo is affected by different winds at different times of the year, so the shape of the island itself reflects the prevailing wind and wave patterns. The sand spit at the western end of the island that we spent time on does not exist in, say, October. Instead, there is a collection of sand at the eastern end. Yearly, as the sand shifts around the island, it moves across the harbor area and makes it shallow again. Then it has to be dredged. This de-facto causes havoc with the current shoreline by removing the natural progression of sand.
The government of the Maldives is acutely aware of the threat the islands face, same as a number of island nations in the Pacific Ocean. Since complaining at the UN doesn’t move the needle much among the chief polluter nations, the best Maldives can do is prepare themselves to be flooded. On Day 292/3, we stayed in Hulhumalé, to the north of the airport. Everywhere we walked on that island was on artificial ground, made with sand sucked up from the ocean floor to a height of two meters. Between 1997 and 2020, Hulhumalé went from being a tiny island to one of the largest in the nation. From the speedboat we took west, we passed several islands close to Malé that are currently ‘under construction’ in this way, to provide significant additional land area at an elevation that will stay above the ocean for at least a bit longer than most islands currently will.
A more ambitious project is also under way, to construct a series of connected floating homes that will be placed in the relatively calm waters inside smaller atolls. Though there are claims that the first set of residences will be ready by 2024, I have only ever seen digital imaginings of them.
Maldives