Soneva launches AquaTerra Centre at Soneva Fushi

Soneva has officially launched the new AquaTerra centre at Soneva Fushi in the Maldives’ Baa Atoll. Following a grand opening ceremony, which took place on April 10, 2023, the new, state-of-the-art conservation, education and science facility will further strengthen the resort’s focus on sustainability, supporting its ongoing efforts to understand, conserve and regenerate the surrounding natural environment, both at sea and on land.

With a name inspired by Soneva Fushi’s exceptional natural setting, AquaTerra brings together sustainability, science and rare experiences. It will become a hub for the resort’s conservation efforts, including the ambitious Soneva Foundation Coral Restoration Programme, will educate Soneva's guests about the local ecosystem through inspirational experiences, and will host cutting-edge scientific research through partnerships with universities and visiting scientists.

AquaTerra is the nerve centre for the Soneva Foundation Coral Restoration Programme, which launched in 2021 and aims to restore the coral reef systems around Soneva Fushi and create a coral hub for the Maldives. Working in partnership with Swiss environmental organisation Coralive, the project uses Mineral Accretion Technology (MAT) to channel low voltage electricity through submerged coral tables, which speeds up the corals’ growth rate. The new centre also houses a spawning and rearing laboratory, developed with the team from Coral Spawning Lab, to conduct assisted evolution and create heat resilient super corals, and a 3D-Printing laboratory to produce coral substrate. Later in 2023, Soneva Foundation will also fund the installation of a micro-fragmenting laboratory, created with micro-fragmenting expert Dr David Vaughan, with 28 outdoor tanks that can produce up to 100,000 corals per year, as well as live streaming cameras with fish recognition software at the coral nursery, to combine with live data from a SmartBuoy. 

The centre will also support the efforts of Soneva’s Terrestrial Biology team. This includes its ground-breaking work on eliminating mosquitoes at Soneva’s Maldivian island resorts using sustainable and environmentally-friendly mosquito management traps, with no harmful chemical fogging. The team is also working on a new project to tackle the hairy caterpillars which live on the islands’ Indian almond trees. It is collaborating with the University of McGill in Canada and Canadian National Research Institute on a hyperspectral mapping project, with the aim of creating an algorithm that programmes a T30 DJI Agricultural Drone to spray leaves with ultra-low volumes of neem oil, which will be the first of its kind in the world.

AquaTerra will be used as the location for a range of short educational courses for young Sonevians through the Soneva Academy, and will be hosting visiting scientists and Masters and PhD students to conduct part of their research at Soneva Fushi.  To see the centre’s conservation efforts first hand, Soneva Fushi’s guests can combine a behind-the-scenes tour of AquaTerra with a guided snorkel at the house reef or a tour around Soneva Fushi’s gardens and Eco Centro Waste to Wealth Centre. To support the Coral Restoration Programme, guests are also able to adopt a coral table to help regenerate the reef over the next decade. Priced from USD 1,000 per table, each table is personalised with a carved name tag, and sponsors receive a certificate and an exclusive photo of their coral table. 

“At Soneva, we will never stop striving to be more sustainable and continue to pioneer initiatives that protect our natural environment and precious resources,” says Sonu Shivdasani, co-founder and CEO of Soneva, who was recently honoured as an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) for services to tourism, sustainability and charity. “AquaTerra not only enables us to offer our guests a one-of-a-kind experience and a variety of learning opportunities around terrestrial and marine conservation, but also strengthens our own conservation efforts, enabling us to collaborate with scientists from around the world.”

“Never have I seen a place that combines all the best practices of coral restoration, brings in the world’s coral experts for collaboration and can trial all of it just a few metres away in the ocean,” says Ahmad ‘Aki’ Allahgholi, Senior Co-Director Marine Science at Soneva. “Soneva is serious about saving corals.”

For more information about Soneva, visit www.soneva.com