Abandoned Resort

 

We spent a week in the atoll known to cruisers as the Abandoned Resort - Dholhiyadhoo to the locals. (anchored at 05*59.543N, 73*13.315 E in 38ft sand). The resort was never actually finished after investors dumped in 10's of millions of dollars. It is now bank owned. I suspect it was casualty of 2008/2009 financial crash. One of the nice things about this destination is that we can go ashore and walk the island. So far pretty much all of the inhabited islands have been off limits to us. The island has two Bangladeshi caretakers who spoke little English but were friendly enough and made it clear we were welcome to come ashore when we wanted.

I don't usually include videos in the blog -- they suck up too much bandwidth, but here's some drone shots from our buddy boat Time Bandit of the abandoned resort. By the way, for us$50 million you can buy the island, the atoll waters and what's left of the buildings.

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Having spent a lot of years cruising the tropical regions of the Caribbean, South Pacific, Asia and the Indian Ocean we've seen a lot of coral reefs. In many places we've seen areas of dead reef, but there's always been enough healthy, colorful reef close by that we could ignore the dead part. You just can't deny it in the Maldives. The coral bleaching that is caused by ocean water heating is everywhere. The Indian Ocean has been subject to a number of heating events that have decimated the reefs. Think Global Climate Change. The last big heating event was in 2015-2016. It has left huge areas of the reef's corals to be turned into dead, grey rubble. If you are interested in some of the technical details, here is a very technical article on the coral bleaching in Chagos, about mid-Indian Ocean Coral bleaching impacts from back-to-back 2015–2016 thermal anomalies in the remote central Indian Ocean

 

To go along with the coral bleaching the plastic trash on the beaches is overwhelming at times. This picture is of fishing gear remains.  If this was all there was on the shorelines it wouldn't be too bad. Every beach that faces the ocean side is covered with plastic bottles, along with lots of glass ones, and other plastic trash. The glass will eventually break up, have its corners rounded by erosion and then be turned into jewelry by aging hippies. The plastic is pretty much forever, it breaks down into microparticles and becomes part of the biome-- permanently.

Left sandals(Jandals for Australians, Flip-flops for Floridians) and plastic bottles as far as you can see.

While I'm on an environmental rant might as well address ocean water rising. The Maldives islands are rarely more than a few feet above the high tide mark. Above you can see some locals who stopped at this sandy beach in the early morning to collect sand. The bags are stacked on the boat as it sits low in the water. Basically they are sacrificing this small, uninhabited island to shore up another, populated island. You see this small time movement of sand ala over the islands. At times you see it on an industrial scale with large diggers loading barges. 

We are currently anchored in front of a resort that is closed for remodeling. Remodeling includes bringing in huge mounds of sand in.

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To finish this blog on a more upbeat tone, how about a Unicorn (fish)? 

Some reef struggling to provide color.

And the ever present weather we deal with. It's thunderstorm season! 

Paul