The Maldives is a country built by coral. Its 1,192 low-lying islands sit on 26 natural atolls, and its reef systems cover about 8,900 sq km, the seventh largest in the world, according to the country's profile with the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). Those reefs are home to around 180 coral species and some 1,100 species of fish.
The Marine Research Centre, now the Maldives Marine Research Institute, calls the reefs "the physical basis of the Maldives". They protect the islands from the ocean, feed sand to the beaches and support tourism and fisheries, the two pillars of the economy. A study cited in the CBD profile traced 89 per cent of GDP and 71 per cent of employment to the country's biodiversity.
Reefs under heat
That foundation has been hit repeatedly by marine heatwaves. In 1998, the first mass bleaching on record, more than 90 per cent of shallow-reef corals died, according to a 2020 study in Frontiers in Marine Science. The reefs needed 16 years to recover their earlier coral cover.
In 2016, a Marine Research Centre survey of 71 sites across 11 atolls found 73 per cent of corals bleached.
In April 2024, the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the International Coral Reef Initiative confirmed a fourth global bleaching event. NOAA later said it likely ended in mid-2025, after heat stress had reached 84 per cent of the world's reef area. A 2026 study in the journal Coral Reefs recorded sea temperatures of 31.5°C in the Maldives in 2024. Across 18 surveyed reefs, live coral cover in the central atolls fell by more than 40 per cent on average. Reefs in southern Huvadhoo Atoll showed no detectable die-off.
How protection works
Protected areas are declared under Section 4 of the Environmental Protection and Preservation Act (Law No. 4/93), the country's main environment law. The President makes each declaration on the Cabinet's recommendation, and detailed rules come from the Protected Area Regulation of 2018, with separate regulations for Addu City, Fuvahmulah City and Hanifaru.
The Environmental Regulatory Authority (ERA), which took over the protected-areas work of the former Environmental Protection Agency, lists 93 protected areas in its published dataset. Most are marine: 80 include a marine protected area. The first 15, mostly dive sites, were declared in 1995, and the latest are two Kaafu Atoll thilas declared in 2024. Together they cover about 651 sq km, by Maldives Now's count of the ERA data.
In 2019 the government pledged to fully protect at least 20 per cent of Maldivian waters, and in 2021 it set that goal for 2030, alongside a pledge to protect one island, one reef and one mangrove in every atoll.
Species protection sits alongside the protected areas. Whale sharks have been protected since 1995. Shark fishing has been banned since March 2010, with a ban on the shark trade following. The Protected Species Regulation of 2021 covers all sea turtles and all rays and skates.
Atoll by atoll
Baa Atoll: manta rays and the first biosphere reserve
Baa Atoll became the Maldives' first UNESCO biosphere reserve in 2011. UNESCO lists the reserve at 144,024 hectares, almost all of it sea, with roughly 250 coral species and 1,200 reef and reef-associated fish species.
Its best-known core zone is Hanifaru Bay, a small bay off an uninhabited island. The bay, covering 529 ha, was declared protected in June 2009, according to the government's protected-areas register. Management rules that took full effect in 2012 ban scuba diving and fishing in the bay. They cap numbers at five boats and 80 snorkellers at a time, require EPA-certified guides and charge visitors a fee for the Baa Atoll Conservation Fund, according to a factsheet from the UN Convention on Migratory Species. Reef manta rays and whale sharks gather there to feed during the southwest monsoon, from May to December.
South Ari Atoll: whale sharks all year round
The South Ari Marine Protected Area (SAMPA) was declared on 5 June 2009. The register now lists it at about 5,143 ha, after its decree was amended in 2019. It is one of the few places in the world where whale sharks stay all year, according to a 2021 study in Scientific Reports. Using photo-identification data from the Maldives Whale Shark Research Programme, researchers identified 265 individual sharks between 2006 and 2019, nearly all of them immature males. The study found that many sharks carried serious injuries, mostly from boats, under heavy tourism pressure, and the authors recommended speed limits and propeller-exclusion zones.
Fuvahmulah and Addu: the southern reserves
UNESCO added Fuvahmulah and Addu Atoll to its World Network of Biosphere Reserves in October 2020, making them the country's second and third reserves.
UNESCO says the Fuvahmulah reserve "encompasses an entire atoll ecosystem", and notes large numbers of tiger, thresher and whale sharks. Researchers call Fuvahmulah's tiger shark gathering the world's largest known in such a confined area. A 2024 Scientific Reports paper identified 239 tiger sharks there between 2016 and 2023, 84.5 per cent of them female. The authors link it in part to the Maldives' 2010 shark protection.
Addu's reserve covers 15,824 ha, most of it sea, according to UNESCO. The register lists several protected sites inside it. The British Loyalty shipwreck and the Kandihera-Maakandu channel, known to divers as Manta Point, were protected in 2018. The Eedhigali Kilhi and Koattey mangrove and marine area was first protected in 2004. Kuda Kandu, Maafishi Kilhi and Mathi Kilhi followed in 2020.
Malé Atoll: where protection began
Kaafu Atoll holds many of the country's oldest marine protected areas. Fifteen sites were protected nationwide under a single directive in September 1995, and nine of them are in Kaafu. They include Banana Reef, Lions Head, Hans Hass Place and the Guraidhoo, Embudhoo and Makunudhoo channels. Nassimo Thila was added in 1999.
Species to know
Conservation status is from the IUCN Red List.
Reef manta ray (Mobula alfredi) — Vulnerable
The Maldives population is the largest documented anywhere, according to a 2021 peer-reviewed study by Manta Trust researchers. The rays follow the monsoon between the western and eastern sides of the atolls. In Baa they move between Hanifaru Bay, where they feed, and cleaning stations at Dhigu Thila and Nelivaru Thila. Catching or harming any ray has been illegal since 2014, and their export is banned. Remaining threats include entanglement in fishing gear, boat strikes and tourism disturbance.
Whale shark (Rhincodon typus) — Endangered
The world's largest fish has been legally protected in the Maldives since 1995. South Ari is its stronghold, and boat injuries are its main local threat.
Hawksbill and green turtles (Eretmochelys imbricata, Chelonia mydas) — Hawksbill: Critically Endangered — Green: Least Concern
The green turtle was moved from Endangered to Least Concern globally in October 2025. A 2023 study co-authored by Olive Ridley Project researchers identified 325 hawksbills and 291 green turtles, mostly juveniles, at 10 sites in Ari, Baa, Kaafu and Laamu atolls. That research suggests both species are stable or increasing at many reefs. Turtles, their eggs and their habitats have been protected since 2016. The main threats are egg and meat poaching, loss of nesting beaches and entanglement in marine debris.
Napoleon wrasse (Cheilinus undulatus) — Endangered
In 1995 the Maldives became the first country to ban exports of this large reef fish, prized in the live seafood trade, according to a 2022 study in Endangered Species Research. Surveys in Laamu Atoll found densities similar to those in unfished areas elsewhere, a sign the protection has worked.
Grey reef shark (Carcharhinus amblyrhynchos) — Endangered
It is one of the reef sharks seen most often in the Maldives. A 2026 study in the Journal of Fish Biology found the country's largest documented aggregation at Villingili Kandu in North Huvadhu Atoll. It also found that Miyaru Kandu in Vaavu Atoll may serve as a nursery.
Tiger shark (Galeocerdo cuvier) — Near Threatened
At Fuvahmulah the sharks gather around the harbour, drawn by discarded fish waste. A 2024 ultrasound study in Frontiers in Marine Science found embryos in 26 of 28 adults scanned, marking the site as a gestation ground.
The pressures ahead
Heat remains the biggest threat. NOAA says every strong El Niño since 1998 has brought global bleaching, and that heat stress has grown more widespread and severe each time.
Local pressures add to the damage. The 2020 Frontiers study found that in 2016, reefs in the heavily developed North and South Malé atolls lost more coral than reefs in less pressured atolls. A separate 2020 study in Marine Pollution Bulletin found that land reclamation at Himmafushi, combined with the 2016 bleaching, roughly quadrupled the sand settling on nearby reefs. The Marine Research Centre has also flagged dredging, sewage and outbreaks of coral-eating crown-of-thorns starfish.
Management lags behind declarations. Only 10 of the 93 sites in the ERA dataset have a management plan or regulation on record.
Fishing policy is also shifting. A deep-water gulper shark fishery collapsed from overfishing in the early 1990s, according to a government paper to the Indian Ocean Tuna Commission. In August 2025 the President's Office announced that it would reopen under a management plan, and the fisheries ministry announced licensing rules on 1 November 2025. The move reopens one group of sharks to licensed fishing after the 2010 ban.
The researchers behind the 2026 Coral Reefs study argue that reefs which survived the latest heatwave, such as those in Huvadhoo, should be identified and protected as climate refuges. For a country whose land, economy and identity rest on living coral, how well it protects them may matter as much as how many it protects.