A love letter to a beautiful island

Dear Hadahaa,

What an amazing time we’ve had together, the best of times. I hope someday to find colleagues and corals that I love as much as you. Hadahaa, you have been so much more than a job, you’ve transformed me, powering my passion for nature, laughter, children and food. I’m incredibly proud to be a piece of your puzzle. There will not be one day that I don’t think of the 12% of my life I belonged in the Maldives. Does this makes me 12% Maldivian, seems like more dho?

 

These are just a few of the things that will make me smile when I’m daydreaming about you:

-          Chef Sunil’s gooey chocolate fondant

-          Swimming with wild dolphins

-          Laughing with beautiful children on local islands

-          Stargazing and lazing on the roof of the dhoni

-          Dancing like a mad to boduberu drumming

I’m going away for a while, to be a little closer, to a bigger island on the other side of the world. But our relationship is not over and I’m already looking forward to hearing the words “Welcome back”.

 I know that you know, but I’m going to say it again anyway– I’m really going to miss you.

With love,

Arabella

Subsurface Superpowers

Imagine how much more you could get out of a holiday at Hadahaa if you didn’t have to sleep. Honeymoons would be 30% longer; you’d be able to catch a glimpse of every shooting star and gaze at every sunrise or, if you are as obsessed as me, snorkel throughout the night. Sound unbelievable? Not so for a dolphin; amazingly all cetaceans have evolved the ability to stay awake throughout the day and night by sleeping with only half of their brain at a time. Unlike most of us, they must consciously take each breath which essentially means they can never completely fall asleep. It’s a useful skill, and got me thinking about other enviable abilities there are in the underwater world:

Invisibility

Fancy blending into to the background in an instant? Then consider life as one of our Hadahaa locals - the Octopus cyanea.

 There are some pretty impressive disguises out there, but Cephalopods really take the biscuit because they are not stuck with just one look; they miraculously transform the colour, pattern and texture of their skin to perfectly match with their surroundings. Layers of different pigment cells expand or contract upon demand to alter the balance of colours. On top of that, they have tiny muscles which tighten to form perky little peaks. And if all else fails, they use their jet propulsion and disappear with a puff of ink.

Octopus Images from Roger Hanlon (hermes.mbl.edu/mrc/hanlon/coloration.html)

     

 Immortality

Feeling a bit senile? If you were coral you could simply copy yourself and start again, and why stop there? Multiply into a colony and continue on for hundreds of years. 

Once a year, coral polyps have a brief sexual outburst, but for the rest of the time they make do with the realms of asexuality. Genetic clones bud from a parent polyp once it has reached adult size. A degree of connectivity remains between individuals allowing the sharing of nutrients and combined structural support.

Glow in the dark

Why waste money on lighting schemes when you could emit light from within?  Glittering microscopic plankton glow with a blue-green light when disturbed at night.

These little protists and copepods in the waters around Hadahaa contain a special substance called Luciferin which produces light in a chemical reaction with oxygen.  Although this enchanting habit makes them more obvious to us, it’s actually a defence mechanism. The sudden flash of light can confuse predators or cause them to feel vulnerable; like a call to reinforcements, it alerts even bigger hunters that there’s a potential meal nearby.

Telepathy

Decisions are hard, wouldn’t it be nice to instinctively know what everyone else is doing, and automatically do it too? Then think about trading places with the bait fish who love schooling around the island at this time of year.

A combination of sight and acoustic vibrations keep the discipline within schools, allowing all the fishy students to move, turn and swim with perfect cohesion. Fish prefer to stick with others about the same size with all of them keeping on average a distance of 0.7 body lengths apart.  There are no leaders of the group; the ones at the front frequently switch places when they change direction or scatter then re-group. There are many advantages of schooling; an obvious example being that hundreds of eyes are on the lookout for danger, or predators becoming easily confused during a chase, not knowing who to single out for supper. 

Money can’t buy you love

It’s easy when you live in a 5* resort to become addicted to luxury. We’ve all been trained to demand high standards, to shudder at the thought of a towel being used more than once. But it’s also the Hyatt mission to provide authentic hospitality. By its very definition, you cannot teach authenticity so it’s lucky for us that generosity is at the very heart of Maldivian culture. As much as I love fish, it’s the people that have kept me in the Maldives; the local villages have humbleness and warmth that never fails to make my heart swell.

We recruit as much of the team as possible from the nearby islands. So when a guest comes to visit Park Hyatt Maldives Hadahaa, they are not simply staying at a resort; they are welcomed into a community. This connection gives Hadahaa a sense of home. Tourists and locals are usually kept quite separate in the Maldives, it’s possible to visit a resort and have the feeling that you could be anywhere. But we want our guests to absorb the culture of the Maldives, to have memories of somewhere extraordinary.

Ahmed “Speedy” Nabeel is a waiter in The Dining Room and for eight months represented his island of Gemanafushi as a “Hyatt Thrive Ambassador”. He particularly looks forward to showing guests around his home island, I asked him to explain why

I feel very proud to show them my island. When we bring the guests we don’t tell the island to expect visitors; they are not seeing anything different to normal life. Sometimes we will arrange a special lunch for the guests. We don’t do it for money; it’s for them to experience. We just make normal local dishes. If they are vegetarian we have to think a little bit because we don’t eat a lot of vegetables, for us tuna and coconut is enough. I think the guests like it because they are getting to see the real Maldives, a different experience. The guests know me already from the resort, and when they come to the island they can meet my family and visit my house, they feel happy because they see the proper Maldives.  Only four years ago there were no resorts in the area, we never met foreigners, we were only fishing.

The guests feel that they are entering a different world. Of course, they get to understand traditional things like houses and food, but I think they also enjoy seeing a simple, relaxing life. No worries. No headaches. No traffic. When I step off the boat onto my island I feel all the tension leave my body, I don’t need to think about much.

We could never ignore someone who comes from somewhere else, if anyone new comes to the island, everyone knows; we think “that’s a visitor” and we will try to help them. If they need anything, we will try to provide them with those things. If somebody gets stuck, we will help them. When I left the Maldives I was surprised that people weren’t as friendly, only the people working in the shops really talked to me. That’s why I always want to live on my island because everyone knows each other. That’s the important thing, we are all friends, everybody will help everyone else, and there will always be someone to help you if you need it. 

Speedy conducting a careers workshop for some local kids 

Holidaying with the Hawksbills

When you live in the Maldives plenty of people are under the impression that you are permanently on holiday. I tend to enjoy being the object of envy so I don’t waste time correcting them (other than pointing out that I’m getting paid for it). But from time to time it’s good to do some work, so I have journeyed to Park Hyatt Abu Dhabi for a short time to spread the love of marine biology and see how I can help with regards to the environment on their island.

The UAE has in recent years taken many new initiatives with regards to environmental care, and we at Hyatt fully support this turn of events. It’s important that we are responsible, ultimately allowing our guests enjoy the natural resources.  

Park Hyatt Abu Dhabi is perched on the edge of a nature reserve, which during the summer months, hosts the critically endangered hawksbill turtles to lay their eggs.  That they still feel comfortable to come ashore just meters from the hotel is remarkable.  Lights, obstacles or noise easily disturbs nesting females; so we must take great care to cater to their sensitivity.

Hawksbill turtles are old friends of mine from the Maldives; they are such regular visitors of the Hadahaa house reef that at least two seem to be resident. Hawksbills are astonishing for many reasons starting with their choice of food; as adults they almost exclusively eat sponges. We think of sponge as a soft and cuddly substance, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. Most sponges are full of needle sharp spines and powerful toxins making them decidedly unpalatable for most creatures. But not the Hawksbill. They have a titanium* digestive system and a hooked beak that allows them to feast on this otherwise untapped food source.  More than just good for the turtles; this is also good for the coral.  Declining turtle numbers is having serious consequences as unrestrained sponges grow over and kill the coral, jeopardizing the future of the entire reef.  

Turtles rely heavily on their instincts, although very lovely, they are not especially bright. The brain is a hungry organ in terms of oxygen demand and since turtles have to relentlessly hold their breath to survive in the underwater world, conserving oxygen is a priority. It turns out; having a tiny brain is not so stupid after all. I sometimes find myself getting jealous of the turtles have an innate ability to always know what to do and where to go. From their first few hours in the nest, they break out of their shell and sense the direction of gravity knowing that they must dig up. Not all the way, because they may have to wait below the surface to sense the temperature of the sand, making sure that it’s night when they make their perilous crawl to the sea. Once again, no instructions needed, they head towards the greatest source of light (which should be the reflection of the moon on the water).  Upon reaching the shore they detect the direction of the waves and automatically swim out to sea. After a few years in the open ocean they manage to direct themselves towards a coral reef to feed so that 20 to 30 years later, they are ready to reproduce. Turtles are able to hone in on variations in the earths’ magnetism and travel hundreds of miles to find the exact area in which they were born to lay their own eggs.  The most remarkable thing of all, this was happening 150 million years before GPS.

* I don’t mean literally- that is biologically very improbable. 

A beautiful hawksbill swooping over the Hadahaa house reef