Your ears hear the magical phrases on the entrance: Welcome to Sandals. Welcome dwelling. Your eyes see gloriously unstated greetings out again: Welcome to the Caribbean. Welcome to essentially the most stunning ocean on Earth.
Come nearer. Step previous the pool, throughout the feathery-soft seashore, and preserve strolling into the consolation of the prettiest water you’ve ever seen. On the floor, it’s turquoise, emerald, and shades of blue you didn’t know existed.
Oh, you simply wait. You haven’t seen essentially the most spectacular sights underneath the floor but. Lots of the 20,000 individuals who work at Sandals Resorts throughout the Caribbean have seen them. They grew up on this water, swimming, fishing, and diving. They perceive how the ocean and its reefs join individuals to the islands, to the setting, and to life.
It is part of each one who calls the Caribbean “dwelling.”
And now, a timeless legacy for Sandals friends who take part in Reef Rescue and Coral Nursery Transplanting dives. These PADI experiences are curated for Sandals.
Consider it. What number of vacationers can legitimately say they established a dwelling, respiratory legacy within the Caribbean Sea, whereas on trip? It is one factor to soak within the sea and take footage of it, however the affection reaches a deeper degree if you end up really within the sea for the aim of constructing it more healthy and prettier for generations to return.
But that is precisely what Sandals friends are doing on 5 Caribbean islands: Saint Lucia, Bahamas, Curaçao, Grenada, and Jamaica. By giving a couple of hours of trip time to take part in unique coral restoration applications, they’re going dwelling with one of the vital participating first traces to a journey story you possibly can think about: I turned a coral gardener within the Caribbean Sea.
The story of a Sandals coral gardener is a narrative that may stay past dinner speak and into perpetuity. Each piece of planted coral will develop right into a more healthy habitat for marine life. It can defend coastlines and develop into a part of the underwater attract of the Caribbean.
Sandals friends can say, “I had a hand in that.”
“The well being of the Caribbean begins with our ocean,” says Sandals Resorts Worldwide Govt Chairman Adam Stewart. “And there’s no higher approach to make a distinction than by inviting Sandals friends to be proactive individuals.”
Ultimately rely, Sandals friends and native underwater gardeners have collaborated to transplant over 37,000 coral fragments by means of applications led by the Sandals Basis and its companions. Many friends have arrived at Sandals as novice divers, taken coral restoration speciality programs, after which immersed themselves into an unforgettable gardening expertise.
So come nearer. Discover the reefs turning into extra vibrant, the fish turning into extra plentiful, and communities turning into extra self-sustainable. Dive into this perpetual cycle of Caribbean goodness. And when you’re at it, construct an ever-growing legacy within the ocean.
Saint Lucia
Welcome to the island the place the coral nursery transplanting program involving Sandals friends began. Since 2018, greater than 16,000 coral fragments have been outplanted simply round Saint Lucia. The advantages are unattainable to calculate.
“To maximise the impression of this program, we depend on the participation of Sandals friends,” says Newton Eristhee, operations director of the Heart for Livelihoods, Ecosystems, Vitality, Adaptation, and Resilience (CLEAR).
Company from all three Sandals resorts on the island — Sandals Halcyon, Sandals Regency La Toc, and Sandals Grande Saint Lucian — study restoration strategies by means of the Coral Nursery Transplanting Specialty, a PADI distinctive specialty. Then, collectively, all of them enter the ocean to get their arms moist within the gardens.
“By serving to us improve the reefs,” Eristhee says, “Sandals friends are serving to to reinforce lives within the Caribbean.”
The enhancing has no finish as a result of the first-hand expertise powers a cycle referred to as a “sustainable financing mechanism.” All funds return into the coral gardening program, permitting the identical licensed divers who practice Sandals friends to coach others in Saint Lucia. Coral gardening expertise then develop to cowl extra of the island and ocean. Already, there’s a coral nursery as far south as the long-lasting Pitons and shortly divers in Saint Lucia will launch a Snorkel Path to showcase how coral fragments transplanted by Sandals friends have flourished into magnificent fashions of well being.
The Bahamas
Colourful reefs have introduced notoriety to The Bahamas for hundreds of years, however younger forests of coral sprouting close to Sandals Royal Bahamian are totally different, these sit alongside coral nursery timber off the resort’s coast. They’re a spectacle-in-progress and the results of a brand new Reef Rescue Community website from the Perry Institute for Marine Sciences, supported by the Sandals Basis and managed by the women and men of the Sandals Royal Bahamian water sports activities crew.
Resort friends can descend into the ocean alongside members of Sandals’ PADI-trained crew and take the brand new Reef Rescue Diver Specialty Course. Throughout the dives, friends first learn to keep coral nurseries earlier than really transplanting corals from nursery to reef.
The primary timber within the nursery, established barely a 12 months in the past, are already thriving with tons of of elkhorn and staghorn coral fragments. Because the fragments develop, so does the well-being of the ocean and the legacies of Sandals friends who now have a wholly new place to marvel — completely celebrating the 2025 United Nation’s World Oceans Day theme, Marvel: Sustaining What Sustains Us.
Curaçao
With over 70 dive websites spanning the coast of Curaçao, there may be infinite magnificence to discover, and now, because of the Sandals Basis, to protect and defend. The Sandals Royal Curaçao dive store crew and the Sandals Basis are collaborating with the BRANCH Coral Basis and have already distributed 5 coral timber, every of them budding with 80 fragments of staghorn coral. The aim is to outplant 300 fragments each six months till they cowl 100 sq. meters of reef.
Resort dive crew members will likely be caretakers of the coral fragements, which can ultimately equip them to information resort friends in coral gardening strategies. It’s necessary to notice that the brand new coral will develop unencumbered, thanks largely to the Future Goals program. The challenge, which removes plastic particles from the ocean and its shores, is repurposed into soccer targets for Curaçao’s faculties making and distributing over 60 targets during the last three years.
Grenada
Extra beautification is actively underway on the southern finish of the Caribbean Ocean, the place individuals dwelling close to [Grenada’s]https://www.sandals.com/grenada/) seashores have gotten coral-gardening ambassadors. Their consciousness and expertise have been elevated when the Sandals Basis teamed up with the Grenada Coral Reef Basis to offer much-needed coral gardening gear.
“Households have lived right here for generations, however eyes are simply now being opened to the generational significance of reef restoration,” says Deleon Forrester of the Sandals Basis. “Sharing this apply with our neighbors throughout the island has made all of the distinction, they’ve one thing crucial: neighborhood belief. That’s how we will get issues executed.”
Jamaica
If you come to the unique dwelling of Sandals: Jamaica 1000’s of coral fragments are in some stage of development off the coast of Boscobel to the north and Whitehouse to the south. The quantity is consistently rising as a result of divers from the encircling communities are actively gardening day by day.
The reefs have undergone a miraculous transformation because the Sandals Basis appealed to fishermen in these areas to be the change makers by sharing the advantages of treating the reef as a part of a fish sanctuary.
“Earlier than the inspiration got here, the reef was beginning to lose its sparkle” says a fisherman, Terrell, who would develop into a full-time Sandals Basis ambassador. “They listened to our issues as fishermen.”
The water at Boscobel and Whitehouse is now beaming with life.
“It’s due to Sandals,” Terrell says.
And that takes us again to the place the perfect trip ever continues. You’ve spent a morning tending a coral backyard. You’ve made the ocean more healthy. After which, happier than you’ve ever been on a visit, you come to your suite with an suave view of the ocean and picture these magical phrases once more: Welcome to the Caribbean.
