Maldives 2022 by Richard and Sarah Deal

We recently returned from the Maldives with a tour that included a week liveaboard and a week on an atoll with its own home reef.

The whole trip was organised through John Spencer-Ades of The Scuba Place and we had a super luxury boat with a pilot boat that kept all the dive gear and allowed us considerable space. We toured both the north and south atolls and saw many Nurse Sharks, Reef Sharks, rays and huge shoals of a wide variety of fish. We saw large pods of dolphins from the boat, however they are shy of humans and whilst we heard them, we never actually saw them underwater.

One wonderful experience was a snow storm of small flashing tiny specks which turned out to be fish scales following a kill!

The atoll was about a 45 minute walk around and reached by sea plane. Some wonderful diving was experienced and a super good home team in the island.

Water temp was a balmy 28°C and the viz was excellent; currents were occasionally quite strong and we had to use reef hooks to hold various positions, they are essential when observing the cleaning stations and for taking a breather. We dived on Nitrox and at depths of 20-35m although a wall dive did push us down to 35m on one occasion. The boat was 3 dives a day, and one night dive in amongst 150 nurse sharks.

The greatest experience was a whale shark, we swam with the gentle giant.  The only disappointment was no Manta ray sightings, but Marble and Mobular rays were plentiful, some quite large. We also saw some very big Moray eels, on one occasion one swimming outside it’s hide. 

The Maldives really is a quite spectacular dive destination.