The boat and food, Diving
and Photos
The big reason we wanted to dive in Maldives in Jan/Feb was to see whale sharks.
The chances are better, I think, on a liveaboard.
We flew into Male after midnight of Jan 6, and were on board
Happy days at approx 2:30am. The lone crew awake pointed to the dive-board:
check out dive at 6am: we gave that one a miss.
About the boat and food:
It is fairly large, with capacity for 20 divers. This week there were ten: three
Swiss couples, Kitty and me, and a Spanish couple Javier and Vanessa. On the
boat, the Swiss usually hung out together, while we were happy to spend most of
our time chatting with the Spaniards. The boat is run by the enigmatic
manager/captain/part-owner Ibrahim, a character straight out of a Maugham story.
The food was fairly good, every meal had a pasta as well as some local dishes,
plus a few salads and fried veggies, dessert and fruit.
About the
Diving:
Most dives were characterized by strong currents, visibility from 15-20m, water
at 24-28 C (3mm full suits), tons of plankton. Not the best conditions for
photography, but almost every dive brought big fish like sharks and tuna, plus
turtles. There isn't much colorful soft coral, but several types of hard coral.
There is much coral bleaching, and tons of broken coral. The lack of coral
colors is made up by the sheer density of fishes -- more than any other place I
have dived.
We had one DM (Hassan) with ten divers; usually the Swiss group stayed close to
him, Kitty and I lagged 20-40m behind, depending on what we were photographing,
and the Spaniards were off chasing sharks, periodically intersecting our path. I
don't keep dive logs, so I'll just list the itinerary we made:
Day 1, Dive 1.
Banana Reef, N. Male. [fish soup; many large moray
eels; lots of broken hard coral]
Day 1, Dive 2. Furana Out (Full moon), N Male.
[white tip sharks, turtles, red-tooth triggerfish]
Day 2, Dive 1. Manta point, north of Paradise
Island in N Male. [no mantas; lobsters, turtles,
clown triggerfish]
Day 2, Dive 2. Enboodu Kandu, S Male. [White tip
sharks @ 34m, moray eels]; hi-speed drift at 15m.
Day 2, Dive 3. Gulhi corner, S Male. [Strong
currents; yellow-fin tuna, sharks, turtles]
Day 3, Dive 1. Kudagiri wreck, S Male. [wreck is
rather bare -- no coral; lots of small fish; easy dive].
Day 3, Dive 2. Kandooma Thila, S Male. [strong
currents; lots of soft coral, colorful. shark, turtle, small fish]
Day 3, Dive 3. Guraidhoo reef, S Male. [~1 Km long
reef, high-speed drift one end to other].
Day 4, Dive 1. Guraidhoo Kandu, S Male. [ white
tips and Grey shark, Napoleon wrasse, snake at safety stop]
-- 5 hour sail South Ari atoll.
Day 4, Dive 2. Buli Thila, S Ari. [large Sting ray,
sharks].
Day 5, Dive 1. Dhigurah Thila, S Ari. [Long thila,
no currents, easy dive, lots of small, big fish]
-- 2 hours spent cruising for Whale sharks. There were 4-5 liveaboards, all
moving slowly up and down along the reef edge (Sun Island resort area). If a
whale shark is spotted, 30-40 people from the boats jump in the water, and swim
madly in the hope of getting a view of the gentle beast. First one sighted, only
Javier could swim fast enough to get a glimpse. An hour later, a second one was
sighted, and Happy days sped to the spot. We all jumped in, and most of our
group, except me, saw this one.
Day 5, Dive 2. Maamigili Out, S Ari. [no currents,
Leopard shark, white tips, millions of glass fish]
Day 5, Dive 3 (night). Dhigurah Arches, S Ari.
[nice and simple; moray eels, large puffer].
Day 6, Dive 1. Kudarah Thila. [Best dive of the
trip; millions of colorful fish, sharks, tuna].
-- 5 hour haul back to Male.
There was one more dive in Male, but we had to sit out, since we fly back late
that night (3 am).
About the photos:
I'd been itching to upgrade from my trusty old Oly C5050. After much
vacillating, I decided to get the new Canon G7 and the
Canon WP-DC11 housing. I
got it the day before we left, but the user guide was in Chinese; so I shot mostly
in 'P' mode. I used it with my Inon
Z220s strobe on slave -- external strobe is a must for this housing: the long
nose that accommodates the zoom lens also blocks the camera's flash from
illuminating the lower left quarter of any image. Over the next couple of trips, I'll find out how
good this camera is. This time, neither the dive conditions (plankton,
currents), nor my level of familiarity with the camera were optimum. Kitty used
her Canon S80, in the Canon
WP-DC1 housing, but took only a few photos.
The thumbnails
below are linked to larger photos; the file name indicates which camera was
used. The photos were edited
(sometimes a lot) using Photoshop-Elements.
