Feimster Fever: Diving the Maldives

On the beach in the Maldives

Our recent SCUBA liveaboard trip to the Maldives with our friends Stephanie and Micah was certainly the best diving we’ve enjoyed yet! We booked on the Ocean Dancer Maldives for a week of tough, but very rewarding dives. I’ll follow up this post with one just about Ocean Dancer (it was incredible!) but this post is just going to focus on the diving.

The Maldives are a long archipelago of circular reefs. Some reefs are very shallow, making the Maldives the number one place for snorkeling in the world. It also creates some very unique diving conditions.

A Little Maldivian Dive Lingo

To understand what we experienced, I’ll give you a little vocabulary lesson in Maldivian. The whole archipelago is divided into smaller groups of islands called “atolls”. We dove in two different atolls during our vacation – Male and Ari. There were three different types of dives we did.

A “thila” (tee-la) dive examined a freestanding underwater “mountain” that usually started around 100 ft and peaked anywhere between 45 and 15 ft under the surface. Usually the thilas had a strong current from one direction, so we would attempt to descend near the front of the thila (to see all the big tunas, sharks and schools of fish) then go with the current to the other side of the mountain, using it as a barrier to the current. A few dives had VERY strong current, where others were milder, but overall these dives had some kind of current to deal with. Very good practice for controlling your air use or using a reef hook (which I wish we’d had!) – more than once I found myself sucking down air while fighting the current. I will definitely do some cardio lung capacity workouts before our next dive trip!

Snorkeling after the whale shark! (Dan, Me top center, Steph right)

The second kind of dive was a “faru” (fah-roo) dive or “house reef”. These reefs were usually right off of an island. These were usually pretty easy dives. Some had just enough current to drift you along with little effort, but you could still stop and examine things without feeling like you were working too hard. We saw all kinds of small critters and a number of sea turtles and moray eels on these dives. They were some of my favorites!

The Gang! Dan, Heather, Stephanie & Micah

The third kind of dive we did (which I don’t remember the name of) was what I will call a “wall” dive. These were the reefs that created the outer edge of the ringed reefs that make up each atoll. They usually had a medium current moving in and out of the ring of reef (depending on the time of day). These dives featured some amazing large animals on the ocean side and beautiful fan coral forests.

Probably the most notable thing of the whole trip is the unbelievable array of animals we saw while diving. Luckily, we had some great friends on the trip with us that had underwater cameras, so I’ll try to give each one credit for their own photos (and let me know if I’d given the credit to the wrong person!).

Giants of the Maldives

Of all the amazing fish, eels, nudibranchs and coral, there is very little that can top the Giant Manta Rays and the whale sharks! First, the Mantas…there is so much to say and yet I still find myself speechless when I think about my first sighting with them.

Manta Prima Donnas

Photo Credit: Steph Sperling

We had descended and were crawling along the reef wall, inching our way to the Manta “cleaning station” – where Mantas are known to frequent to be cleaned by the dozens of cleaning fish species. This was only our fifth dive of the trip, and it had some tricky currents, so I was sticking pretty close to the dive master. At one point he shook his clanger, and pointed behind me (to the open ocean). When I turned, I literally lost my grip and just stared – I’m pretty sure I even stopped breathing for a few seconds! The Manta was so huge I couldn’t see the whole thing in one field of vision – it was probably about 10 feet away and I couldn’t take it all in from tip to tale in one glance. More than its enormous size, it looked like it was just floating along in the current, just like how a bird glides in the breeze. But this was no bird – it was a regal creature that I’m sure would have demanded only whispers in its presence if we could have spoke at all.

Photo Credit: Steph Sperling

Finally the dive master clanged again and I had to fight the current to get back to the wall – I had drifted out about 20 feet during my daze. We crawled along and finally came to the cleaning station. What followed was 40 minutes of the most amazing ballet that I think nature can create. At least 2, maybe 3, different Mantas just kept swooping in to enjoy the cleaning. It was like an underwater giant dance. I had the song “Primadonna” from The Phantom of the Opera playing in my head the whole time. I will never forget the way they would float just a foot above our heads and over seven of us at a time – our dive master told us our bubbles make them “funny”. Whatever they do, it was just an incredible experience! At one point, I remember looking up and seeing two Mantas dancing together and as my eyes wandered, I noticed the schools of Oriental Sweetlips hovering in front of us (less than a foot!) and then watched a sea turtle wander over and down the wall in between us. It was a moment I will remember forever.

Whale Shark Scramble!


That's Steph at the top! (Photo Credit: Greg Hoberg)

The whale sharks were a very different story. Where the Manta sighting was this quiet, graceful, regal moment, whale sharks are a little more elusive. We weren’t able to just descend and creep up on them. In fact, we didn’t dive with them at all – we drove around in the boat until our amazing dive master and boat owner would spot one of the giants in the shallows (like 40-60 feet). They would yell, “Whale Shark!” and we’d all scramble to throw on our booties, fins and grab our mask and snorkel as the boat would circle around. We’d perch ourselves on the outsides of the boat until we saw which way they were pointing, then we’d launch ourselves into the blue. After that, it was a kicking and swimming frenzy – I would just follow the person’s fin bubbles in front of me and try to keep up! (Here is reason number two for the note about doing some cardio training before the next dive).

Photo Credit: Steph Sperling

Because our dive master and boat owner were incredible at tracking the animals, we were usually the first group to catch up to the massive animal. Then we would swim with them until they sped up and into the deep. We were able to swim with three different ones, varying in size from 20 ft (basically a Ford Explorer) to 35-40 feet (more like a school bus). At one point the shark was relatively shallow, only about 8 feet below the surface, so I got up to the front of it and free dove down until I was even with the beast. Until that point that I was even with it, I was not aware of just how enormous it was. Once I was level with it, and it blinked its headlight of an eye at me, I had a shudder of just how miniscule I was!

Greg taking the pic of Steph (Photo Credit: Steph Sperling)

While my personal experiences were pretty incredible, I was only ever able to swim with the sharks for about 10-15 minutes at a time. Because Dan didn’t join us on our dive that day, he and a few others that stayed on the boat, continued to search for the sharks while we were under. They found a giant one and swam with it for over half an hour! Overall, the immense size of these creatures is such a humbling experience. I feel very lucky.

The Rest of the Sea Life

Now, while the Mantas and Whale Sharks were pretty incredible, the sheer amount of fish on any dive was enough to put me into diver heaven. More than once, I would look up toward the top of the reef, and just float in awe of the thousands of fish in schools of varying colors all over the reef. One particular time, there were large schools of black fish about 6 feet above the reef. Then there were schools of silver and blue fusilier right about 3 feet above the coral. After that, I noticed some beautiful red and orange big eyes hovering about a foot off the coral. And close still, were schools of little teal fish swimming in and around these beautiful orange table corals. It was just magnificent. One of those sights I will remember forever.

As for non-fish creatures, we also saw over a dozen moray eels and reef sharks, sea turtles, two octopus, dozens of kinds of coral (including some of the most amazing soft coral in the world), banded shrimp and nudibranchs (these sweet looking little sea slugs that are only about an inch long). Photos at the end of the post.

Diving Maldives - highly recommended!

Diver Recommendations

Basically – if you are a diver and want a challenging but immensely rewarded dive experience, I highly recommend the Maldives. However, if you don’t like current or more technical dives, this may not be the best for you. I would also note that because of the currents here, I’d recommend some cardio training before you do go. I’d do it all again in a heartbeat!

Here are some photos of the creatures we saw (all photos by Steph Sperling).