|
British Mensa Travel Special Interest Group |
|
Home Copyright
© |
Maldives
dive guide by John Adams Working on a contract "somewhere in the Pacific" I figured that "somewhere near the Pacific" wouldn't be too far out of the way for a dive trip. More than six hours flying straight south and almost five flying west brings me to the Maldives. On a single dive I saw soaring eagle rays, zipping white tip sharks, hawksbill turtles oblivious to divers, the surprisingly rare tuna, and huge Napoleon wrasse unswerving in their progression along the reef. That's just one of my 33 dives! So, here's my dive review of my first more-than-a-weekend liveaboard on my first trip to the Indian Ocean (or anywhere within about 4,000 miles) and my longest dive trip to date. Where is it? What is it? Why is it? The Maldives (pronounce "dives" as in "gives") is definitely not named for the lack of quality of the diving. It means "many islands" in Dhivehi (yes, that is the local language). Perhaps diving was named after the Maldives.The islands are just west and a little south of the southern tip of India in the Arabian Sea of the Indian Ocean. Opposite side of India from Sri Lanka. To be exact, our southemmost dive was at 3° 13.561N and 73° 25.811E (so says the GPS!). That's just barely north of the equator. The Maldives actually extend south of the equator as well. The Dhivehi word for an administrative district is "atholhu" giving us the English word "atoll". This is the epitome of the coral atoll. 1192 "official" islands and thousands more bits of land at low tide.The 26 atolls span 754 km by 118 km, but the actual land area is only 298 sq. km. No hills, no rivers, no land more than ten feet above sea level. Just a tiny bit of global warming/ice cap melting and they're gone! Charles Darwin never came here, but in 1837 presented his now-accepted theory that coral atolls develop atop sinking volcanoes, going up as the volcanoes go down. This was not proven until 1947 during drilling in preparation for atomic weapon testing in the Marshall Islands. Some shallow-water coral formations were almost a mile deep! Coral atolls are rounded or oval-shaped rings of coral barrier and islands - 2 to 155 km across in the Maldives. The inside is mostly sandy bottom with less dramatic spots of coral. The lack of water movement (and food!) inside the atoll creates a quiet area - not as much to see, but a great place to anchor a liveaboard. A breach in the perimeter of an atoll is called a "kandu". Most diving is done in these channels that are kept open by the strong current and water/sand erosion resulting from tides and ocean currents. The other kind of diving is on a "thila" or submerged coral formation. A typical dive in the Maldives starts with a descent and drift dive on a kandu and finishes poking around in a thila. We spent ten days on the Madivaru 7. Occasional sightings of the Madivaru 3 prove that they didn't sink the first six (at least not all of them!). This is a luxurious floating hotel built in 1996 in the Maldives (cheap labour) at a cost of one million dollars (expensive wood). All Southeast Asian teak, it was designed for the Maldivian style of SCUBA diving: slipping from atoll to atoll and anchoring inside.The 100-foot boat features eight air-conditioned double cabins with "ensuite facilities" (private bath), a large public area inside, enough covered deck space for everyone, and lots of uncovered deck space for the melanoma-inspired. The enormous quantity of wood gives the boat the warm feel of a private living room instead of the cold metal military feel of many dive boats. It'll take a lot of cheap labour to keep it looking this way. Seafari is the Italian company that markets and operates the Madivaru fleet, named after an island in the South Male Atoll. They are actually owned by a Maldivian. The clientele is mostly Italian, as evidenced by the cuisine and service. Many thanks to divemasters Salvo Cacciola of Italy and Tim Coles of England. They took very good care of us. The Maldivian crew was quite good as well, with special appreciation for the expert dive boat captains and the chef. The food was good and healthy, but a bit monotonous. Every lunch and dinner included pasta, rice, and spicy Indian curry. Rather short on the fresh vegetables. But then, there is not much indigenous produce other than coconut. Fresh fish was often served. The chef would wake up in the morning and start fishing. He was sometimes cleaning fish by the time we were headed out for the second morning dive. Dressed, cooked, and served for lunch. Wonderful! This is one of the poorest countries in the world. The economy is based on fishing, tourism, and shipping. Population is about a quarter-million, with 20% in the capital city of Male (pronounced MAH-lay). The original settlers were probably Dravidian and/or Sinhalese from south India and/or Sri Lanka with a lot of intermarriage with Africans and Arabs. This is an Islamic republic - more Islamic than republic. Sunni sect only. Expect the five calls to prayer in Male, starting an hour before dawn. Polygamy is OK, but most folks just marry and divorce as the mood strikes. Alcohol is not allowed. Everyone smoke Marlboros. Don't expect to find any bars in Male. There were piles of confiscated bottles at the airport. Bags are x-rayed on arrival. I was detained and searched for smuggling myself - failure to declare videotapes. This just wasn't my chance to catch up on Star Trek episodes. Everything must be reviewed for pornographic content. I hear that Cosmopolitan magazine fails this test. Tourists are only allowed at designated tourist spots - segregating the infidels from the believers. There may be alcohol at the resorts, but the rules seem to change. We had alcohol on our liveaboard - $80 for a bottle of vodka. Beer was a more reasonable $3 per can. The diving was incredibly good. Quite unlike anything in my previous experience. But then, I was the relatively inexperienced diver with only 250 dives. Most folks had about 500 dives, some over a thousand, and a couple over two thousand. The other folks had been everywhere I've been and then a lot more. I finally one-upped them with my diving experience in Lake Michigan. No one dives there and the Indo-Pacific. The divers were mostly from around Texas or California, with others coming in from Germany, Korea, and Hawaii - fourteen Americans and one couple from Italy. This is not beginner diving. This is advanced diving. Make no mistake - not for beginners. You must have a computer, be in good cardiovascular condition, control your buoyancy, handle yourself well in current, and be able to swim a couple hundred meters if necessary. It is recommended that you have at least 100 logged dives, some below 100 feet. Everyone had dive computers and made maximum use of them. This is really deep diving. Normally there would only be two dives per day (European style), but Americans want four or five. Now we're getting into some really risky practices with repetitive deep dives over ten days! This wasn't a decompression situation according to my computer, but some folks were redlining and beeping. I'd usually do 5 to 10 minutes at fifteen feet before coming up and sat out a day. We didn't dive off the liveaboard except for a couple of night dives (not too great). We used two "dhonis", the general purpose Maldivian boats used for fishing, ferrying, diving, supplying liveaboards and everything else. About thirty feet long with a large covered area with tank racks and benches with dive gear baskets underneath, these were ideal dive boats. Eight divers per dhoni provided lots of space for gearing up. There were four places to take a giant stride into the water, so we could all hit the current at the same time. These picturesque boats are powered by a three-cylinder engine and operated from a platform in the back. The captain has the left hand on the throttle, the right hand on a manual bilge pump, and steers a big ruddder with his foot Boat rides ranged from five to twenty minutes long. Barely enough time to gear up before we arrived at the dive site. Seas were quite flat all but the last day. Even then it was quite tolerable. Not one person got seasick the entire trip. A typical (ideal) Maldivian drift dive starts in deep water at the outside corner of a kandu (channel) between the outside of the atoll and the centre of the atoll. Timing is critical - the current must be going into the atoll from the outside, not flushing the garbage from the inside. This is important not just for visibility, but so the dive boat can find you in the atoll instead of the Indian Ocean! Sometimes the current is going out. Then you have lower visibility and must stay in a group close to the reef. Currents change with depth and vary with the width of the channel. A few dives we had to haul ourselves along the reef to reach calmer waters. These cuts can be hundreds of feet deep with a lot of current. The dive briefing for one of the early dives instructed us to stay below 125 feet. I pointed out that my dive computer maxed out at 130 feet - too close for safety. We compromised and I went to 119 feet. At 125 feet was a ledge overlooking the entrance to the kandu - the very comer of the barrier reef and the channel. We had to stay near the ledge to avoid the current and not scare off the pelagics (open ocean marine life). It was well worth the effort! That dive we saw eleven eagle rays in formation plus a loner behind the pack. There were also sharks - lots of white tip around four or five feet, and an occasional larger grey shark. On another dive I saw a leopard shark - a very strange and beautiful creature! One dive yielded a large school of circling jacks. Stingrays and sharks were often lying on the sandy bottom of the kandu. After a few minutes at the entrance we move up along the kandu wall towards the center of the atoll. The walls are usually vertical, sometimes sloping a bit, with frequent coral overhangs with fish, morays, clams, and incredible soft corals underneath. Along the way are an enormous number and variety of marine life, changing as we go inside the atoll and the current subsides. Massive schools of rainbowed fusilier move up and down the walls in a solid sheet. This is where we see huge Napoleon wrasses, an occasional friendly hawksbill turtle, many species of butterflyfish, some anemones with the requisite clownfish, an occasional lobster or four, oriental sweetlips, four kinds of moray eels, many kinds of angelfish and parrotfish, frequent lionfish, plus the bizarrely artistic and aptly named Picasso triggerfish. About 75% of all Indo-Pacific reef fish can be found here! The dive ends up inside the atoll on the back side of the barrier reef - usually no current in 25 to 35 feet of water. This is called a "thila" and contains huge numbers of little fish, lots of tridacna clams (the giant ones that eat divers' feet!), a few stingrays, and all manner of coral and little critters in the sand. Great place for macro photography. I saw white-tip sharks on about a quarter of the dives. Whale sharks have also been seen here. Some of our divers say they saw manta rays, but I'm now convinced that these creatures belong in the same category of mythical beings as mermaids. I'll believe in them when they stare me in the face! Almost all early dives are variations of the start deep outside, end shallow inside drifting - a very safe dive profile, but far deeper than typical for American sport divers - not a chance of using dive tables. Afternoon dives start farther inside the channel in shallower water or only cover the thila. The sharks are pretty timid, as usual. The only one that's sometimes a cause for concern is the hammerhead, which is hard to find anyway. If you want to worry about becoming fish food, tangle with the two-foot titan triggerfish. They were nesting at the time we were around and if you got within about 20 feet, they'd come after you with teeth bared! This diving is for hard and soft coral, fish and pelagics during the day. We saw a lot of crustaceans and molluscs, but not much variety. One octopus, a few lobsters, very few crabs, many clams. The night diving was on the sandy bottom of the inner atoll. There was very little life, although unswerving night divers reported lots of crustaceans in some spots. Bring all your lenses and be prepared to change from wide angle to macro in the middle of each dive. If your equipment can't do that, just bring a 12-300 zoom. Visibility ranged from 30 feet to 150 feet, typically around 60 to 80 - it depends a lot on the current. Pelagics like water with lots of plankton. I'm sure that manta ray was just beyond visibility. The dive sites have some colorful, if hard to remember, names. One was Hulidhoodiga Uthura Thila, near Aarah Island in Felidhoo Atoll. One of my favorites was the Ranikan dive site in Hathikolhu Kandu, ofi Rihiveli Island in South Male Atoll. Kodibholi had great soft coral. Foththeyo in Felidhoo Atoll had abundant soft coral and a huge variety of fish and the best visibility (about 150 feet!). Ambara Thila nearby was carpeted with massive numbers of huge anemones with their partners the clownfish. We ended the week with the sharks and eagle rays on Embudhoo Express. Not all the marine critters were sighted during dives. Just sitting on the deck of the Madivaru we twice saw a school of about 200 dolphins passing through the atoll having lunch. Now and then a hawksbill turtle would poke its head above water for a look around. And of course, the inevitable "I think Ijust saw a manta!". The impressive sights extended well above the water, too. Aboard a boat in the Indian Ocean far from civilization with no pollution and very few lights the celestial display is stunning. The Southern Cross, constellations, and planets are the stargazers' equivalent of fish in a barrel. A few minutes reclined in a deck chair yields even satellites and meteors. It's too far south for Hale-Bopp, though. The nightly show often began with stunning sunsets stretching fire across the horizon and ended with sunrises featuring subtly shifting hues of black, grey, blue, orange and red and suddenly yielding to daylight. Liveaboard diving is incredibly comfortable and convenient. Just dive-eat-dive-eat-dive-eat-dive-sleep. Read a little if you want. There is no sand - and no sand fleas! There are no taxis, no group restaurant reservations (and splitting a check for 12) and there's no need to move equipment. No shoes are allowed. Of course, there is one disadvantage: it usually costs $200 to $300 per day. The Maldives is in the middle of that range right now. But expect that to change as the Madivaru 7 is "discovered". Another slight problem with long dive trips: if you have a problem, you can miss a lot of dives! One diver on our trip came up faster than his ear adjusted and ruptured an eardrum. He missed most of the dives. Several others sat out some dives waiting for ears to recover. Take care of your ears - and feet! A few feet required some emergency duct tape - all that swimming made some blisters. Wear your socks. One more warning: beware the noontime sun on Easter Sunday at the Equator. One diver was out on deck without sunblock talking to the divemaster. He said it was only for ten minutes, but he certainly was red! This is not a common destination for American travellers. Visitors from Australasia, the Americas, and Africa made up only 2.7% of all tourists in 1991. Most are Germans, Italians, and a few British. The Japanese just recently discovered this part of the world. 90% of all visitors stay on resort islands. 90% are divers.Warning: some of the resorts are very crowded with variable facilities and service. The nicer ones are run by the Italians. If you're fussy about your food, go diving with the Italians, not the British. If you want the cheapest alcohol, follow the British. Electricity is 220v with British plugs, although the boat also had 110v with the round European plug. Just bring all your transformers and adapters. A large, thin bath sheet to double as a light blanket is quite useful. I thought the best diving was on South Male atoll, not too far from the international airport at the capital of Male. An easy hop by air taxi - use the seaplanes, not the Russian helicopters.Take a "scuba sausage", or "parachute" as they are called here. This is a long tube you can inflate with air so the dive boat can find you. Watch out for the seasons. Sometimes it never rains and sometimes it always rains. We had one day of rain out of ten - plus a couple of short showers. It seems that February and March are the best months for diving. It's shorter to go across the Atlantic through the Middle East, but cheaper to go across the Pacific through Singapore. I booked the trip through Island Dreams, owned by SCUBA SIG founder Ken Knezick. I've done about fifteen dive trips through Ken, so I'm not too impartial (even though Ken won't pay me to say nice things). It's just really nice to pay Ken to worry so I don't have to. Just about everything went splendidly well. Questions?
Email me at john@adams.org
for opinions or Ken
at info@islandreams.com for info. Check out Ken's Maldives website at
http://www.islandream.com.
For the cyberspatially challenged, call Ken at +1 800/346-6116 or +1 713/973-9300. Copyright © John Adams 1997. Originally published in M-Merse, newsletter of the SCUBA SIG of American Mensa, Ltd., Karen Hale, Editor. Published in VISA issue 27 (winter 1997). Photos to which this article links are Copyright © 2000 Ken Knezick / Island Dreams. |