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Medhufinolhu, North Male Atoll,
Maldives (by
David Cumber) The Maldives, a diving location I have been wishing to visit for years. I had high expectations! Based on Medhufinolhu Island, I visited a few of the numerous dive sites available. Medhufinolhu is in the North Male Atoll in the Maldives. The Maldives is made up of 26 atolls spreading over an area of 754km vertically and 118km wide. There are roughly 1200 hundred islands of, which around 200 are inhabited. You don't travel independently here very easily and most people visiting are on packages. In this sense if you visit there, you may just see the island your resort is on, as you are transported directly there from the airport. But, you can easily visit other resorts and islands on day trips. The service and accommodation on my island was great, it made for a great holiday. This is a place where you could dive for years and never visit the same site. The dive operation on my island had over 40 dive sites, which it visited. These sites were on the North Male Atoll, and only covered about a third of the atoll. The furthest site was around 1 hour away (although special trips were arranged to more distant sites of particular interest i.e. for manta's). So how many dive sites can there be? Well I'm sure no-one's visited them all, even one of our guides who has dived there for years commented about areas that he had not dived yet, on the atoll. I believe that the best way to see this location would be on a liveaboard, allowing you to visit any of the famous sites you want, even on other atolls. They also offer some cool options such as a fly dive package. Sounds crazy...flying and diving, but the flight is on a seaplane skimming the ocean surface and you can visit some very distant and remote reefs this way.
You get currents here! As the dive operations have set times normally for the dives it's a bit of luck if you dive on the slack. Every dive briefing mentioned that the way we would dive the reef would depend on the current, and this would be checked when we arrived on the site. I mention this, as not every diver has experienced drift diving. You will not have a choice here. This is another good reason for a liveaboard, as they may be more flexible in there timings. Water temperature, 27C when I was there, but may get as high as 28-29C. The Maldives was hit as hard as everywhere else was by the El Nino of the late 90's, devastating the coral, when the water temperature was over 30C. Visibility, 10-12M max when I was there, but this was during the low season when vis is at it's worst. Could get up as high as 30-40M. All equipment can be supplied by the dive operations, but if you take your own you my save some money. Most diving courses are offered, from beginners to instructors. Although there are currents here, it's a great place to learn, but it may set your standard for diving quality at quite a high level. If your not diving or qualified, the snorkelling is also fantastic, more details below. The dive sites I visited: Rasfari A gentle slope that is 3-4M at it's peak from the surface, but goes down to 30+M where it becomes a sandy bottom, that runs parallel to an island. In this sandy area there is a couple of raised coral areas, almost like small sea mounts, that were locally referred to as Thila's. These could have strong currents around them, and acted as marine life magnets. Cleaning stations were based here and the big stuff (rays, sharks) can cruise in for a cleaning. On my dive the vis was quite poor for the Maldives, we descended down to around 25M and headed out for one of the Thila's this meant quite a long swim while dangling several meters above the sandy bottom. When we reached the Thila, we could make out a couple of very large Barracuda hanging vertically in the water being cleaned. The dive guide said he saw 3 eagle rays in the blue, but as vis was poor I never saw them. After spending a few minutes on the Thila, we made our way back to the reef on the slope. As we crossed over the sandy bottom, we saw two small white tip reef sharks lying on the bottom. The reef was generally in poor condition, looked as if it was quite stunning before all the bleaching. Scores of blue tooth triggerfish were swarming around the reef. I saw a boxfish, a large spotted puffer fish, a long nose wrasse, and numerous butterfly varieties. A large napoleon wrasse crossed our paths, and then headed of into the blue. As we got into shallow water the current was really starting to pick up. On the safety stop we were flying. I surfaced into what can only be described as a washing machine. Currents were pulling me left and right, spinning me around on the surface. Waves were also breaking over me. Within 5 minutes I was chucked out into much calmer water and bobbed there waiting for the boat. Peak reef
Peak Reef Boduhiti Thila Another slope, with a similar location and layout as Peak reef, but without the overhangs. Didn't think a lot of this dive, may have got it on a bad day. The fish life was okay but not very numerous. The coral was poor. The currents were also a bit wired. Our guide said that at one point the current might change direction, due to a back eddy. If we swam on about 10-15M, we would go through this. Well we headed of along the reef, when we began to swim into the current. The problem was that it didn't change. In fact we ended up coming back on ourselves, covering the same piece of reef. Did see a couple of small white tip reef sharks, a scorpion fish, spotted puffer, and mantis shrimp. We dived at 22M which was the bottom of the reef, and where the sandy bottom continued to slope down into deep water. The current again blew us off the reef on our safety stop. Ihiga A lovely horse shoe bay, with a sandy bottom, surrounded by reef. Had the feeling of an amphitheatre. Would have looked stunning with a pristine reef. There are signs of coral growth, long may it continue. We descended in 5M of water, swam down to the sandy bottom at 22M. There was a white tip reef shark waiting for us at the bottom. There was also a large coral bombie on the sandy bottom, with a couple of green moray eels. As we cruised back up to the reef we went round the corner of the bay. The dive guide had said that on the corners of the bay there could be currents which eagle rays hang in. As if on cue, as we came to the corner, there was an eagle ray. It was within 5M of us at one point, and performed several circles for us to get a good look at him. After he had gone, a napoleon wrasse came to visit us. All the obvious suspects were seen as we cruised along the rest of the reef. Blue tooth trigger fish, puffer fish, several varieties of damselfish. I loved this dive site, and wanted to go back there for my next dive. I didn't, but all was not lost as I then went to Vashimas Thila
Diver on Vashimas Thila Vashimas Thila Excellent. A large sea mount right in the middle of nowhere. I knew I was on to a good thing, when all the instructors from the resort came for a fun dive with us. The top of the mount was around 15-16M, with the sides sloping of to deep water. We descended and took up a position into the small current facing out into the blue. Although there was a current, it was just about right, enough for the big sharks to be cruising in but we had no problem staying on the mount. The guide had chosen a great time to dive it. Even if there was a strong current, there were probably areas on the mount to get down and out of the current. The top of the mount was quite large, about 30M long and wide. So there we waited. As we had descended I had seen a large white tip. It took a couple of minutes, before the first Grey reef shark showed up. There was possibly three in total, but it was hard to be sure. They would sweep in and then disappear into the blue, and then back again. The visibility wasn't good enough to follow them as they went into the blue. We watched for a good 15-20 minutes, before we went round the top of the rest of the sea mount. There was a couple of green moray's, lots of soft green corals, scores of fusiliers. With excellent visibility this would be a fantastic dive as I think there was a lot going on in the blue that we couldn't see. Go there if you can.
The house reef of the island, Reethi Rah reef, was also very good. You can dive it, and night dives were sometimes made on it. But snorkelling it gave you as good a view. The east side of the island was sheltered from any rough sea conditions and current. You can simply wander in of the beach. The water was still only about 1.5M deep around 100 yards offshore, and absolutely crystal clear. Twice in only 1M of water I bumped into a large stingray, feeding on the sandy bottom. Here there was coral outcrops with many types of juvenile triggerfish, such as the picasso triggerfish, damselfish; the odd anemone with it's accompanying fish. The coral had been hit hard, but you could still find the odd patch of staghorn, or a brain coral. At least four different types of butterfly fish, including the long nose variety. Parrotfish, surgeonfish, goatfish, spotted puffer fish, the odd jack and snapper were also cruising about. I also found quite a few morays around here, mainly just the green variety. But one was a whopper. As I was snorkelling around a small bombie in about 2M of water, I noticed the bombie was hollow in the centre, had a look in and saw some soldier fish. Thought that was quite nice, went for a closer look and realised that the reason I couldn't see a sandy bottom through the bombie was because a 8ft moray was culled up inside. He came out as I was above him, giving me a great view of him. The water at this depth has a lot of light penetration and the colours are a lot brighter. I got some photos from this area, which you can see in the photo gallery. As you get a little deeper the bottom starts to slope away to 10+ meters. There was a little current in the deeper water, so do be wary of this. But with the current flowing here I had two eagle rays doing acrobatics directly below me (caught this on video, check out the video gallery). Also had a hawksbill turtle wandering around. On the Northwest side of the island this is also some good snorkelling, that is still quite sheltered. A current flow through here, but the water is so shallow you have no chance of being carried away. It was here that I saw baby black tip reef sharks hunting in the shallow water. You could see these every day, at most times of the day. Also saw a group of squid, several spotted moray's, smaller stingrays. The stingrays can be in the water all round the island in only centimetres of water. I could have spent hour's snorkelling and in fact did. You may feel very waterlogged after a visit here.
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This
is also a slope, but unlike Rasfari, had no visible land above the surface.
It's a flat circular reef with sloping sides (hence a peak where the dive
site gets its name). The top of the reef lied 5-6M below the surface,
with the slopes going off into deep water. Currents can force you over
and on top of the reef if you don't get down to 10+M quickly, where it
runs parallel to the reef. So we descended quickly. The fish life was
everywhere. Large groups of black snapper were hanging in the current.
While large groups of fusiliers were here, there and everywhere
(see photo). The slopes has lots of small overhangs (I wouldn't call them
caves), you could get down below these to get out of the current. This
also sheltered the lionfish I saw. Amongst other fish I saw included
clown trigger fish, boxfish, emperor angelfish and
parrot fish. There were also numerous green soft coral and
the odd large sea fan collecting nutrients from the current. This
was a really nice dive site, and on slack tide would be great to investigate
all the overhangs. But we were moving quite fast, and staying in one place
was hard work. As we went towards shallow water, the reef was beginning
to end. On our safety stop we were blown off the reef and made an ascent
in blue water. A dive site I would recommend and would like to dive again.
