At last today we have a safari boat with a serviceable engine and although the cast-off time was missed by an hour, movement North is finally a reality and we are underway.  The first job was to inspect our next boat that is on-route to Male to stock and be made ready for us in a few days time.  This was achieved, in good time considering our late start at sea and the delay to diving was limited to 2 hours; an achievement by local standards.

Our first 30 metre dive was on Himmafushi, this was a gentle drift along the outside reef of Lankanfinolhu this is site that you supposed to see Manta’s.  Luck was out this time but the plethora of various sea life was quite outstanding; ll divers gathered the relevant information for the Reef health survey by noting the key indicator species and Hawksbill Turtle decided to follow us for a while.  All divers returned to the dhoni on time and in good health with big smiles on their face, an excellent dive.

 The second dive of the day was at Lola Fushi.  Preceded by a short transit into a rising wind that forced the dhoni to drop back and undermined our hopes for three dives today.  This dive was the first run-out of the team’s reef survey skills and, despite a current of around ¾ kt, some good results were obtained and some useful lessons learned in terms of techniques for future coral surveys.  This was the fifth dive on which fish surveys were conducted in anger and recognition skills of the team are rapidly building.  Star appearances on this dive were White-Tip Reef Sharks, Tawny Nurse Sharks and a Black Blotched Stingray.  For those who wish to know, one can sex sharks by ……….