Diving in the Maldives

Well, we just got back from the Maldives and of course straight back into study. I wanted to do some sort of reflection piece about the first trimester but really all I can say is that it was so intense that it seems really hard to believe that I have to do it all over again. 3 more times. From all the effort put in, it seems like I should be finished with the course rather than just realistically starting.


Anyway, the Maldives. I managed to get my textbooks out with me, in fact my hand luggage was around 14.5kg with the books and laptop, but luckily no-one weighed it. If you think my entire dive kit and clothes weighed in at 28kg, you can see I was lucky there.

Due to flight schedules we had to spend a day and half in Male', the capital of the Maldives. 80,000 people live here on an island 2 sq km (a quarter of the population on the Maldives). It's only 2m above sea level and in fact the Maldives should be a destination everyone should visit, because thanks to global warming it may not be around for ever. It is rumoured that the president has cut a deal with Australia in exchange for the exclusive fishing rights to the territory should the population need to be re-housed.

Male' itself is very strict Muslim (as are all the Maldives) and is a 'dry' (free of alcohol) island, as well as not allowing the import of booze, pork, religious articles etc. It seems to be a very strange hypocrisy going on as on the resorts you are allowed to wear inappropriate clothing, drink alcohol and eat pork. Then you realise that various people in the government own or part own many of the resorts. Essentially they keep the people in one state through religion and find ways of justifying the dichotomy to themselves to enhance their wealth.

In fact, one thing I didn't know about the Maldives, and I think a lot of visitors don't get to hear about either, is the shocking abuse of human rights that is going on in the country. There is a very interesting website which is well worth reading at http://www.friendsofmaldives.org/fom-about-achievements.htm which gives you an idea of how the president is running the country and it isn't too far off the lines of Myanmar (Burma). There is a campaign (now dormant) to encourage you not to go to the resorts that feeds the governmental party members pockets (and there are a lot of them) and I strongly encourage you to contact the organisation prior to booking any trips to the Maldives to avoid feeding the regimes private interests.

Anyway, I can recommend a trip to Male' to take a look and see what Maldivians look like when they're not bringing you drinks on the beach and how they live their life. It doesn't take too long to look around, we visited the Grand Friday Mosque, the Sultans Gardens, the fish market (Maldivians catch tuna with a rod a line so qualify as being pretty sustainable - hoorah) and we also visited the tetrapod wall which Beatrice was very keen to go and see - I think that she thought it would be some kind of tortoise or something. Pictures from Male' are here.

Anyway, we were really there for the diving, so after a day and a night, we took a seaplane to join the boat. Now, I didn't even know that seaplanes were in involved with this holiday but
I grew up with 'Baileys Bird' and 'Tales of the Ragged Tiger', so you can imagine how excited I was and the experience didn't disappoint. In fact I might have paid extra had I known that seaplanes were involved. The pilot was wearing shorts and in fact, no shoes at all to fly the plane (they clearly like to play up to the image). Landings and takeoffs were very bit as exciting as you might imagine.

I was also very impressed by the boat Beatrice had chosen (though I had suspicions it would be nice as I had dived on a sister boat 'Cyclone' in the Red Sea'). 36m long, with lots of space and a nice standard of fit, even a jacuzzi on the top sun deck (though no-one actually used it the whole week). Some pictures of the boat here (as well as anything else non underwater related). Apologies for the surplus of sunsets, I uploaded them by accident...

I should probably mention that I upgraded my compact camera from the hateful Casio Z-1000 back to the Canon Ixus (the new 860) and also bought the underwater housing. All I can say is it a thing of beauty and joy and should you be looking for a compact camera right now I don't think you could have a better choice.

I find the diving hard to describe. On the one hand we were always (bar one dive) the only boat there, mostly because the boat was visiting uncharted dive sites they had discovered. On the other hand I wasn't blown away by the underwater scenery - the sites are coral thilas or protuberances jutting up from the sea bed. I assume the lack of 'wow' factor is after diving in the South China Sea, especially Sipidan, everything seems a bit mundane - just spoiled I think...

Anyway - there are no lack of photos for all that, so it looks like we did see quite a lot of things (I apologise for (a) the volume - non divers may want to look away now, and (b) to the divers, the fact I haven't had time to colour correct a few of them). Beatrice is busy editing a video of the trip, she was very taken with the underwater videographers on board, so you may get to see sharks and manta that we did see, but the visibility was very poor and so I only took video of those encounters.

One encounter of note was during the night dive, when Joe, one of the dive guides, offered a beer related bounty for any pictures of the Maldivian Sponge Snail. Amazingly, on a dark reef I managed to find not one, but two of them, and apparently mating at that. Joe was very pleased (and so was I in beer related terms). They look a bit like the tetrapods, so maybe that's what Beatrice was hoping for in Male'.

Anyway, apologies for the scrappy report, I just wanted to get it up quickly before the course really started to bite again and another post got left unfinished, so at least you can remember we're still here (somewhere in the world) and see a bit of what we've been up to.