Best of the Maldives: Whale Shark Odds – Holiday Island

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Holiday Island whale shark sightings

Perhaps the ultimate underwater treasure in the Maldives is a whale shark sighting. Most of the time, the biggest animal that you can see there. And a paragon gentle-giant docility and prehistoric charm. And number of spots are known hang outs for these elusive creatures who spend their lives in the depths unless they are feeding. Those locations (eg. Dhidhdhoo, Hanifru) are all protected by the Maldives as Marine Sanctuaries. While they are more prevalent in these places (and at certain times of the year), there are never any guarantees when it comes to mother nature.

The resort dive centre, Dive Oceanus, keeps and publishes detailed data on whale shark sightings (see above) which can also help to focus one’s holiday timing and planning for the highest incidence and probability as well.

I have to confess that Lori and I were tinged with a touch of disappointment when our whale shark excursion this summer came up empty. Most South Ari resorts offer such excursions, but on specific days. If you really are obsessed with sighting one and want the highest odds possible, then Holiday Island (also located within the Dhidhdhoo Marine Sanctuary) offers daily excursions. They will even add extra trips for people if they request it. It might mean a lot of event-less boat rides for your holiday. But at least you will have given the effort you all. And the beautiful Maldives seascape makes for dazzling scenery as a consolation prize.

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Best of the Maldives: Seahorses – Kuredu

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Kuredu sea grass

The Queen has been such a supporter of of all of the June Jubilee activities including rocking out at the Buckingham Palace Concert which is probably not her dream Saturday night out. Rather, one’s favourite day in June is most definitely Ladies Day at Ascot today such is her love of all things horses. And ‘horses’ in the Maldives are a bit fabled and mystical creatures themselves…sea horses that is.

It indeed exciting to see the big game of snorkel safaris (and diving). But sometimes it is just as exciting and curious to uncover the tiny creatures. A baby manta, nudibranches, leaf fish. Perhaps the most enchanting and illusive is the Sea Horse.

Sea Horses are indigenous around the world including the Indian Ocean, mostly prominently Hippocampus borboniensis, dubbed ‘Réunion seahorse’ for its prevalence in this Maldive neighbour. I have asked many a dive master and no one has ever recalled seeing one or hearing reports of any. In fact, the TripAdvisor Forum on the Maldives posed this question last year and none of the Maldives veterans and experts had ever heard of a sea horse sighting.

Part of the issue is that sea horses live in sea grass which is not that common in the sand-bottomed lagoons and reefs prevalent in the Maldives. One resort which does feature sea grass is Kuredu (see photo above) and, lo and behold, they have reported sighting sea horses a few years ago. So if you want to start a holy grail hunt for these unicorns of the shallows, then start at Kuredu. Still, a bit of a long shot…or ‘dark horse’ if you will.

 

Seahorse

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Best of the Maldives: Longest House Reef – Soneva Fushi

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Soneva Fushi house reef

If instead of endless diving, you want to do endless house reef snorkelling, then Soneva Fushi is your best bet. It has the longest house reef in the Maldives and a fine one at that. Over a kilometre and a half (nearly a mile long) of aquatic scenery. And when you finish that you have the same on the other side.

Marathon snorkelling!

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Best of the Maldives: Baby Turtles – Four Seasons Kuda Huraa

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Four Seasons Kuda Huraa Nargis Fakhri turtle

A real ‘Born Free’ story in the Maldives are the turtle nurseries that a few resorts support. Our family delighted at the nursery tank that Filtheyo had and visiting it fostered our daughter Isley’s love of turtles and her adoption of them as her favourite creature to this day. But, Four Seasons Kuda Huraa have taken a page from their sister resort of Landaa Giraavaru to creative a comprehensive turtle conversation programme around their newly launched nursery and discovery center.

Kuredu may be the destination for big, monster turtles in the wild. But at the complete other end of the spectrum, Kuda Huraa is now the place to experience these charming critters up close and personal in their infancy. Taking a page from their sister resort’s (Four Seasons Landaa Giraavaru) stunning Marine Discovery Centre which focuses on Mantas and Anenome Fish, Kuda Huraa has opened a comparable centre but with a focus on turtles…

“Five of the world’s seven species of sea turtles live in the Maldives, and two of these are regularly seen. The critically endangered hawksbill turtle lives on coral reefs, while the endangered green turtle feeds on seagrass, keeping the seabed healthy and productive. The Resort’s Kuda Velaa (‘Little Turtles’) Protection Programme works with island communities across the Maldives to increase awareness of turtle conservation and protect nests from poachers. The project also gives endangered green turtles a head start in life by rearing a select number of hatchlings from protected nests for up to 15 months to improve their chance of survival in the wild. For the first nine months they are kept in land-based pools before they are relocated to larger enclosures in the lagoon where they will start to forage for themselves on sea grasses, adapting them to the wild. Guests can attend daily turtle feeding sessions to learn more about Kuda Huraa’s most delicate little residents.”

Not just kids are enthralled by these terrapin tolders. In fact, this month’s Harper Bazaar features international model and actress Nargis Fakhri posing with them (see photo above) in her shoot there…

“’It’s awe-inspiring; I feel like I’m in the middle of nowhere,’ she says. Her favourite part of the Four Seasons Maldives at Kuda Huraa is the children’s activities section. She’s also thrilled about shooting with turtles, something that the Bazaar team has captured in this shoot.”

Four Seasons Kuda Huraa turtle

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Best of the Maldives: Dolphins – Rihiveli Beach

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Rihiveli Beach dolphins

The best free divers in the ocean are our aquatic cousins the cetaceans. As I said yesterday, that’s not ‘free diving’ as in ‘free beer’. Nor is it as in ‘born free’. But in Rihiveli Beach it is. Rihiveli have their own resident dolphin pod in their lagoon.

‘Swimming with dolphins’ is one of those magical experiences that are regularly found a top people’s bucket lists. So popular that an industry is growing quite lucratively to provide dolphin swimming experiences. Some of these are tracking dolphin pods down to jump in the water and snorkelling with them. We tried one of these excursions in Mauritius and the dolphins seemed quite bored with our presence and simply kept their distance. Because of the dolphins independent mindedness, another popular alternative is swimming with dolphins in captivity. Either in large swimming pools or enclosed ocean spaces. The Maldives has approved a Dolphin Lagoon, the website for which was launched yesterday.

Such a facility has stirred, and always does, much debate about the ‘zoo issue’. The arguments essentially boil down as follows. Opponents say it is inhumane and immoral to extract creatures from their natural habitat and stress them with confinement purely for our entertainment. Proponents say that such facilities allow people to connect with these creatures they normally would not get a chance to encounter which in turns build financial and political support for environmental causes which in turn enhances the lives of the entire animal kingdom. I personally line up on the proponent side. Of course, I am all in favour of regulation and oversight to ensure that the animals’ captivity is as healthy and comfortable as possible. But in our increasingly virtual, urbanized, manufactured world, the more voters (especially powerful ones who take posh holidays) and walking pocketbooks (especially affluent ones who do the same) who have the chance to be enchanted by these whimsical creatures, the better the prospects for their species overall.

But if you want see the ‘born free’ diving version, then Rihiveli is your resort.

(Thanks Francisco)

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Best of the Maldives: Coral – Park Hyatt Hadahaa

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Tim Godfrey Gaafu Alifu cave

If the underwater stars that dazzle you are star fish, starlets and feather stars, then Park Hyatt Hadahaa is the place to swim to and at.

Adrian Neville tweeted last week, “Park Hyatt house reef, the best corals of any resort bar none. But oddly the fish life is as quiet as life on the island.”

Not much better authority than Adrian Neville. And he’s just finished latest research for his upcoming edition of his must-have book on Maldives resorts ‘Resorts of the Maldives’. Check out his Twitter stream for 140-character advance tidbits.

Hadahaa is in the Gaafu Alifu atoll which Harwood and Bryning’s book “Complete Guide to Diving and Snorkeling the Maldives” describes as “The coral reefs inside the atoll are in great condition and a marvel to dive and snorkel” (see picture above).

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Best of Maldives – Fish Breeding – Four Seasons Landaa Giraavaru

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Clarks Anemonefish juvenile

Question: For those who have been paying attention this past week, what is this a picture of?

Answer: Now that is a Nemo fish! I know because it has the three white stripes!

[Soundeffect]: Buzzzz! Wrong. Actually, the Maldive species ‘Amphiprion clarkii’ has three white stripes when they are young, but as they mature they turn a dark-brown/blackish colour.

Whatever you want to call them, one of the best places to see Anemonefish is Four Seasons Landaa Giravaru. Not just Anemonefish in general, but specifically the babies as their Marine Discovery Center has a breeding research project underway. One downside to the popularity of the Disney film is the popularity of capturing ‘Nemo’ fish for fish tanks. Landaa hopes to be able to improve breeding knowledge to both stock the ocean and to provide an alternative source of supply for fish tanks so they won’t be hunted from the reefs.

If you thought that Anemonefish were cute, the babies are all more the cuter. I couldn’t get my wife out of the Center she was so entranced watching them dart in and out of their host anemones in an incessant tease of pseudo-hide-and-seek. And not just the anemonefish, but the anemones themselves provided a bit of action. You could see them in all different positions all over the tanks. Resident marine biologist Harry Masefield (see photo below) explained that the anemones were quite active and often tried to escape from the tanks by crawling out the top and so they had to devise all sorts of guards. With their swaying tendril-like arms they seem more like colourful vegetation than the quite animated animals that they are.

Four Seasons Landaa Giraavaru Marine Discovery Center anemonefish tank

Four Seasons Landaa Giraavaru Marine Discovery Center anemonefish

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Maldives QI, Part 1

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Stephen Fry QI

In honour of Stephen Fry’s brilliant QI (short for ‘Quite Interesting’) TV comedy quiz show returning to BBC this weekend, we feature a couple of Maldives QI questions of our own…

Maldives Clown Fish

Question:  What common, colourful fish in the Maldives is this a picture of?

Answer #1:  A ‘Nemo’ Fish.?

[Sound effect]: Buzzzz! Wrong. The character ‘Nemo’ in Disney’s film ‘Finding Nemo’ had three white stripes as a opposed to the single one shown above.

Nemo

Answer #2: A Clown Fish.

[Soundeffect]: Buzzzz! Wrong. You are close in that the term ‘clown fish’ is often applied to all members of the family of ‘Anemonefish’, but not all Anemonefish are really clown fish including this specimen.

Anemonefish are from the subfamily Amphiprioninae in the family Pomacentridae and only one specific species of Anemonefish, Amphiprion ocellaris, is actually designated the ‘Clown Anemonefish’. The fish shown at top is really a ‘Amphiprion nigripes’, also known as a ‘Maldive anemonefish’.  With its cousin ‘Amphiprion clarkii’ (also known as ‘Clark’s anemonefish’ or the ‘Yellowtail clownfish’), they are the two species of Anemonefish (out of 27 that exist worldwide) found in the Maldive waters.

As it happens, a number of Anemonfish have also been dubbed ‘Clownfish’ in their informal names such as Amphiprion perideraion (Pink skunk clownfish) and the Amphiprion melanopus (Fire or Cinnamon clownfish) as well as obviously ‘Clark’s which I said is known as the ‘Yellowtail Clownfish’. But not this species here. Even Wikipedia describes the terms ‘Clownfish’ and ‘Anemonefish’ as interchangeable, but now you know the real distinctions.

Thanks to Sarah Kompatscher, Marine Biologist at Anantara, and Verena Wiesbauer Ali, Marine Biologist for Kurumba.

Clown Anemonefish

Proper ‘Nemo’ or ‘Clown Anemonefish’

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Best of the Maldives: Nurse Sharks – Dhiggiri

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Nurse Shark

These creatures should get an endorsement contract with ‘Night Nurse’, the cold medication to help you sleep. It seems all these Nurse Sharks do is sleep. During the daytime when most dives occur that is.

My wife Lori got to see a couple of them diving Furana Thila from Kurumba. Her log book notes…

“Highlight of the dive was a young nurse shark resting in a shallow cave approximately 1.5 metres long. The mother is often there, but not this time. Saw another resting on the sandy bottom.”

Nurse sharks can be found through out the Maldives. They like caves where they can sleep during the day time. My nomination for the top place to see them is Fulidhoo Caves near Dhiggiri. According to Tim Godfrey’s book on Maldives diving, Fulidhoo Caves is one of 4 cave sites meriting the top 3-stars marks in his ratings and a great place for Nurse Sharks…

“The reef slopes from there to 50 metres with caves and overhangs ranging on depth between 25 and 40 metres. The most interesting feature of this dive are the nurse sharks sleeping in the caves.”

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Best of the Maldives: Fish Frenzy – Velassaru

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Velassaru fish in lagoon

A perfectly tranquil lake-like ocean with shimmering shades of mottled blue…then suddenly it erupts with a hundred tiny splashes. What the…?

This is fish hunting. Big fish going after little fish. The little fish congregate in big schools for some sort of anonymity in numbers, but it only seems to concentrate the opportunity for the big fish like trevallys and jacks. These predators also work in teams casually circling, or should I say ‘encircling,’ their targets until…Wham…they dart through the schools trying to snap at any unfortunately glassfish or blenny they can get their teeth into. The prey shift gears from their near suspended animation to an immediate emergency retreat to any exit they can find including right out of the water into the sky if that means safety.

It is a delightful ‘Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom’ spectacle that you see across the Maldives. But, we were especially captivated by it during our very first trip to the Maldives visiting ‘Laguna Beach’, now redeveloped and renamed to Velassaru. My favourite picture ever taken in the Maldives came about because we were woken from our sleep all the way over in our bungalow early in the morning from the racket of one of these ‘feeding frenzies’. While we have seen many similar sights, we always felt that they were never quite as stunning as what we witnessed with predictable regularity and consistently large scale as what we saw at Velassaru.

We always chalked up the difference to ‘first-timer nostalgia’. But then we had the chance to re-visit the island on our last trip in July and what did we see the very minute we stepped off the boat…cinematic feeding frenzy. In the picture above, you can see the vast shoals of tiny, silvery fish in the lagoon. The light-shaded shapes in the midst of them are the wake of reef sharks who have joined the trevallys in their stalking. The fish wisely clear a path as the juvenile sharks wiggle through their masses. The picture below shows the dynamic more clearly and you can click on it to see even more close up.

I’m suspecting that the intensity of the feeding frenzy action at Velassaru has something to do with its massive shallow lagoon. In the direction of the water villas, the lagoon extends for 2 kilometres. While the long, sandy table means no house reef, I think it does attract more schools like this looking for the protection of the shallows.

Velassaru shark hunting

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