Dive Sites Complete

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Dive Sites Complete

Announcing the Dive Sites database and *Complete* interactive guide.

When I first started Maldives Complete, it seemed like the only information available on the Maldives was for divers and honeymooners. As a result, I veered away from those topics and focused on less catered for subjects like families as well as unusual activities and offerings. I am obsessed with snorkelling and this has brought be closer to the diving domain. Increasingly, however, I am receiving more and more diving enquiries and am finding it hard and harder to find comprehensive diving information in structured, interactive resources.

The primary source for dive site information has been the hard-copy books which are extremely well done. But they add a fair bit of weight to the baggage and aren’t the easiest to navigate. As with the proliferating resorts, one of the biggest problems is being spoiled for choice. There are 100+ active resorts, but there are 10 times that number of dive sites (at least).

The main sources of research have been the following in particular (and the featured dive charts are kindly used with permission and the source is linked to in the profiles)…

And after several months of research and coding (with big help from my ace assistants Emma Barnes and Grace Bolton), I have now scratched surface with a credible v.1 database with over 500 dive sites. Specifically, the new section includes…

  • Number of Atolls covered – 18
  • Number of Dive Sites – 552
  • Number of Dive Charts – 243

Here is the number of dive sites included by Atoll…

  • Baa 31
  • Dhaalu 5
  • Faafu 53
  • Gaafu Alifu – Dhaalu 34
  • Haa Alifu 33
  • Laamu 14
  • Lhaviyani 22
  • Meemu 54
  • Noonu 31
  • North Ari 55
  • North Male 89
  • Raa 3
  • Seenu 16
  • South Ari 44
  • South Male 45
  • Thaa 1
  • Vaavu 22

The exercise has also surfaced some other interested statistical tidbits about the Maldives dive sites (at least the sample set I have at hand)…

  • Resort with Most Dive Sites Nearest: Filitheyo – 53. This stat is primarily down to the (a) great information from Werner Lau who operates out of Filitheyo, and (b) the fact that Filitheyo is the only resort in the entire Faafu atoll so it pretty much has the atoll to itself.
  • Most Common Dive Site Name : “Kuda Giri” – 6. You will see that sometimes I parenthetically appended the atoll name to the dive site name. This was done to make the site name unique since multiple dive sites used the same name.
  • Most Common First name: “Bodu” – 13.
  • Common Type (eg. “Thila”, “Kandu”, “Corner”): “Thila” – 112.
  • Longest Name: “Kanandhou Kaleyge Galha” – 23 letters.

Right now the profiles are quite basic. They include…

  • Dive chart (where available)
  • Atoll
  • Nearest resort
  • Alternative name(s)
  • Features (eg. cave, wreck, creatures)

All of the material is far from perfect.

  • Polish – Not all of the graphics are perfectly aligned/sized/etc. Some people look down their noses at Maldives Complete’s rough hewn design. It stands in stark contrast to the slick (and all too often useless) websites of many resorts. I’ve resisted exhortations to “polish” the site with a glossy look and feel. I have neither the money nor the graphics ability to do so really. Furthermore, I have bit of aesthetic preference for the simpler layout and style. I prefer to think of it as “artisinal”. J
  • Precision – I toiled for a long time at the outset about the degree of granularity to have in the interactive map. Zoom in and you can’t get a sense of everything at an easy glance. Zoom out and you can’t get precision or a sense of the surrounding area. I think I got the balance right in the end, but if anything I ended up sacrificing precise placement of dive flags for ease of at-a-glance navigation. You can drill into very close-up looks at the dive areas and their topology using the British Admiralty map DeepZoom feature of the site.
  • Completeness – Help me! My aspiration is *complete* and I am aware that I have rippled the surface of dive sites and information about them. If you would like me to add a dive site or materials about one already included, please contact me.

I may extend the profiles to more information if (a) there is demand from website visitors, and (b) there is help from local resources to supply the information.

Which brings me to the final points. I have a number of principles that guided the development of Maldives Complete, and those have led me to not just adding dive site information, but *how* I added it…

UNIQUE – First principle of Maldives Complete is to only add data and functionality you can’t get elsewhere. I follow Seth Godin’s marketing precept, ‘Don’t be the best one, be the only one.’ If someone else has the information or material, then best just to point to that rather than add a “me too” capability (and the profiles point directly the top dive resources on the web to help people find more detail about those dive sites at the web sites that focus in on them).

The interface for the material is a uniquely interactive map of every atoll. The other dive maps (eg. MondoMaldive, Maldives.at, Werner Lau) don’t cover ALL the atolls. They cover about a half dozen atolls. Maldives COMPLETE has 18 of the 22 main atolls (and I will be doing research to get dive site locations for the other 4 over the next few months).

Also, the existing dive site maps use a numbering key which means that you have to reference the name at the bottom which is all a bit cumbersome.

I’ve also based the catalogue on the British Admiralty Maps which provide comprehensive topological information and a range of depth measurements. All of the other maps are a simplified atoll layout just showing the islands. The maps also have the added advantage of being consistent with the longstanding Maldives Complete feature of the “Deep Zoom” map which allows people to examine certain areas with great clarity and detail.

UTILITY – For everything I add to the website I ask, “Is it useful?” As a result, I didn’t add a number of pieces to the Dive Site information that I could have. For example, I have passed on…

  • Pictures – Some dive site guides have pictures taken from the sites. But frankly, they are all close-ups of various fish and features that could be anywhere.
  • Depths – Frankly, the vast majority of the Maldives dive sites are all between 5-10 meters going down to around 20 meters. It didn’t seem worth the effort to catalogue the minor variations and few exceptions. Star rating
  • Ratings – These vary but include overall quality of dive, sometimes a special rating for snorkeling, or sometimes a difficulty rating.
  • Visibility
  • Descriptions
  • Accessibility

USER-SUPPORTED – The best part about Maldives Complete is the extensive support I get from fans around the world you appreciate it and help plug gaps in data and information. A good chunk of my “Best of the Maldives” features are nominated by readers and most of the few percent of pictures I am missed are supplied by guest. I am hoping that dive centres, marine biologists and supportive guests will help me build the catalogue especially with the addition of dive charts.

(I guess one could say that it’s all about yoU !)

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Maldives Complete-ly by the Numbers 3

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Maldives Complete numbers

Maldives Complete’s sexennial…6 years on and even more complete than ever. Well, a 0.1% more complete (from 98.4% last year to 98.5% this year). The challenge is the new resorts coming online. While I am able to track down missing material for some longer standing resorts, new resorts opening presents a whole new slate of things I need to find for a complete profile.

I am once again marking the milestone in true business review fashion with a look at a Harpers Index sampling of stats which tell its progress…

  • Resort Numbers – Despite a surge of newly announced resorts, the number of active resorts has stayed stable with as many resorts going out of commission for refurb as came on line.
  • Room Types – Big surge in .
  • Best of the Maldives – Resort with most Best Of’s Published – One & Only Reethi Rah 30 (2013 = LUX Maldives 30). Resort with most Best Of’s Drafted – Soneva Fushi 69 (2013 = One & Only Reethi Rah 55).
  • Visitors – The top search terms are specific names of resorts (“Kurumba” – especially “day trip to Kurumba” and “Amilla Fushi” top the list), but topical searches have once again risen to the top such as “bed decoration” and “best house reef in the Maldives”.

This year has not seen any particularly significant new features or addtions to the site. I have focused on Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) for once to make it easier for people to find the website. I get lots of emails of people saying “Thank goodness I finally found your website.” The money at stake for expensive Maldives holidays mean that lots of travel sites invest heavily to appear at the top of search results crowding out smaller sites like Maldives Complete with less money to spend on such techniques. I’ve cleaned up a few fundamentals like proper tagging and the like, but the biggest impact on ranking are inbound links. So if ay fans of the site out there want to help out, if they can arrange any links to MaldivesComplete.com, that would be the most gratefully received contribution. I’ve also cleaned up a few cosmetic details (cross-browser font compatibility especially on Mac browsers has been a headache).

As it happens, I have a number of exciting bigger developments in the works for 2015…

  • Turtle Database collaboration with MarineSavers at Four Seasons.
  • Dive Site Database
  • Snorkel Safari Treasure Hunt (!)
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Maldives Tour 2014 – Day 1: Male Arrival

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Maldives Complete Tour 5 Male arrival

Tour #5 begins. I’ve set off on my 5th tour, our 13th trip to the Maldives overall. After this tour, we will have visited 55 resorts in total. The focus of this journey across paradise is the Gaafu Alifu (first time) as well as Baa atoll (we have toured here before but there are a number of new resorts as well as a couple we missed last time).

Gaafu Alifu, it turns out, is the world’s largest atoll. It has really come to life in recent years with a number of premium resort developments. It is known to have dive sites that rival the famous Ari atoll.  It is also primarily accesses via a domestic flight (instead of a seaplane or speedboat).  Some people are put off by seaplanes – they are very noisy and they are smaller which can make people ancy about flying more uneasy.  Unfortunately, seeing the Maldives from above, with this mottled tapestry of blues and greens is one of the great thrills of any visit.  If a more conventional flying machine makes this part of one’s journey a bit more enjoyable, then a domestic flight with a more ‘conventional’ aircraft might be just the thing.  It is a full 48 seater turbo-prop.  It flies a bit higher altitude than a seaplane, but you still a treated to a spectacular view of the Maldives seascape.

When I arrived, I spent my first day in Male catching up with a number of Maldivians who have been very helpful supporters of my work. I pitched up at the best “remote office” in the world at Traders Hotel with penthouse suite view, delicious food and drink, and a spa to freshen up before my meetings. I’ve yet to try the rooftop pool, though definitely on the Maldives bucket list.

I met with my longest standing industry supporter, Aminath Hudha who is working for a resort broker. She reports that business is strong across all areas (making her life very busy). I also met with people at the Ministry of Tourism who are enthusiastic about the site (so much so that they stayed quite late for our meeting on a Ramadan day when government offices shut at 2:00 pm).

Ramadan greetings, Maldives.

 

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Spotting Spotlight

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Report Lionfish

Environment Day today is a time for everyone to reflect on what they can do to help the environment. The good news is that help might be as simple as many folks’ favourite activity – posting pix on social media.

According to an NBC piece “Social Media Could Help Save Species on the Verge of Extinction”…

“While an untold number of butt selfies and pictures of food are posted on social networks daily, people are also snapping images of birds, flowers, and other creatures that can help researchers who keep a close eye on flora and fauna at the tipping point.”

The stream of data helps scientists map where the world’s endangered species are and where they need to be conserved, said Stuart Pimm, a conservation ecologist at Duke University in Durham, N.C., and the lead author of a new paper on the decline of global biodiversity.

Maldives Complete’s Snorkel Spotter was always envisioned as a sort of social app for sharing snorkel experiences. Sort of a “FourSquare for Fish”. But I always speculated if it might be a tool for marine biologists. As it happens, an increasing number of environmentalists are using similar apps for conservation initiatives.

Florida in the USA is actually facing an invasion of a fish that are one of the more colourful sightings in the Maldives – lion fish. Unfortunatey, they are not native there are have no know predators meaning they are seriously throwing the marine ecosystem out of balance. The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission have developed a “Report Lionfish” app (or people without smartphones or tablets can report on their website).

So if you see something really unusual (meaning it might be a relatively rare species), do try to post it up on Snorkel Spotter with the time and house reef location and maybe it will help the resort’s marine biologist in their understanding of the marine life around them.

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Migration Migraines

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website renovations

Resorts aren’t the only ones with refurb disruptions.

You might have noticed a few website difficulties in the past week. After half a decade with hoster Aquest Solutions, they have decided to close their doors. When the announcement came through to me the end of last month, my heart sunk. Aquest have been instrumental in building MaldiveComplete over the past decade. Their technical support has been excellent and they patiently helped when I too often got in over my head with some of my technical ambitions.

I started MaldivesComplete while at Microsoft and one of my motivations in the undertaking was to get my hands dirty with technology again. I started my career on the technical and development side, but in recent years moved more to sales and marketing. I missed working on the inards of computer systems to get them to do wacky and clever things and the new web technologies were too fascinating to not have a play with. I got a chance to work hands-on with a range of new things in the Microsoft stable such as Visual Studio, Silverlight, Community Server, ASP.net, DeepZoom, Bing maps, and Expression.

Unfortunately, Microsoft technology hasn’t risen to the same prominence on the Internet as it has on the desktop. And platform choices I made (eg. Silverlight, Community Server, DeepZoom) have not taken off making it a bit challenging to support at this point.

Fortunately, DotNetPark has comes to our rescue. They offer comprehensive applications hosting services with all of the technology platforms and expertise I needed. When I first found out about the impending migration, I did a fair amount of research first, and they were by far the most comprehensive and prompt in their assistance. Thanks to their professionalism and help, the whole site has more or less moved over just this week. You might have encountered a few error messages and even possible bounced email, but they should have been minimal.

Normal service is not yet fully resumed. We are still troubleshooting a bug which is keeping pictures from rendering in new posts (which I discovered on my first post on the new platform). Also, the Snorkel Spotter is not yet working properly). Hopefully, these will be sorted out very quickly.

As a result of all of the work invested in March on the migration, new posts and profile updates have been limited. Hopefully, once these final niggles will be sorted out this week normal service can resume.

Thank you for your patience.

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Seth-urday Buffet

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Maldives Buffet

My other popular blog (I have 4) has a semi-regular piece called “Seth-urday” featuring material from Seth Godin who I have referenced here on a number of occasions as a bit of an inspiration to the whole “Best of the Maldives” section. This week, Seth published a post “The buffet problem keeps getting worse” which illustrated another perspective for my obsession with resort esoterica…

“Here’s the thinking that leads just about every all-you-can-eat buffet to trend to mediocrity. ‘Oh, don’t worry about how fresh the mashed potatoes are, after all, they’re free.’ Indeed, as far as the kitchen is concerned, each individual item on the buffet is ‘free’ in the sense that the customer didn’t spend anything extra to get that item. The problem is obvious, of course. Once you start thinking that way, then every single item on the buffet gets pretty lousy, and the next thing you know, the customers you seek don’t come…Successful organizations often beat the competition by turning the buffet problem upside down. ‘Let’s make these the best mashed potatoes in town–who knows, next time, that guy out front will bring his friends.’ The mashed potatoes aren’t free, the mashed potatoes, the wifi and everything else you do are an opportunity. The cheapest and most effective marketing you’ll do all year.”

While it is an illustrative metaphor, Maldives resort are literally dominated by buffets for much of their food service. A number of my “Best of the Maldives” pieces have indeed been buffet items picked out from obscurity for their distinction. I guess I am now on the hunt for the best mashed potatoes in the Maldives!

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Complete Update

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Best Of list hover tooltip

The number one objective for Maldives Complete has always been “completeness”, but the number two has always been ease of use. Providing the easiest route to the information people need has been the design point which is why I have shunned advertisements, sponsorship and other non-essential dross that clutters so many resort and travel pages. In recent days, I’ve finally finished off the bulk of enhancements that have been on my wish list since my summer tour.

My Maldives tours not only inspire ‘Best Of’ pieces and help complete the profiles with data and pictures, but they also percolate ideas for new features and enhancements to the site. I meet with lots of site fans and industry folks and they provide lots of great ideas of how I might be able to improve it further. Of course, digesting all of the research as well as doing my day job means that these ideas don’t get done over night, but over the past few months, I have implemented a good number of changes that germinated about of Tour 4…

  • Best Of – 2 new pages with added drop down menu…
    • Activity – eg. Sport, Kids, Culture
    • Infrastructure – eg. Lodging, Pool, Decoration
    • Service – eg. Dining, Drink, Greeting
    • Ambience – eg. Nationality, Spa, Ocean
    • Commercial – eg. Pricing, Shopping, Online
  • ·Room Type – A flurry of research to update and complete more of the field
  • Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) – Still people struggle to find the site and so I am spending a bit more time making the site search engine friendly (if you are a fan of the site, the one thing you can do to help – and others – is to provide a link to the site from any websites you have…thanks).
    • Better descriptions
    • Better titles
    • Better metatags
  • Profile – I’ve added a couple more pieces to each profile
  • Best Ofs – changed list to “Tooltip” popup to accommodate some of the extra long lists
  • Activities
    • Surfing
    • Marine Biologist
    • Hotelier Group
    • Walkway Rating – ie.  Soft, Hard, Paved
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More Why I Do It

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Scott Adams - aquiring skills

One of my most frequent questions abourt Maldives Complete is still “Why do it do it?” In my previous post in response, I cited Scott Adams’ own answer to the question of the “non-zero chance” for some big serendipity. Scott recently published a new book titled “How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big: Kind of the Story of My Life” that delves more deeply into his personal life philosophy. As a part of the release, he has been doing the book promo circuit and his interview with Forbes really hit home for me as another reason behind my compulsive researching and posting…

“For years people have been asking me why I blog. At one point, blogging was taking about half of my work time while providing only 5% of my income. My wife and my friends asked ‘What is your goal in blogging?’ I don’t do goals. I do systems. (That’s a theme of the book.) In this case, my system involved publicly experimenting with a variety of writing styles and topics and closely monitoring the reactions of readers. I was honing my writing skills and my understanding of the reading public. I didn’t have a specific goal. I was aiming for ‘better.’ I reasoned that my system would generate good opportunities for me in ways I couldn’t predict with any precision. That’s what makes it a system and not a goal. I was simply improving my odds that something good would happen. I just didn’t know when it might happen or in what form it would come. Blogging also charges me up. I like the interaction, the angry villagers with torches and pitchforks, and the possibility of saying something useful. It is one part of my overall system for keeping my personal energy high. It also keeps my mind sharp. Several years into my system, it seems to be working.”

Webmastering Maldives Complete is part of my own “system” to keep learning, make new friends and relationships, understand new technologies (eg. Deepzoom, Silverlight), grapple with new media (eg. social media like Facebook, Twitter, TripAdvisor), and to constantly hone my ability to research, distil and share insights.

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Maldives Complete-ly by the Numbers 2

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2013 Anniversary numbers

Maldives Complete’s semidecennial. 5 years on and more complete than ever.

I am again marking the milestone in true business review fashion with a look at a Harpers Index sampling of stats which tell its progress…

  • Resort Numbers – The array of options steadily climbs with another 4 more resorts announced, but a full 12 additional resort newly operational.
  • Room Types – Being a new feature last year, this area has grown the most (363 new profile photos and 6.2% gain in completion rate).
  • Best of the Maldives – Resort with most Best Of’s Published – LUX Maldives 30 (2012 = W Retreat 21). Resort with most Best Of’s Drafted – One & Only Reethi Rah 55 (2012 = LUX Maldives 31).
  • Visitors – More of the top search terms are specific names of resorts (“Kuramathi” and “Bathala” top the list) pushing down last year’s top terms – “maldives water temperature” and “whale shark”. But the latter remained them most popular post – “Whale Sharks – LUX* Maldives” being the first Maldives Complete post to top 100,000 views.
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Failure in Paradise

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404 page

Yesterday was the 8th anniversary of my first blog which sort of started it all. On the topics of “Leadership and Management” and “Embracing Failure” (both linked by the shared theme of risk attitudes), it pre-dated my Maldives Complete launch by just over 3 years and helped me to get a handle on the medium before immersing it with Maldives material.

One of the messages to “Embracing Failure” is about not avoiding problems, but looking at them as opportunities. One example that I have written about it creative twists on “404 Pages”, aka error pages on websites. Usually, one gets a pedestrian message like this – “The URL contains a typographical error. A custom filter or module, such as URLScan, restricts access to the file. Things you can try: Create the content on the Web server, etc…”).

But website owners are able to set an alternative default page to display when errors are hit. I thought it would be a great opportunity to showcase yet another Sakis master shot and provide a bit more of an topical if not tropical message.

I hope I can keep Maldives Complete running so smoothly that you never hit the 404 page, so I thought I would share it here (also, wait a second with the speakers on).

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