Best Beginner Diving in the World

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Maldives beginner diving

One of my crusades for Maldives Complete is promoting the destination as the “best snorkelling in the world.” But, of course, snorkelling is a bit of a gateway drug to the bigger, bolder, more expensive and extensive pastime of SCUBA Diving itself. So it’s no surprise that none other than National Geographic dubbed the Maldives as the #1 “Scuba diving spot for beginners” …

  • “Known for its calm, warm waters (27-29C all year), the Maldives is a great place to learn, with visibility usually over 30 metres. Many resorts feature ‘house reefs’. Island resorts with PADI Dive schools are plentiful; one of the best is the luxury Anantara Kihavah Villas, located within a UNESCO World Biosphere Reserve that’s home to turtles and tropical fish. The Maldives is the only habitat where whale sharks appear year-round.”

One of the advantages of the Maldives is its pervasive shallowness. For newbies, this contained space of the shallow sites can be less intimidating in that they don’t have to depend entirely on their newly minted buoyancy skills to maintain depth control and that they are never that far from the surface so an emergency ascent is easier. You also use less air on shallower dives which can help nervous neophyte tank guzzlers.

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Dhivehi Dive-site Designations

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Dive site terms Maldives

Today is UN Mother Language Day. Time for a bit more Dhivehi tutorial. The country itself has an evocative etymology in native Dhivehi…

  • The name Maldives may derive from the Malayalam words ‘maala’ (garland) and ‘dweepu’ (island) or the Tamil maalai (garland / evening) and theevu (island), or මාල දිවයින Maala Divaina (“Necklace Islands ) in Sinhala. The Maldivian people are called Dhivehin. The word Theevu (archaic Dheevu, related to Tamil தீவு dheevu) means “island”, and Dhives (Dhivehin) means “islanders” (i.e., Maldivians).”

The individual beads on that jewelled strand also take description names from the local tongue. The chart above illustrates a few of the most common topological terms…

  • Thila – underwater pillar
  • Giri – underwater pillar close to surface
  • Faru – above water reef edge enclosing a lagoon
  • Fushi – island

And there are a few other common terms you see constantly in dive site names…

  • Bodu – “large”
  • Kandu – “channel”
  • Kuda – “little”
  • Beyru – “outside”
  • Rah – “island”

In fact, below is a list in order of the most popular terms by number of dive sites that include them…

  1. Thila – 328
  2. Faru – 181
  3. Kandu – 136
  4. Giri – 114
  5. Kuda – 78
  6. Fushi – 72
  7. Bodu – 61
  8. Beyru – 32

އެނމެ ބަހެހ އިނގުނ ނުފުދޭނެ (Enme baheh ingun nu-fudheyne)

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Best of the Maldives: PADI Free Diving – Anantara

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Anantara - PADI free diving

Free diving is becoming quite a popular pursuit both around the world and in the Maldives. The reef-protected atolls provide exceptionally calm waters to practice plunging the depths. Anantara steps up with its own dedicated centre and the first to provide the popular PADI certification.

While competitive free diving can be quite mind-bendingly difficult and hazardous, basic free-diving does open up a new way to experience this aquatic wonderland. The Anantara announcement provides an alluring description of free diving’s enchantment…

  • “Aquafanatics is the first PADI-certified free diving centre in the island nation…A truly liberating activity, it relies on the diver to hold their breath, leaving them free to move unhindered through the translucent Maldivian waters. With no oxygen tank bubbles to distort vision, the vivid colouration of coral life glows brighter than ever. Devoid of heavy equipment, guests move at will alongside inquisitive fish, developing a sense of belonging. With every dive guests acquire the ability to stay below a little longer, discovering more on each descent. Free diving is entwined with the cultural heritage of the islands in the Indian Ocean. Since ancient times locals have harvested sponges and clasped gleaming pearls from beneath the waves. Anantara’s professional free diving instructor, Mari Kagaya, reveals a peaceful, intrinsic underwater encounter. ‘The Maldives provide the pinnacle in free diving adventure,’ she explained. ‘Escaping the trappings of scuba gear, our encounters with sea life are graceful, natural and deeply personal. Guests discover their own hidden depths, not only of their body, but also the mind’.”

Anantara makes an astute point that free diving is not a new fad, but actually an ancient necessity as generations have used it to explore and exploit the seas which surround it for centuries. I always remember the tradition I read about when I first visited the Maldives for coming-of-age young men. Boys, often no more than 13 years old, would jump off a boat with a rope in hand, free dive into the water where a whale shark was swimming, SWIM INTO THE WHALE SHARKS MOUTH, and then OUT ITS GILLS, hence lassoing the fish. Young boys were the just small enough to pull off this crazy feat. I would certainly consider someone to have proven their “manhood” if they did such a thing. Not surprisingly, the government prohibited this practice years ago because too many young lads were drowning in the effort.

Proving one’s mettle with a PADI certification seems much more sensible to me.

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Best of the Maldives: Free Diving Certification – Dusit Thani

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Dusit Thani - free diving

If you yourself want a deep dive of learning with your own diploma, then Dusit Thani was the first of the Maldives resorts to offer an official free diving certification. With their $36,000 investment in specialised support and safety equipment

“Dusit Thani Maldives takes pride in launching the first official and internationally approved free-diving centre in the Maldives, an incredible addition to the selection of water sports available at the resort. Free-diving is a form of underwater diving that relies on the diver’s ability to hold his or her breath until resurfacing without the use of scuba gear. Besides experiencing the tranquillity of underwater kingdom, there are various health and fitness benefits attributed to this unique diving activity. Dusit Thani Maldives’s free-dive centre has joined forces with Apnea Total, a globally renowned free-diving organisation. The Apnea Total Free-diving Education System and Standards are followed at the centre and guests will be provided Apnea Total certifications that are recognized worldwide. Resort guests will train under the supervision of highly experienced free-dive instructors who have themselves worked and trained under record-holding free-divers. Additionally, the centre boasts world-class CRESSI equipment and the rental cost of these is included in the course price. The center offers all levels ofApnea Total courses:Free-Diver Basic, Advanced Free-Diver, and Free-Diving Master, each lasting 2 days, 3 days and up to 5 weeks respectively. The Basic course will equip guests to dive safely and comfortably down to 20 meters on a single breath and the Advanced course equips guests to dive down to 40 metres below sea level.”

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Best of the Maldives: Dive Yoga – Constance Halaveli

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Halaveli - dive yoga

Yoga enhances the whole person – mind and spirit. But some poses can be particularly effective at helping certain parts of the body. Each week, our yoga teacher asks us what is hurting and what we want to focus on. Sometimes a tender back will call for a few extra twists and Child Poses. She worked on our hips and arms to get us ready for the golf course in the spring.

One of the most apropos yoga specialisations have been offered by Constance Halaveli – dive yoga. Diving is about body control. Slow and deliberate movements are the focus for both yoga and diving.

But perhaps most of all is the breathing. Yoga turns this autonomic routine in a mindful practice. A scuba diving is all about the breathing. Breath control not only regulates how long you get to stay under water (making your oxygen last longer), but it actually controls your movement in the water. Take a deep breath filling your lungs with air and your increasingly buoyant body will slowly rise. Exhale, and your body will sink again.

The resort describes the programme…

“TGI Diving , DBI, Constance Halaveli Resort and Spa & Katy Appleton team up to offer you an unique adventure to the magical Maldives. Many people would say that the Maldives offers the best diving on the planet, so we are taking apple yoga to the North Ari Atoll for a remarkable combination of underwater discovery and yoga designed especially for diving. We have designed packages to suit all levels of ability and experience – for both diving and yoga. You will be able to join us for just one session or the entire week, it’s up to you! You will experience all that the Constance Halaveli Island has to offer while enjoying daily yoga practices and sublime diving in this piece of paradise.”

For a slightly less aesthetic portrayal of what the dive+yoga combo might be like and a bit of cheeky chakra, Dive Plus on Maafushi posted this pic of their own offering…

Maafushi - dive yoga

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Best of the Maldives Online: Interactive Dive Map – Dive Board

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Dive Board

Another site making use of Google’s array of online mapping tools is the Dive Board website. It calls itself the “the largest online logbook” providing a database of dive sites around the world. Users can register and log their own dives on the website. Each dive site has a short profile including such information as Dives logged, Longitude and Latitude, and pictures.

But the real power of the site is how is has integrated with Google Maps complete with drill down functionality. At a “high” level, you can scan an entire atoll and it will show you some markers for individual dive sites. But in areas with lots of diving, it will have a coloured circle and a number both indicated the number of dive sites in that sub-area. If you then zoom in, the map will display further discrete dive sites, or even more circles indicating where you need to drill down further in order to distinguish the sites’ specific location. I love the elegance of this solution. You get high level scan-ability as well as drill-down detail. This capability was one of the great benefits of the Microsoft Deep Zoom technology that I exploited for the British Admiralty Maps (unfortunately, the Deep Zoom control only works in Internet Explorer now that Chrome has dropped support for Silverlight technology).

I appreciate the importance of drilling down in making the Maldives Complete Dive Site database. That part of Maldives Complete also works with a basic amount of drill down. There is a top level overview of all the Maldives allowing a user to choose their atoll (most people stay within a certain atoll when visiting a diving. The Atoll view which shows all of the sites in an atoll. You can squeeze them into a PC screen-sized map half the time, but the other half, denser sections of the atoll require a sub-area drill-down map.

Okay emoji

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1000+ Dive Sites

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Dive site snap

This week I crossed the 1000 dive site mark – 1077 to be precise. Thanks so much to the many dive centres and marine biologists who have helpful shared their knowledge and material with over the past weeks me to allow me to consolidate it into the interactive platform.

I’ve not just added material, but I’ve also enhanced a number of aspects of the interface as well.  Especially if you are going to be packed with comprehensive information, you need to make it easy to navigate and access.

For example, the most common layout for dive site maps on the Internet is to number the dive sites, and then place the numbers on the map and then have a key off to the side saying which dive site is which number. If that wasn’t challenging enough to have to look up everything, the numbers aren’t laid out in any semblance of an order so you are having to hunt and peck to find the location of a specific dive site “Where’s Wally” style. The Maldives Complete maps have interactive labels, so a browser search will take you right to the dive site you are seeking amidst the constellation of choices in front of you on the atoll map.

Some of the V2 enhancements include…

  • Marine Protected Areas – I’ve added all the Protected Marine Areas highlighting both their areas and dive site labels/links found in the MPAs.
  • Profile Link – Version Link from Resort Profiles to Dive Site and to Dive Maps
  • Drill Downs – I’ve added a number of more drill down sections in atolls where concentration of dive sites in certain areas make it too hard to distinguish them at the default zoom. In particular, there are “region” maps for…

A few more fun stats about the dive site population. First of all, here are the most common dive site “types”…

  • Thila – 232
  • Faru – 104
  • Kandu – 92
  • Giri – 67
  • Reef 63
  • Corner – 56
  • Point – 32
  • Channel – 17
  • Rock – 17
  • Garden – 13
  • Wreck – 10
  • Wall – 5

And just as there are more than one “High Street” in England, there are more than one “Kuda Giris” in the Maldives ocean. Sometimes a popular site name is found in multiple atolls, but sometimes a single atoll will have the exact same dive site name in two places (eg. “Kuda Thila” in the North Male atoll). So make sure you know which one you are going to!). The top favourite dive sites names are…

  • Coral Garden – 9
  • Kuda Giri – 8
  • Kuda Thila – 7
  • Bodu Thila – 6
  • Shark Point – 5
  • Aquarium – 5
  • Bodu Giri – 5

My 6th Tour of the Maldives is coming up next week (stay tuned for details) and this trip should help me gather up even more material on dive sites across the Maldives, but especially in the two remote atolls I am visiting.

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Best of the Maldives: Mobula – Robinson Club

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Alexander von Mende Mobula

(picture courtesy of Alexander von Mende)

Maldives diving expert Alexander von Mende not only helped with the Huvadhoo dive sites, but he also offered some very insightful tips for my Best of the Maldives research. He ventured that the dive site Dheeva Giri is the best in the Maldives for Mobulas. Well, I certainly hadn’t encountered these creatures in my 20 years of visits and research.

In fact, I didn’t even know what they were. So I turned to Alexander’s book which also includes an extensive marine life guide. It turns out that Mobulas as sort of mini-Mantas, also referred to colloquially as “Pygmy Devil Rays” (great name).

Alexander says that the only place he has seen them has been at Dheeva Giri and Nilamdhoo Kandu which is near Robinson Club. He commented…

“We had a place which was regularly frequented by them in larger numbers: Dhevva Giri’s southern sand flats – quite a sight these small Manta relatives”

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Best of the Maldives: Resort Dive Site – Werner Lau (Bathala, Filitheyo, Medhufushi, Kuda-Funafaru)

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Werner Lau dive sites

When describing my motivations for adding a Dive Site database to Maldives Complete, I noted the lack of interactive guides. Most diving information is traditional hard-copy book form or magazine websites that provide articles and overviews, but not a structured, interactive resource.

The exception to this standard approach is the Werner Lau dive centre website. They have cleverly integrated a mapping of the dive sites near their centres with Google Maps to provide an interactive layout of all of the dives sites local to their 4 Maldives dive centres. You can scan the area for websites who have ToolTip annotations and then simply click on their names to take you to a full profile of the dive site complete with dive chart.

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Best of the Maldives: Atoll Dive Book – “Huvadhoo”, Alexander von Mende

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Hudavhoo dive book Alexander von Mende

Most dive books (Godfrey, Harwood & Bryning, Lonely Planet) try to cover a range of atolls. While this breadth approach is useful when trying to plan your next resort destination, it’s less useful when you’ve actually decided on your base where you are likely to stay mostly within your atoll. And increasingly, if you are a keen diver, that atoll is likely to be “Huvadhoo (Gaafu Alifu and Gaafu Dhallu).

Alexander von Mende’s book, “Diving in the Maldives – Huvadhoo, the forgotten atoll” is the ideal one for diver planning a trip to this unsung gem. He takes a different tack by focusing entirely on this one location in depth.

Huvadhoo is one of the furtherst atolls from the Male hub which may have served as a deterrent. But that unspoiled nature is now becoming one of its top allures. Von Mende also claims that it is one of the best locations for spotting large marine life like Silver Tip and Grey Reef Sharks, Dolphins, but especially Whale Sharks. South Ari has long been renowned as the pre-eminent diving atoll especially with its quite prominent whale shark marine protected area. But the more visitors get to know Huvadhoo, it could rival South Ari for that crown.

I know that when we dove and snorkelled Huvadhoo, it was some of the most impressive we had done in our years of Maldive visits. An open-water close encounter with a juvenile dolphin was one of the lifetime high points of diving for us. And we spotted dolphins every single time we got into a boat at Huvadhoo even for a simple, short transfer.

Von Mende’s book is also sort of an all purpose diving (and even snorkelling) book for anyone visiting the Huvadhoo atoll. It features in depth description 34 dive sites with dive chart illustrations for half. It also has 136 pages of “Identification Guide” provide pictures and other information on the fish, coral and other marine life found in that area.

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