Exploring the Maldives

For this trip, we spent two weeks on board the Carpe Novo liveaboard vessel. The trip started in the capital Malé, where we had time to relax and enjoy a beautiful drift dive along a wall in the North Malé Atoll. This was followed by our first channel dive in the South Malé Atoll, where we saw our first gathering of reef sharks. As the days went by, we made our way further south towards the equator, diving exhilarating channels filled with sharks, rays, and huge schools of fish. Mixed in were dives on coral pinnacles that contained some of the healthiest reefs we have seen. The real highlights happened at night though, with curious nurse sharks coming right up to our divers, and a massive whale shark which came up to our boat at night to feed on plankton. We all managed to get in the water with this gentle giant.

Every day we did three dives, and in between various presentations and workshops were offered. Ruud ran his signature workshop on cartography, with a special focus on the Maldives of course, while Alex had our group study and transcribe 18th-century logs of ships sailing through the Maldives. For this trip we also partnered with Dr. Twan Stoffers and Jimmy van Rijn, both marine biologists. They gave several very interesting presentations on the marine ecology and sharks of the Maldives. Based on our observations, they even had us map the marine food web of the sites we dived. We did not stay on board continuously for two weeks. The crew arranged for us to visit several islands on our route, and even set up a delicious beach BBQ on a deserted island!

Shortly after crossing the equator, we arrived at Fuvahmulah, famous for its numerous tiger sharks. We did two dives here and saw seven huge tiger sharks! They were not shy and some of them came right up to our divers, a thrilling experience and one of the highlights of the trip. We ended the trip in the Maldives’ southernmost atoll, called Addu. Here, Alex and Ruud prepared the group for a dive on the British Loyalty, the largest known shipwreck in the Maldives. After a presentation about the history of the ship and a workshop on how to conduct a shipwreck site assessment, the team explored the wreck and together created a detailed site assessment of this 140-meter-long behemoth. On our last dive day we visited the famous manta cleaning station in Addu, and this did not disappoint. We managed to see three manta rays graciously gliding along the cleaning station and even over the heads of our divers. Watching them for two dives in a row as they put on a show for us, everyone got their manta fix!

This trip was one of the most incredible diving experiences we have had to date. We did 33 dives in eight atolls and two hemispheres, saw hundreds of sharks, 11 shark species, snorkeled and dived with the largest fish in the ocean, had amazing manta encounters, and dove the largest shipwreck in the entire archipelago. A big thank you to the Carpe Novo crew and all our divers: Dave, Natasha, Bill, Tim, Rob, Melinda, Bob, Ashley, Gerry, Sascha, Keira, Joost, Twan, Jimmy, Dmitry, Bodey, Allison, Kate, and Spencer. We can’t wait to dive with you again, and are already planning our return!