The Maldives

Close up with an Oceanic Whitetip Shark

The Maldives are a collection of small islands and atolls stretching 870km that spans the equator in the middle of Indian Ocean.

I’ll start with the bad news: following a mass bleaching event in 2016, some coral reefs have not recovered; and a noticeable smog drifting in from India sits over the sandy atolls causing health risks and officials have issued health alerts.

It’s still a lovely place to dive and if you squint, you can imagine what the reef used to be like, and what an amazing view of the stars there used to be.

The good news is that there are several Maldivian led projects that accept tag-along tourists like us to get close to sharks.

We went to the island of Fuvahmulah, where there’s a population of tiger sharks who wait around for fishermen to clean their catch. This makes it a great place to get into the water with them.

But the real excitement came when we had a opportunity to go off shore and drop into the water with a shiver (the collective noun for sharks) of Oceanic Whitetips.

These sharks have recently made the upgrade to critically endangered and very little is known about them. They’re mostly found in blue water, hunting in essentially an ocean of space. Usually they’re found along side pilot whales, benefiting from the whales specialty of locating squid.

We spent 3 hours in the water, 30 miles offshore, with 11 Whitetips. They circled our group, curious, investigating us, sometimes bumping one of us. They remind me of wolves just patiently assessing whether they can make a meal of you.

Check out the video of two of our dives here: