A great little scenic dive to finish off the maldives holiday, and also my 60th dive. Great to finish off on a round number for some reason! After the problems with my sinuses the previous day, I was a bit worried I’d be stuck at 59!
This site is a thila and noted for shark sightings. Expect to see white tip, grey reef, silver tips and if you are lucky even hammer head sharks. Sadly, we didn’t see any sharks, and I had problems with my sinuses, which meant I had to skip the following two dives of the day.
The Olhahli Caves are the northern tip of the North Male Atoll – on the north Reetha Rah. There are a couple of small caves at 15 and 20 metres but the main attraction is a big cave 40 metres long at a depth of 25 metres. In the big cave on the ceiling are blue and white soft corals, as well as some sea fans and sponges. At its base is a mixture of sand and coral on which seawhips grow. The reef also hosts moray eels, stingrays, turtles and puffer fish. Napoleons, white tip sharks and eagle rays are often seen out in the free water.
Yet another dive on the Nelivaru Thila. This time we saw a great display of white finned sharks. They were cleaning in/around the reef at about 30 meters, right at the start of our dive. We stayed there at 30 metres for about 20 minutes, putting us into mandatory decompression. There was quite a stong current, so it was tricky to cling to the reef. The first good argument I’ve seen for reef hooks. We followed the reef up to 15m and sat there to watch the sharks for the rest of our air. Finally, we did our deco stops in about 6m of water. I managed to clock up 4 minutes. Jen managed to clock 7mins!
The Maddoo Giri was absolutely fantastic. Its a strangle old reef being 25m-30m at its deepest, and 3m on top. There’s an absolutely breathtaking swim through / hole on the northern side of the reef. We dropped on the western side into 28m, and swam around to the north to investigate some of the reef. About half way along the length, we turned around and headed back to the openning for the swim through.
The openning of the swim through is in 25-30m, and then ascends up to the top of the reef at 3m. Its like a big hole, dug at a 45 degree angle from top to bottom. Inside, its beautiful. Lots of wildlife, and a great view upwards. A great dive to take your time over!
