The Maldives Just For Divers!

The Maldives has increasingly become known for its luxury four- and five-star resorts, but Stuart Philpott was looking forward to visiting an altogether-more-laidback island aiming at providing value-for-money accommodation for divers

PHOTOGRAPHS BY STUART PHILPOTT

The Maldives Just For Divers!

Not so long ago, the Maldives was known purely as a diver’s destination. Accommodation was no-frills, clean, basic and affordable, just somewhere to crash between dives. Sadly, over the last few decades, this quintessential ‘eat, sleep, dive’ existence seems to have been lost in the luxury four- and five-star tourist market.

But there’s some good news afoot! Crown and Champa have gone back to their roots and built a new more-affordable three-star resort just for divers. I spoke to Prodivers’ regional manager Ray van Eeden, who confirmed in March they opened ‘a state-of-the-art’ PADI five-star centre on an island called Innahura, which was supposedly bigger and better than their HQ on Kuredu. This included two shiny new compressors, row upon row of BCDs, regulators, shorties and fins, air-con shop, classrooms and free nitrox. As for the dive sites, all of the surrounding reefs and channels are very much unexplored. Local marine life has rarely seen a diver, let alone a diver plus camera and scooter, although I had a strange feeling this would all be changing quite soon!

Long-haul flight times from the UK to Malé via Dubai are approximately 12-13 hours. And then from Malé it’s a short 40-minute seaplane hop to Innahura. Peering down at the lush palm-fringed islands surrounded by clear sparkling blue seas really did whet my appetite before arriving. The popular island of Kuredu is about an hour and a half boat ride from Innahura. Ray said several of their repeat customers had already checked out the new resort, comparing the place to Kuredu 30 years ago.

Innahura is part of a chain of islands located in the northern Lhaviyani atoll. It’s a relatively small plot, measuring 600 metres by 180 metres, meaning I could stroll around the whole island in less than 20 minutes. There are 78 rooms in total, a reception area, main restaurant, two bars, swimming pool, watersports centre offering kite-surfing and sailing in the 32km-long shallow lagoon as well as the all-important dive centre. There seemed to be an interesting mix of guests. I understood the resort was still ramping up and I was visiting during low season, but where were all the divers?

The rooms, aka beach bungalows, have been built to a good standard complete with sea views and open-air bathrooms. All of the accommodation is basically the same apart from 33 face the sunrise and 45 the sunset. There is a walled garden area that backs onto the bathroom, where some palms and other plants are left to grow. My room had a banana tree complete with full bunches of ripe bananas which, at night, tended to attract the local fruit bat population. I found it a little disconcerting sitting on the toilet dodging flying bats!

Leopard Shark

Innahura exceeded my expectations on so many levels. Some of my marine life encounters including the eagle rays, leopard shark, dolphins and turtles were definitely a ‘one off’

I had opted for the full-board option, which included three square meals a day. The daily spread of buffet-style food offered a variety of cuisines, including vegetarian. I got talking to the exec sous chef, Oshan, and mentioned I hadn’t seen any Goan fish curries on the menu and he actually went away and rustled one up for me. I couldn’t ask for a better service than that! The only slight downer was the restaurant opening times. Most days they didn’t start serving breakfast until 7.45am and with the dive boat departing at 8.30am this didn’t leave me much time for a leisurely feed. The same applied at dinner with a 7.30pm opening, which seemed quite late, especially for families. Having experienced Prodivers’ quality of service in the past, I wasn’t surprised to find an extremely professionally run dive centre waiting for me on Innahura. Ludo Hofmann, the dive centre manager, had planned out a schedule taking in some

A true island paradise

One of the many turtles encountered

of the new dive sites (so far they have discovered 35 in the 10m-30m range). Assistant manager Lisa Brand would be my guide and double up as a model. These days Prodivers run a totally paperless system, everything is done electronically via a tablet or on the website, including bookings, daily dive logs, filling in and signing registration forms, etc, which is a much more eco-friendly option. Ludo said they offered two morning dives and one afternoon dive but can do two in the afternoon and night dives on request. The full range of PADI diving courses, including scooters and rebreathers, were also available in five different languages.

The star of the show has to be a dive site called Turtle Rock, and although the name is a complete giveaway, I only expected to find one or two turtles flying past. I ended up going back four times during my stay and the highest count was around 50 hawksbill turtles on a single dive. Yes, I said 50 turtles! Seriously, this place is turtle soup! No sooner had I taken a shot of one turtle than another two or three more came into my viewfinder.

Some 99 per cent of the turtles are hawksbills, although I did see one huge green male on several occasions. For some reason unbeknown to the dive staff or the Olive Ridley Project based at Kuredu, mornings are the best time to visit. The turtles don’t seem to be around in the same quantities during the afternoons. The only slight niggle for me, as a photographer, was that the turtles, not being used to diver interaction, were very wary and would usually let me approach to within two or three metres and then head off into the blue. Using scooters didn’t seem to make much difference as the cheeky turtles would adopt an evasive zigzag manouvere. How dare they make it difficult for me to compose a shot!

The top of the fringing reef lies at around 15m-20m and this tapers off at a shallow angle until it breaks the surface. Nurse sharks, various species of rays, puffers, morays and huge quantities of reef fish complimented the turtles. The edge drops off into the deep blue abyss and it’s often possible to spot passing pelagics, including sharks, tuna, dolphins and mantas. During my stay I had almost daily encounters with spinner and bottlenose dolphins riding the dive boat’s bow wave. I even saw a pod of spinners pass by me underwater and at Meyafushi Kandu, a bottlenose came down to the ledge at 30m just to check me out.

Dive boat approaching the jetty

Marbled Ray

Prodivers have a number of exciting channel crossings on their diving hit list, the most popular being Meyafushi Kandu, about 30 minute’s boat ride away. Every day encounters include sharks, barracuda, eagle rays and shoals of jacks as well as other smaller schooling fish. On one corner of the reef there are always shoals of snapper, triggers, sweetlips, damsels and fusiliers congregating. We would usually start our dives at the edge of the channel and then head across the opening. I had no idea what spontaneous marine life would turn up or how it would react. A shoal of around 50 inquisitive batfish did a fly by. I managed to get in the middle of them twisting and turning to get a picture with Lisa following closely in the background. Using the Apollo scooters we could easily go back and forth across the channel three or four times even with the current running.

Madi Faru South turned out to be one of my favourites. Lisa said she had seen a mobula ray on previous dives, and as we made our descent it appeared like clockwork. We passed over several feathertail rays half-buried in the sand and then a squadron of eagle rays appeared out of the blue. I managed to get reasonably close to a number of individuals but frustratingly couldn’t get a decent group shot. My flash guns always scared them away.

Lisa pointed to a solitary leopard shark lying on the seabed. We decided on a two-prong approach, Lisa moving in on the right and me on the left hopefully meeting up somewhere next to the subject for a close-up picture. But three metres away, the shark spooked and came directly for me at full speed. I had just enough time to raise my camera and take a ‘knee jerk’ shot which caused the shark to veer away sharply. If I hadn’t taken the picture I’m sure the shark would have hit me! We scootered up

Scootering with sweetlips

I ended up going back four times during my stay and the highest count was around 50 hawksbill turtles on a single dive

the reef, stopping sporadically to look at turtles, mangrove whip rays, morays and puffers. At the safety stop I saw a number of eagle rays taunting me from below. For some strange reason they came straight up to the surface, circled us twice, and then shot back down to the reef. I have never seen anything so bizarre, but what a perfect end to yet another amazing dive.

There is a ‘house’ reef, but this isn’t accessible from the shore and can only be reached by a shuttle boat service. The dive staff didn’t seem to think it was worth a visit, so I kept focusing on the other sites. Ludo heard rumours there had been manta sightings in a shallow lagoon on a nearby island. I had visions of barrel rolling mantas putting on a show for me, but alas we couldn’t find any. Just to rub salt into the wound I missed a large solitary manta feeding in the shallows at Madi Faru South.

Innahura exceeded my expectations on so many levels. Some of my marine life encounters including the eagle rays, leopard shark, dolphins and turtles were definitely a ‘one off’. Maybe it’s because they weren’t used to seeing divers, but I hadn’t experienced this unique behaviour anywhere

Turtle time

Time for scooter fun

before. It’s worth noting that the neighbouring islands are presently in the state of construction and will be opening new resorts in the next year or two. I’m not sure if this will affect the dive sites, especially Turtle Rock, but there will undoubtedly be more divers about. During my stay there was only a handful of divers on the boat with me and there were no other dive centres operating in the area. Prodivers (www. prodivers.com) certainly ticked all the right boxes. The dive centre was massive and the staff couldn’t have been any more accommodating. The difference in standards between four-star Kuredu and three-star Innahura didn’t seem to be that noticeable. I actually preferred the simplistic ‘barefoot’ approach and the more-affordable prices are definitely worth considering. Looking at the resort today I wouldn’t say it was truly a ‘divers’-only retreat as there were plenty of families and couples just enjoying the sun, sea and sand. Maybe it just needs some time to get established and build up a following. The resident GM, Rainer Steinhilber, summed up by saying ‘Innahura is nothing fancy, but we’ve got the basics right. It’s a three-star resort with spacious four-star facilities. There’s a healthy mix of guests, it’s not just a diver’s island’.