Diving - The Exciting Part

Our daily dive routine would consist of three dives, two in the morning and the other in mid-afternoon. The first dive in the morning would start at about 7am before breakfast while the second dive would be around 11am. The afternoon dive would start at about 3pm, if weather permitted as this was the period when late afternoon showers were expected and the waters could be choppy.

We started well in our diving on the first day of our stay in Handhufalhi. We did a check-dive in Banana Reef, a banana shaped reef just a few meters below the surface north of Hulhule Island. The reef wall slopes gently to about 25m. The corals were in abundance and colourful. There were also many fishes, big and small. It was indeed an excellent introduction to our diving expedition in Maldives.

Our next dive was at Manta Point, a reef located near the Paradise Island north of Hulhule Island. The top of the reef is at around 15m deep; the reef then slopes gently down to about 30m. This is a home to colonies of cleaner fish and manta rays come in here to be cleaned. They come from the deep water and hover over the reef, allowing the cleaner fish to do their work.

We dived down to about 20m on the western side of the reef and slowly moved to the other side, hovering near the edge waiting for the Mantas to appear. They are curious creatures and when they see air bubbles rising to the surface, they would, like busybodies, come to investigate.

After about ten minutes hovering on top of the reef, the Dive Master sounded to us and pointed at the direction where a huge creature, hardly visible, was moving slowly towards us. We held on to solid rocks and remained stationary.

Soon it appeared; it was a huge manta followed by another one! They came slowly towards us with many cleaners following and some sticking to the underside of their white bodies. This was our first encounter with the mantas at close range! It was a sight to behold!

In the afternoon the sky looked threatening and the wind was rising and so we had to abandon the third dive of the day. But we were contented with our earlier dive and so we spent the rest of the afternoon happily relishing our exhilarating experience at Manta Point.

The next day (30th Aug.) we were supposed to dive at HP Reef in a channel north of Paradise Island, but the current was too strong there and so we requested to go back to Manta Point. We did, and didn't regret it.

This time, we dived straight to the top of the reef and waited for the mantas to come. Our patience was rewarded fifteen minutes later when a school of about a dozen mantas appeared and performed their cleaning ritual in front of our eyes! It was not only a feast for our eyes, but also for our cameras and video.