Maldives dive-sites

Maldives

Eurodivers, a well respected Swedish operation, run a PADI five-star diving facility on Kani. They have five instructors, all speak English amongst the seven European languages they had between them. They ask to see you diving cert-card and check how many logged dives you've done and how long since your last dive. They of course respect other dive organisations certifications. I'd done 60dives that season and just come from a week in Scapa Flow but was like everyone else, 'invited' to a free check-out dive the next morning. The checkout dive took place in the lagoon just off the dive centre in 4m of water. The instructor asked you to demonstrate three basic skills, half-mask clearance, Reg recovery and breathing off your buddies octopus. They also gave you a useful brief on the dive-centre. I was impressed with their setup. Plenty of hangers for wetsuits and BCDs. A plastic box to keep your kit in overnight with plenty of custom made shelving. Three clean-water pools designated for bcd's+suits, regs and other kit with plenty of weights in 1Kg blocks.

We had brought all our own kit so didn't need to use any of the hire-gear. They had 3mm shorties, Scubapro Regs with Ocoptus and content guage -but no depth guage or compass. Sub-Gear BCDs came with whistle and "Sausage" in the pocket. The sausage was a delayed SMB on 0.5m of string. Diving with a computer was mandatory (hence no depth guage). In fact, no computer, no dive. They hired out Aladin sports if you didn't have a computer. They hadn't seen my new Suunto Vyper before and questioned me if it was a full decompression computer! Personally, I wouldn't consider an Aladin Sport a deco computer! They had a few basic rules to follow, which they repeated religiously at the end of every dive-brief:

No diving beyond 30m (20m max for Open Water divers) *
No decompression diving
60 minutes max divetime *
Safety stop at 5m for 3 mins
be on your safety stop on 50bar min
if you lose your buddy, surface after one minute
Always dive with a computer

(* - We were told these rules were Maldavian law)

I didn't feel that these rules unreasonable, though the 30m rule was somewhat a pain! The 60minute rule was a bit overly restrictive for those very-shallow, very long dives.

My only complaint with their set-up was that they only had 10L cylinders. The fill was always 200bar on the nail - but more of that later! They didn't do nitrox either though this was less of an issue for me. One of the other three Eurodiver centres in the Maldives has started to do nitrox and the centre manger told me they would probably go that way too in the near future as more people are enquiring about it. It's not that the dives are demanding considering the local diving rules and the limiting 10L tanks, rather the repetitive diving factor one needs to consider.

Diving is not cheap in the Maldives. I had booked a ten-dive pack in advance through my travel agent for 210UKP. This included tanks&weights and the boat charge. Paying for your diving on-island can mount up

	With all hire equipment	Tanks and weights only
Single dive	$35	$27
5 dive package	$163	$128
10 dive package	$306	$255
Add $9 per-dive on top of above for the boat Above prices in US dollars (USD/UKP exchange rate was 1.60 at the time)

One very good point was that you didn't have to commit in advance to a certain number of dives. You just went diving and they worked out the best rate at the end of your holiday. They also offered the full range of PADI courses from discover Scuba upwards. They also ran weekly Shark and Peak-Performance Buoyancy PADI specialities. They do have a house reef of sorts on Kani, and if qualified, you can dive it without a guide. But the reef is quite bleached and was adequate for snorkelling (we saw small rays and black-tip sharks) but no one I knew dived on it.

Diving was usually 0915 and 1430 daily. Twice a week, on seperate days they also had early morning dives at 0700 and night dives at 1800. They also ran half and full day trips to further afield dive sites (over one hour to site). Booking a dive was straightforward. All you had to do was put your name on a list on the notice board in Reception by 2000 the night before. The odd-time some people forget and turned up for a dive, but they still managed to squeeze them onto one of the boats and get them a dive.

Boat diving in the Maldives is on Dhoni's. These are wooden flat bottom ex-fishing boats about 12m's long. They usually have two rows of seats for upto 20 divers and a covering. They aren't very fast. Eurodivers had a number of these but they also had two modern fibreglass dhoni's. These were much faster and one even had an on-board toilet. Don't laugh - that's a very important feature. With anything from a 10-50 minute journey to the dive site, an hour in the water and the return journey, you can be a long time crossing your legs! It is also slightly risky as people are tempted not to drink too much water which they should do to avoid dehydration which could increased risk of a bend. All the dhoni's had ample room for upto 20 divers, their cylinders and boxes. All the boats carried first-aid kits, O2 and VHF radio's in case of an incident. During my stay they were never needed.

Each dive was similar in nature. Arriving at the dive-centre 20 minutes before your dive, you just checked which boat you were on as they had two or three running, got a tank, BCD and reg'ed up and the boat-boys would load would rig and dive-box onto your boat. All on-board, the dive-guide 9an instructor) would check the list and ensure all were on-board. Then allocate buddy-pairs. Any couples were matched up first and then the singles were paired off in relation to their diving depth limit and very subtly, air-consumption. My girlfriend is an experienced but confessed warm-water diver. Although she enjoys diving, she's not as keen as myself (that's not hard as I'm a bit obsessed!). Over the holiday she did six dives whilst I knocked up 15. I had thought I'd be able to pair up with someone for the dives she didn't do. But most of the other couples were doing the same thing so even though the diveguides made a reasonable effort at pairing you up with someone of equal ability, that wasn't always the case. On a few of the dives I did find myself diving with a couple of right eejits.

A full briefing on the dive site was given with a drawing of the underwater profile and depth contours. All the overhangs, coral blocks and features of interest were described along with the expected fishlife. All the diving was drift diving along reefs, within channels between two islands or around thilas. The diveguides would rate them as wither incoming or outgoing currents and rate them in strength from slight, medium to strong. Lets just say that their "medium/strong currents" were exhilarating! Real white-knuckle rides, especially around reef corners. Some mentioned that the diving would be great if it weren't for the currents. But they didn't appreciate that it's the currents that attracted the big pelagics - the reason we were here in the first place - you can't have your cake and eat it! On arrival at the site the dive-guide would jump in and snorkel around the boat to assess the current and ensure it was as expected. Usually it was as briefed and we would drop into the water and start our dive. They were happy for buddy-pairs to either follow the guide or peel off on their own. But to go in the briefed direction for boat cover purposes. They briefed against going into the current, and if the current changed they recommended you just went with it - you were on holiday! And the viz? It averaged between 15-30m over the two weeks with the ultimate exception being the one wreck dive we did - a staggering 50m+ viz!

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