Diving South of the Maldives

Mushroom shaped corals

After the Biosphere Expeditions survey ended, Linda and I flew to Fuvamulah (pronounced foah-muh-lah) which is located in the southern part of the Maldives and is the only island that is an atoll 🏝️.

Check out a map of the atolls of the Maldives on Wikipedia.

Fuvamulah is known for tiger shark diving 🦈. I was so excited to get to this destination and dive with these sharks. However, the reefs are also very diverse with unique corals, (mushroom shaped, table, branching), deep walls, sharks, mantas, sea life and macro critters. Some divers even saw a thresher shark lurking in the deep end.

Green corals A tower of corals

What I really liked about diving in the Maldives was the variety of butterfly fish. I tried to photograph them but they would always swim away. Here's one I manage to capture with a squirrel fish.

These fish are often found in pairs and when I tried to photograph them, they'd always evaded me. I got lucky with these guys but not many others. 😔

I also found many Nemos aka clownfish. But in the photo below, there were numerous juvenile black damsel fish hanging out with them. 🐟 👶 🐟

I learned that the young damsel fish were mimicking the clownfish's symbiotic relationship with the anemone for protection against predators. When they grow, they lose this behavior.

There were a lot of little critters too but I didn't bring my macro lens. Fortunately my buddy Linda had hers. 💥

All macro photos below were taken by Linda Elliott 🩵.

Cool shots of blennies Hermit crab without its shell

This tiny critter is called a psychedelic batwing slug and is the size of a grain of rice! ‼️

This critter looks like a nudibranch but it is actually a juvenile sea cucumber! 🤩

More pics of the reefs of Fuvamulah here.

Next blog is about the tiger sharks! 🎆 🤩 🧨