Ask most people what they ate in the Maldives and they will describe a buffet. Prawns. Salad. Something with pasta. A dessert station. The kind of international spread that could have been served in a hotel in Dubai or Singapore or London — and probably was, last month, by the same catering supplier. There is […]
Most people have a story about the moment they decided to learn to dive. For some it was a documentary. For others it was a friend who came back from a trip and could not stop talking about what they had seen beneath the surface. For a growing number of travelers visiting Fulhadhoo island in […]
Introduction Somewhere in the turquoise expanse of the Indian Ocean, there is a small bay no bigger than a few football fields that draws marine biologists, photographers, and ocean lovers from every corner of the globe. That bay is Hanifaru Bay, located within Baa Atoll, Maldives — and it is, without exaggeration, one of the […]
| Underwater Education Series If you have ever found yourself floating in the warm, turquoise waters of the Maldives, watching an enormous winged creature glide silently beneath you, chances are you have just had a close encounter with one of the ocean’s most magnificent animals — the manta ray. But here is something many people […]
If you’re planning a Maldives trip around its marine life, there’s a good chance you’ve landed on the same question almost every traveller faces eventually: manta ray, or whale shark? Both are genuine bucket-list encounters. Both happen in some of the clearest, warmest water on the planet. And both are completely achievable without a […]
Every year between June and October, hundreds of manta rays converge on a single small bay in Baa Atoll, Maldives, to feed on dense plankton blooms. This year, that natural event is unfolding alongside a much larger one: the return of El Niño, now officially declared by NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center. The two events are […]
Somewhere in the warm, blue waters off the Maldives, a female manta ray is being followed. Behind her, a line of three males — each with a wingspan wider than a family car — mirrors her every turn, rise, and dive. This courtship chase has been going on for six hours. She hasn’t chosen […]
Most people know manta rays from a single moment. A photograph. A travel video. A friend who came back from the Maldives and could not stop talking about what they saw in the water at Hanifaru Bay. That one image — a vast, dark shape gliding silently through blue water, wingspans wider than a […]
It is a fair question. These are enormous animals — with wingspans that can reach five metres and bodies that weigh up to 3,000 kilograms. When you are floating on the surface of the Indian Ocean and one of them materialises from the blue below you, the scale of the encounter is genuinely startling. But […]