After our India adventures, it felt just a little too early to return to (cold, grey) Austria and as I was already in Asia, I decided to do a little stop on the way home. As I hadn’t been scuba diving for a few years, the Maldives sounded very appealing. I had done a liveaboard here in 2018, but this time I knew I had to work and therefore needed to stay on an island rather than on a boat where WiFi is not that reliable. A quick research got me set on the Southern island of Fuvahmulah, promising 100% guarantee on diving with tiger sharks. Tiger sharks, one of the main species of shark that was still missing in my ‚collection‘! So I booked myself a diving and accommodation package for a week’s stay, diving in the mornings and working in the afternoons and evenings. And of course, exploring some of the quite little island in between!

I was lucky to meet some really nice buddies to dive with and to explore the island with. Together, we did 6 tiger shark dives and 8 other dives along the reef. During the other dives, we were not as lucky and only faintly saw a thresher shark at one point. However, there were plenty of reef sharks, moray eels, turtles and just overall lots of beautiful schools of fish and healthy looking reefs!

The shark dives were the highlight of course. There is a feeding station where dive masters hide tuna heads underneath some rocks which the sharks will then smell and start circling around and search for them. Sometimes, they were then really digging into the rocks, picking them up and even accidentally swallowing some (and spitting them out again). In the end, they always found the tuna of course! Really cool to watch and we were able to get real close. My favourite dive was one of the shark dives where we followed the reef a bit afterwards and I went really deep with my buddy. Down there, we saw the sharks coming up from the bottom and at one point some were circling around us. Super cool!

Overall it was a great week and my dive/work schedule worked out pretty well. It’s definitely something I can imagine doing more often – although unfortunately all my bucket list diving destinations are liveaboard-based now. Guess I gotta wait for better WiFi on the boats! For now, here are some more photos.