Maldives Sea Queen 02-10 January 2005

[Bunny]

Here it is folks. And it's LONG, so make yourselves a nice cup of tea, grab a bikkie and settle in:

Maldives Trip report 2 – 10 January 2005

So here I am. Ready to check into my Emirates flight to Male, the week after the Tsunami has struck South Asia. The check-in girl looks at my final destination looks at me concerned and says “should you be going there?”. I’m not so sure myself. The news has been full of the disaster, and whilst I’m sure everything will be ok, I’m still slightly apprehensive of what I will find. I needn’t have worried.

On the flight to Dubai I was lucky to have 3 seats to myself, and the 10kg free luggage allowance for divers is very pleasant too. I hadn’t flown Emirates before and I was very impressed. Ok, so the movies (and movie system) were not THE most up to date, but the food was very good as airline food goes, the seats were a decent size and the crew worked very hard throughout the flight.

Dubai to Male, the flight was completely empty. 55 listed passengers for a 275 seater plane, and half of those were heading to Colombo. I was surprised to see that Emirates have a camera at the nose of their airplane, so landing was very cool as we could see ourselves flying in over the islands. On landing at the airport island, we could see that the protective wall that lines the airstrip had sustained some damage from the flood, crumbling in parts, and there were some puddles across of the airfields, but apart from that everything looked ok.
Arrival at Male was super easy, I went through customs in about 2 minutes and found myself standing around with no one to collect me. Hm. Looking around I could see workmen repairing cosmetic damage to the floor, but again, apart form that, I couldn’t see any damage to the airport. Lots of other groups were being collected and I was standing around on my own. Then I spotted a couple of other folks with MST tags also looking lost, so I went over and introduced myself. It seemed that only a total of four of us had arrived for this trip. Had everyone else cancelled???

Well yes, there had been some cancellations, informed us Anne Marie, one of our hosts who came to collect us, very surprised that were already through customs, and quite shocked at the lack of passengers. But 3 guest from the previous week on Sea Spirit had decided to stay on for another week, one guest was due to arrive tomorrow, and also the new host couple who were taking over Sea Queen from the following week were also on board to work on the handover. So we had 4 guides to 8 guests. Happy days.

So to the Sea Queen, and a very nice boat she is too. I’m no good at specs, but allthe cabins were well appointed, the bathrooms small, of course, but you CAN use loo paper (judiciously) and the toilets flushed properly throughout the trip, which to me, frankly, makes or breaks a liveaboard. If you’ve ever been on a boat with a defective toilet you’ll know what I mean! The dhoni that had collected us from the airport cruised past the Sea Spirit to pick up the other guests, and she didn’t look a whole lot different from the Sea Queen. Apparently the cabins were larger, but she is just going in for a refit and in fact the cabins will be made smaller to match the size of those of Sea Queen in order to allow a few extra passengers.

The food throughout the week was very nice. Lunch everyday involved fresh fish, and dinner was a mixture of western foods and curry, although local cuisine and spices predominated. It was delicious, but I must say I had to reach for the Zantac once or twice. I’m told that the food on the Sea Spirit is more western, and less spicy, but I wouldn’t have swapped what we had. It was delicious.
So to the diving. We arrived on Monday morning, and Monday afternoon saw our check dive at Lankan.

Dive 1 Lankan

The top of the reef is at 5m, aim to go to 20m, expect lots of bommies, fusilier, sweetlips and possibly some sharks. The briefing, like all that were to come, was excellent, very specific, with very good advice on what marine life to look out for where. They certainly knew their stuff.

Jumped in, pretty murky. Very green, in fact. I had somehow expected it to be all clear water and bimbly diving. I guess I should have read the Diver Maldives special in the summer (which was on the boat and very informative, especially the article by JB would’ve told me all I needed to know!). Vis is about 10m of plankton, and the temperature is a toasty 28C. All of sudden I see the diver behind me gesticulating wildly, and can see the murky outline of a shark swimming by. A shark? Hm. Big head. Oh my god, it’s a whaleshark!!! Only a baby one, admittedly (about 3m) but a whaleshark, nonetheless. And he was in a hurry. I’ve seen a couple of whalesharks in my time and this one was going some. He must’ve been a bit surprised to meet divers. Camera for checkdive purposes left safely on boat, of course. But then there was no shot to be had anyway. We carried on with the dive, through a massive pile of green sludge thermoclime (good thing I brought my 4th element vest), but even through the green, you could see that this was a stunning dive if only the sun had peaked out a little. There were fish EVERYWHERE! Large schools of fusilier, bigeyes, goldies under ledges, also saw green moray, green turtle, lion fish, huge napoleon wrasse… if this is the check dive, what’s come??

Dive 2. Maldives Victory

Briefed as an ideal Nitrox dive, with expected heavy current, I took the 32% Nitrox and left the camera behind again. Still settling in. Not many wrecks in the Maldives and we got to dive 2 of them. This was a freighter, which sits on a bottom of about 40m. It’s a great dive as it’s a freight ship which is very much intact, and still carries a fair amount of it’s cargo, we saw lots and lots of bottles, a couple of tape recorders, tapes still in their cellophane wrapping, and, behind secure gating, what looks like gold bars but turns out to be cartons and cartons of Benson and Hedges!

Those with wreck specs were permitted to penetrate and we went through the living quarters where sinks were lying toppled over, and went up a few sets of stairs. Saw a lone giant barracuda guarding the ship, as well as lots red tooth triggerfish (turns out, they are EVERYWHERE all the time!), bigeyes, squirrelfish, large black coral in the hold. The mast of the ship is covered in green Tibestria coral. Even found a little black and blue striped nudibranch.

Dive 3 Bathila Thila

A thila is basically a round reef, like a little mini underwater island. Dropped in and immediately saw two large whitetips cruising by below, went on to see a moray having a good clean at a cleaning station, large school of jacks, batfish. Bigeyes, and another enormous napoleon wrasse. Also saw several anemones, some full of eggs, being fiercely protected by clownfish. First dive with the camera and the new DS125 strobe, a large, cumbersome thing. Certainly takes some time getting used to. Even just getting the strobe pointing in the right direction in the current is proving a challenge. I can see it’s going to be a “learning” week.

Dive 4 Maaya Thila

This is a night dive, and I’m not normally a fan of night dives. Due to heavy currents, there aren’t many opportunities for nightdiving in the Maldives anyway. So I thought “all right then, I’ll go”.

It was THE BEST nightdive of my life. (And I thought the Thistlegorme at night was pretty cool). Of course I couldn’t get the camera to work (stobe battery gone flat – doh!), typical. We saw loads of whitetips and moray’s out hunting for food, and managed to watch one white tip and one moray each catching and eating their fish (apparently whitetips are pretty cr*p at hunting so you don’t often get to see that0. Lots of large loggerhead turtles asleep under ledges, lionfish, nudibranchs, Maldivian nail sponge, baby pufferfish, spotted boxfish, big schools of just about everything, not too much current. Superb!!!

Dive 5 Maaya Thila

Again. This time in daylight. More whitetips, big school of barracuda, large tuna, big grey reefshark overhead, lots of anemones, found a shy octopus hiding in a crevice, and then a large manta cruised past. We finished the dive watching a turtle feeding on our safety stop. Only a slight south westerly current. This really was my favourite site of the trip.

Dive 6 Kalhahandi Huraa

Dropped in to what was going to be a drift dive in a channel – and drift it was. Four of us went in one side of the boat, the rest on the other side, and we pretty much lost everyone from the minute we hit the water. A 2kn current ripped us around the reef, which in itself would not have been a huge problem except the vis was only about 8 metres so keeping an eye on your buddies was a challenge. The dive was supposed to be a wall covered in an array of pastel soft coral with lots of lovely small things hiding in large overhangs but there was a snowballs chance in hell of being able to stop and have a look. Even the wall was so dark that we couldn’t even see the coral. It was very hard work finning to stay on the wall, and even harder work finning down against the upcurrent I saw my buddies do 10metres in 1min. Therefore didn’t really pay due attention to the stingray and manta that cruised past us until we got around the corner and to the plateau top of the reef where thankfully the current dropped a bit and we were able to appreciate the stacks and stacks of beautiful table coral.

Dive 7 Madivaru – Ari

In search of better vis and lower currents we headed from the Male region to the Ari region. Idiot me managed to put the viewing screen of the camera the wrong way around on securing it in the housing and didn’t notice till under water. I really am a scatterbrain, but this was to cost me dearly. The only way of taking any shots was to point the camera in the general direction of the object and hoping for the best. Didn’t think it was too much of a problem though when we started what turned out to be another green murky, high plankton drift.

We saw more eels (and different types of eels) than I have ever seen in one dive. Green, masked, honeycomb, eels everywhere. Then I saw my first ever ornate ghost pipefish (starting to kick myself now over the camera cock-up), and then it got worse. The self-kicking part. A manta slowly cruised over to us to check us out. My buddy looked at me and pointed in a “it’s beHIND you” kind of way, and I turned, and there it was. Huge, and right in front of me. It followed me around for a while, and then his mate arrived. They watched us desperately trying to hang on to bits of rock in the current which had now picked up considerably, and then proceeded to play catch with each other before cruising off into the distance.

It was after this dive that the crew introduced us to reef hooks. Ahhhh!


Dive 8 Madivaru

The next morning we tried again to look for the mantas, but since I had my camera in full working order now, of course they didn’t show. Also the current was even stronger than yesterday afternoon. But the dive was not devoid of rays. We had a litte eagle ray and then later a big bull ray to keep us happy, then found more ornate ghost pipefish. Sadly the flash on my camera does not work in super macro setting (the things you learn at the wrong time!), so I didn’t get a sharp shot of either of them, but I’ve posted a couple of slightly wonky ones to prove they were there!

Before the next dive we went in search of whalesharks in the shallows and hit paydirt. Along the way we came across a pod of False Killerwhiles (like large dolphins) accompanying us and then there it was. The shadow in the water. Mask fins, snorkel – jump! Wow!!! We had a good 5 minutes snorkelling with it. It dropped deep as soon as it saw us coming, but didn’t disappear completely, so we still got to enjoy the experience. The pure majesty of these creatures always leaves me completely dumbfounded. Wow.

Dive 9 JCB and dive 10 Dhigurah Arches

Really more of the same, current, drifts, not great vis, but lots of fish everywhere.

Dive 11 – Hathi Kholu

Another rapid drift dive along a wall but managed to see my first ever blue and yellow striped ribbon eel. 2 of them, in fact. The colour is just stunning. Here we also saw the first signs of some damage to the reef, with a few knocked over table corals.

Back on the boat, we had a large pod of dolphins playing around the boat, but dolphins here are shy, and as soon as humans get in the water, they take off. We also went on land for a little bit of shopping on Dhangethi, a small island inhabited by locals only, which took a bit of a hit during the Tsunami. Although from what we saw, the damage did not appear to be too severe. But there was lots of driftwood washed up on the beach (it took a 5 minute walk to cross the whole island) and the shores looked a bit battered.

Dive 12, 13, 15 Cocoa Channel.

The next few dives were all based around Cocoa Thila, Cocoa Corner and the Channel in between. These are some of the heaviest currents I have ever encountered, and that includes drift dives in South Africa. The briefing on current direction and strength invariable turned out to be quite different when we got in the water, and dictated whether we dragged our way across the top of the Thila, or whether we hooked into the reef at the reef corner to look for sharks. We did see sharks and on one dive some people who had decided to use Nitrox that day, saw a big squadron of eagle rays flyng past. I missed them as my deco requirements had me up and crawling across the Thila plateau again. The potential for beautiful stuff is endless here, but the effort involved in fighting the current detracts a little bit from the fun. Guess I need to spend a bit more time in the gym! Still managed to find some nice stuff including 2 mantis shrimps.

Dive 14 Hogula Huraa

Another wall, lots of pretty scenic shots and actually a nice bimbly current for a change. A great dive for pretty small stuff.

There was another night dive here aswell, but I skipped it. I was knackered!

Dive 16 Kuda Giri

Our last dive and the perfect end to an excellent trip We went to visit a small intact wreck (which has no name) and then drifted gently along a wall where we found the very rare Leaf Fish (sadly also not quite in focus). Amazing little creature part of the scorpionfish family which looks a lot like a thinner leafy frogfish (which we searched for but didn’t’ find). Despite the vis being quite green here again it was a lovely dive and the sun decided to come out and light up the scene a bit.

The last day we went for a walkabout on Male of which I’ve posted number of photos. When you compare what we saw to the images that were shown on the news it is hard to believe it’s the same place. The day we were there, officials were awaiting the arrival for of Kofi Annan on his tour to inspect the “devastated” areas. On arrival, I expect he was asking himself what he was doing here.

Overall, the trip was excellent. And I can highly recommend the Sea Queen and it’s crew to anyone who plans to travel in the region. But make sure you hit the gym before you go.

Matt and AnneMarie (the hosts) were just finishing their 3 year stint on Sea Queen and handing over to Lisa and Dave who have previously lived and worked in Sri Lanka and will do an excellent job, I’m sure. Matt’s hard drive sadly crashed the week we were there, so we didn’t get the chance to get the video, but if you’re interested in the photos (and there are LOTS of them) the are at:

www.yblume.smugmug.com/travel.

I’ll certainly be going back as soon as I can.
Yvonne.

[Noel Johnson]

Looks about 5 lines to me I'm afraid...

[Bunny]

Yeah, it doesn't seem to want to take it. I'm working on it. The file seems to be too large. Admin.. any help here, please?

Problem solved, it didnt' like the formatting.

[Lynne]

Excellent report Bunny and great photos too! Incoming green!

[Tim Ingmire]

Excellent Report. I wanna go!

Just looking through your photos now - very nice.

Strobes, eh? Bloody Nuisance.

[SCUBA Chick]

Excellent report Yvonne...getting really excited about our 12 night trip on Sea Spirit now...

Cracking pic's too...that reminds me must order another memory stick for the Sony

Scubachick

P.S Hope you don't mind but I'm going to PM you for some info!!!!

[Bunny]

sure, please do.

[Fiona]

Thanks for the report Yvonne however I don't like the sound of this

"and she didn’t look a whole lot different from the Sea Queen. Apparently the cabins were larger, but she is just going in for a refit and in fact the cabins will be made smaller to match the size of those of Sea Queen in order to allow a few extra passengers."

The cabins on Sea Spirit weren't that big and they will have to take quiet a lot of each cabin to get another one on each side of the boat.

[Bunny]

From what I gather, the whole layout will change. I wouldn't worry too much. As long as you don't both try to get dressed/changed at the same time, the Sea Queen cabins are big enough. You don't spend any time in your cabin anyway.

[Pigpen]

Great report. I was on Sea Queen in 2003, and reading your report has brought it all back.
I knew that Matt and Anne-Marie were leaving, but do you know what they will be doing?