We plan most of our trips based on two activities: hiking or snorkeling. The Maldives, obviously, fell into the latter.

It did not disappoint.

The house reef at Dusit Thani was quite healthy, and we regularly saw turtles, as well as white tip and black tip sharks. We had a special experience one day where three black tip sharks circled us slowly for about five minutes. They were not bothered by humans at all. in our previous experiences with them, they disappeared almost as quickly as we saw them. It was very difficult to get a picture. Not so here.

I have a particular fondness for turtles, In fact, when photographing this one I was so focused on it I totally missed another black tip that came within about five feet of me. A special treat is that this is a Hawksbill turtle, where we’ve mostly seen green turtles in the past.

The water was amazingly clear, which was a bit of a surprise considering it was in the middle of rainy season. but we weren’t complaining!

One day at Dusit, we received a WhatsApp alert saying that 10+ mantas had been sighted. We opted to go, and were rewarded with an experience of snorkeling with several dozen mantas! Since we were in deeper water, the pictures didn’t turn out quite as well (it’s much better on video). The mantas would swim in “trains” – one right behind another – of a dozen or more. Then they would do somersaults, many times right below us. We ended up getting many more pictures of their undersides than from on top!

In that last picture you can see many other mantas, they are like shadows underneath the two in the foreground. We had no idea mantas could be so playful!

At Nova, the fun continued. The house reef was still healthy, but we never found the resident turtle. We saw more black tips and white tips. Two of the highlights were a porcupine ray and a white snowflake moray eel, both of which I’d not seen before.

Another one of my favourite fish to find is clownfish, also known as anemone fish. There’s a species unique to the Maldives, so of course I had to find them.

Aren’t they beautiful???

Our excursions at Nova were excellent. We were successful on our whale shark excursion, with the whale sharks being one of the most fantastic creatures I’ve ever seen.

You can see in the second picture there are many fins on the surface – the whale sharks are so popular, there’s a crowd whenever they’re sighted. My goal for the next time we swim with them is to be in a place that not quite as crowded.

A few days later, we had the opportunity to swim with nurse sharks. A local village got a permit from the government to feed them three times a day in order to preserve the population. Our guides were very adamant in making sure that we understood that the resort was not feeding the sharks, it was only the local village.

We were also given advice on how to swim around the nurse sharks – not to go in the the middle of the feeding area, the nurse sharks will swim around us. While the sharks don’t have teeth, they do eat by using suction, so the guides told us to make sure, if the nurse sharks got close, to close our hands into fists so we didn’t lose any fingers. They said the nurse sharks would steer clear, but if they got close, to take our fist, put in on their nose and push them away.

Fortunately, we didn’t have to use any of those guidelines! While they did swim around us, everything was very peaceful.

Once we got into the water, we discovered the sharks were much bigger than I imagined. I had though that they were on the smaller side, maybe a couple of feet. On the contrary, these were creatures at least as big as we were!

it was a fantastic experience.

Snorkeling in the Maldives was so much fun. It had been two years since our last snorkeing trip thanks to two moves in the last two years, so we’re making sure it won’t be as long until our next one. The only question is: where will it be?

I’ll end this post with a picture of my favourite fish: Husbandfish, always seen when I snorkel.