Hi all
Thought I would just share our experience diving 8 days in Fuvahmulah (FVM) February 11-20 2022
Booking: I contacted "Pelagic divers", who arranged the whole trip including domestic flights. Inah would reply within hours of whatsapping him (sometimes even minutes).
Traveling: Ham via DXB to MLE. Getting to Maldives was (sort of) easy - get negative PCR (from personal experience - if your PCR comes back positive, and you have no symptoms, book for another PCR, you might be lucky), fill out IMUGA, and print out everything from vaccination pass to hotel booking. - flying from Germany, they do check everything.
Stay: we stayed at Tiger Shark Residence. Faboulus place! Lovely little pool, good size room with "outdoor" bathroom - loved it. Bed was very comfy, ac good and wifi very strong. At night it was so quiet I could not believe it ... We were FB, and food was ok to good - but it'll be some months before I want to eat tuna again.
Diving: Pelagic divers picked us up every morning (always on time), drive 10 min to the dive shop at the harbour in a pickup with seats welded in the back (Like the pickup they use in Thailand/koh tao). Then we had 3 dives, returning to port between dives most days. Finish usually before 2 pm and they'll drive us back to the guest house. The day there was most divers we were 7, but mostly we were 4-5 divers. Water temp was a nice 28-29 C.
1st dive of the day was a deep dive at "Farikede", negative entry, drop to 30 m (be prepared for deeper), swim against current and see ... blue water. No luck any of the 8 days. Kind of dissappointing, but talking to other divers diving with other operators, and they did not see anything special either, so I guess it was just bad luck. We did see a few silver tips and tiger sharks, but no schools, no hammerheads or threshers.
2nd dive was usually the "Tiger zoo" - all I can say is: wow. I could do this dive over and over and did not get tired after the 7 dives we did there. Pelagic divers "hides" the tuna heads inside some rock and watching the enormous tigers move the rocks to get to it was impressive. During all dives there were 4-5 dive guides: 1 on each side, 1 in front og 1-2 behind us, so we always felt very safe even when the sharks came close. Lots of other fish to see, even a school of barracudas and a napoleon. One day a silver tip also showed up for the show
Absolutely the main draw at diving FVM.
3rd dive would be a "reef dive", lots of healthy hard corals - not very colourful, many "fish", occasionally a small black tip or turtle. Also saw an octopus, a few nudies and a leaf fish. We feel the dive guides could benefit from meeting some Indonesian or Phillippino guides and learn to be better at spotting stuff - I'm sure there must be more to these reefs, than just rushing past.
Best dive: one day after the tiger zoo, we swam away from the site and did our safety stop, I just finished, when the guides, started swimming out and signalling us like crazy. I thought they could bring the boat to us, but then realised there was a whale shark coming towards us. IT. WAS. MAGICAL. For 20 min the baby (4.5-5 m) whale shark swam with us, visiting everyone to have a closer look, playing with our bubbles and giving everyone an amazing time. This dive made it into my top 5 of 600+ dives. My praise to the dive guides, as even though they too very ecstatic, they checked on our air to make sure nobody ran out.
We paid 100 us for the PCR to leave FVM (and enter Dubai on our short stop over). Flight home and stop over went without any problems.
Conclusion: we loved the diving with the tigers and the reef dives were ok. Maybe we should have only stayed 6 days, but even so we enjoyed the dives and relaxed vibe of the whole island. Everyone seemed very friendly.
Thought I would just share our experience diving 8 days in Fuvahmulah (FVM) February 11-20 2022
Booking: I contacted "Pelagic divers", who arranged the whole trip including domestic flights. Inah would reply within hours of whatsapping him (sometimes even minutes).
Traveling: Ham via DXB to MLE. Getting to Maldives was (sort of) easy - get negative PCR (from personal experience - if your PCR comes back positive, and you have no symptoms, book for another PCR, you might be lucky), fill out IMUGA, and print out everything from vaccination pass to hotel booking. - flying from Germany, they do check everything.
Stay: we stayed at Tiger Shark Residence. Faboulus place! Lovely little pool, good size room with "outdoor" bathroom - loved it. Bed was very comfy, ac good and wifi very strong. At night it was so quiet I could not believe it ... We were FB, and food was ok to good - but it'll be some months before I want to eat tuna again.
Diving: Pelagic divers picked us up every morning (always on time), drive 10 min to the dive shop at the harbour in a pickup with seats welded in the back (Like the pickup they use in Thailand/koh tao). Then we had 3 dives, returning to port between dives most days. Finish usually before 2 pm and they'll drive us back to the guest house. The day there was most divers we were 7, but mostly we were 4-5 divers. Water temp was a nice 28-29 C.
1st dive of the day was a deep dive at "Farikede", negative entry, drop to 30 m (be prepared for deeper), swim against current and see ... blue water. No luck any of the 8 days. Kind of dissappointing, but talking to other divers diving with other operators, and they did not see anything special either, so I guess it was just bad luck. We did see a few silver tips and tiger sharks, but no schools, no hammerheads or threshers.
2nd dive was usually the "Tiger zoo" - all I can say is: wow. I could do this dive over and over and did not get tired after the 7 dives we did there. Pelagic divers "hides" the tuna heads inside some rock and watching the enormous tigers move the rocks to get to it was impressive. During all dives there were 4-5 dive guides: 1 on each side, 1 in front og 1-2 behind us, so we always felt very safe even when the sharks came close. Lots of other fish to see, even a school of barracudas and a napoleon. One day a silver tip also showed up for the show
Absolutely the main draw at diving FVM.3rd dive would be a "reef dive", lots of healthy hard corals - not very colourful, many "fish", occasionally a small black tip or turtle. Also saw an octopus, a few nudies and a leaf fish. We feel the dive guides could benefit from meeting some Indonesian or Phillippino guides and learn to be better at spotting stuff - I'm sure there must be more to these reefs, than just rushing past.
Best dive: one day after the tiger zoo, we swam away from the site and did our safety stop, I just finished, when the guides, started swimming out and signalling us like crazy. I thought they could bring the boat to us, but then realised there was a whale shark coming towards us. IT. WAS. MAGICAL. For 20 min the baby (4.5-5 m) whale shark swam with us, visiting everyone to have a closer look, playing with our bubbles and giving everyone an amazing time. This dive made it into my top 5 of 600+ dives. My praise to the dive guides, as even though they too very ecstatic, they checked on our air to make sure nobody ran out.
We paid 100 us for the PCR to leave FVM (and enter Dubai on our short stop over). Flight home and stop over went without any problems.
Conclusion: we loved the diving with the tigers and the reef dives were ok. Maybe we should have only stayed 6 days, but even so we enjoyed the dives and relaxed vibe of the whole island. Everyone seemed very friendly.
