Maldives Liveaboard that is offering more than 3 dives per day.....

[roflcopter]

Can anyone recommend a good liveaboard in the Maldives that offers more than 3 dives per day? If I am going to fly that far and spend the money, I would really prefer 4+ a day. Any recommendations? Preferably a boat that doesn't take out 30 divers at a time

 

[Tippytoes12]

I don’t know of any. The reason given is that many of the dives are deep, more or less straight down to 30 mts for the most of the available dive time. It’s enough, honestly. You see lots of marine life from the boat, huge schools of dolphins and if you are lucky mantas and we even saw a sperm whale once. The boats are all for up to 24 to 30 divers, but there can be as few as ten passengers. As I am sure you know all diving is from a dhoni, which is spacious and has a toilet on board. Dhoni diving is brilliant, reduces noise on the mothership and rendre is relaxing space. Buddy pairs and teams, maximum of 6 but usually only 4, jump in May together.

Really recommend Emperor boats !

 

[Damselfish]

The other thing is the combo of tidal and oceanic currents there can make the dive schedule less simple. The liveaboard we did, the dive schedule varied daily to get in the water at the right times, also to transit to spots they wanted to hit at certain times. Often we didn’t have much of a schedule it was more like “ok now is good.” I don’t know how typical that is, but there wasn’t usually time to fit in more than 3. Wasn’t the fairly fixed schedule you see on a lot of boats.

 

[matador]

I am also not aware of anyone offering 4 dives a day; I was there on a 10d liveaboard a few years ago and we never had 4 dives a day.
I think actually the problem is diving from the dhoni which I beg to disagree with the OP above who said that is "brilliant". Going back and forth with the dhoni (twice if there are too many guests) adds up to the travel to/from time considerably and it leaves no time for a 4th dive. Another problem with the dhoni is that everyone has to surface about the same time as you cannot let the dhoni and the other guests waiting, something that sometimes is possible when diving off the boat or with a much smaller group.

 

[scubaozy]

I did 4 dives a day in Maldives but it was to make up missed dives due technical problems/delays on the boat. Obviously 4th dive was a night dive. Duration of day/night does not change much throughout the year, so, you have limited time to squeeze in an extra dive and usually this is also not with the best light conditions. Tanks need to be filled between dives, so, on a full boat this is another limitation on how many dives can be offered. Additionally average dive depth is on the high side due thilas, so, you also need to have enough surface interval between dives to get decent bottom time. I think 3 dives is reasonable for the location. If you need to get more out of your long travel, consider doing few more extra days.

 

[Christian]

The good, classic Maldivian diving is all about currents (water flowing in and out of the atolls). That means only part of a day provides favorable conditions in a specific locale. You could probably stack up dives on sheltered reefs inside an atoll, some reefs are pretty even though a lot of corals are damaged in the shallows (above 5-10 meters) due to El Ninos 1998, 2010 and 2016/17. But it wouldn't be worth travelling around the globe for. So liveabords there afaik and have seen offer three dives and sometimes a night dive or two per week, depending on cruise and guests.