Maldives WS-067 (Joey)

Photos from my last whale shark encounter in the Maldives, taken on March 27 just off Maamigili island (South Ari Atoll):











South Ari is the best place in the Maldives to find whale sharks; there's a population of a little over 100 identified individuals living nearly year round in the area. As all the sharks are juveniles and nearly all are males (there are four known females out of 103 known individuals), the area is thought to be a whale shark nursery. My dive centre, among others in the atoll, has been working with the Maldives Whale Shark Research Programme, a team of British researchers, to help identify individuals when we encounter them on our weekly whale shark diving and snorkelling trips.

This shark was cruising in shallow water (around 6 m deep) but didn't stay long once we jumped. Even with only three of us in the water, it started heading towards the reef edge almost right away and had dived to deeper water within five minutes of beginning the encounter. This is the first time I've seen this shark, and while our encounters are generally getting shorter (most probably due to to having too many boats and too many people in the water with any given shark — whale shark tourism is in its infancy here and poorly planned and controlled), I'm guessing that this shark is particularly jumpy because of the finning attempt.

The Maldives Whale Shark Research Program has nicknamed most of the sharks they've encountered in the Maldives. This one is Joey. He's about 6m long and, despite the finning attempt, seemed relatively healthy. He was first sighted with the nearly-amputated dorsal about a year ago so, while it's pretty sad to see a shark in this sort of condition, but at least we know he's hanging in there.

Whale sharks are officially protected in the Maldives, but the high prices fetched by the fins and the ease of finning a docile, relatively slow moving shark near the surface can be too much for some local fishermen to resist. The recent ban on all shark product exports should — if enforced — help improve the plight of all sharks in the Maldives. On the other hand, the Maldvian government also recently announced plans to build an international port at Maamigili Island. This area is basically whale shark central, and the plans for the port fly in the face of the government's supposed support for the idea of creating a series of marine protected area around Maamgili to protect whale shark habitat — one of the main aims of the Maldives Whale Shark Research Programme. The president has since told reporters that there will be no harbour before a full environmental survey has been carried out. Of course.

February 18, 2008: On an island in the sun

On the move again. About a month ago, I exchanged a couple of emails with a French-Canadian base leader in the Maldives about an opening he had. After an early morning interview (two hours after which I spotted my first-ever dugong, I'm sure it was a sign) and another email or two, I had accepted a position with Sub Aqua (the same company I worked for two years ago in Egypt) at the Conrad (formerly the Hilton) hotel on Rangali island in the Maldives, one of the posher of the very posh resorts in this archipelago of over 1000 paradisiac islands (in the middle of the Indian Ocean, well off the west coast of India).

After a day in air transit purgatory, the cheapest ticket I could find involving stops and/or transfers in Bahrain, Dubai and Colombo, I made it to my hotel in Male some time after 2 a.m. Up the next morning at 7 a.m. to re-pack and grab a bite to eat before my 9 a.m. meeting with one of the local admin staff to get my mandatory AIDS test and chest x-ray at the hospital. A few hours later I was in the airport with Tobias, an old Sub Aqua Egypt colleague who is now working here and was returning to the island from holidays the same day as my arrival. We always say that the diving world is a small one. It was great to catch up.

When it was finally time to board the air taxi, I grabbed a spot by the window (hard not to have a window seat, really) and pulled out my camera during the flight like all the other tourists. It's pretty sweet, flying over all these little reefs and white sandy beaches surrounded by postcard-blue water. I hope it's going to be even sweeter living on one for a year.

Leaving Male, the island city:






Coming in for a landing:

January 20, 2008: Dugong!

Woo hoo!

After over a year of diving in the Red Sea, and over a dozen dives in a bay actually inhabited by dugongs (and where everyone but me seems to find them), I finally spotted my first one. Near the end of a dive, nowhere near where any dugong should be hanging out, she just cruised on over in about 5 metres of water as me and my group were swimming along back towards our exit point in the reef. I looked over to my left and nearly had a heart attack when I saw the two-metre long beast just gliding along a few metres away from me, looking at me with her beady little eye and patiently waiting to get noticed. Afraid she wouldn't stay, I could hardly tear my eyes away long enough to get the attention of my divers (who all nearly surfaced in their surprise). But our dugong was in the mood for a bit of fun; she circled around us a couple of times, pumping her whale tail as we stared in wonder and awe. We hung out long enough for our photograher to get a few shots off (the photo is courtesy of him), but eventually, and extremely reluctantly, I had to end the party thanks to the group's dwindling air supply (I considered staying down until they were out of air and making them snorkel in, but I wasn't sure how well that would go down). Sigh... Oh well, now that I've seen a dugong, I can leave Egypt and head for the Indian Ocean and the Maldives. No dugongs there, but mantas galore and the occasional whale shark to boot. Sweet!

December 31, 2007: Kul Sana Wenta Taeb!

What can I say, it was a New Year's party. I came, I saw, I drank, and I paid dearly for my sins the next day -- I nearly puked off the jetty after my housereef dive, which I wanted desperately to end from the moment it started. But I learned my lesson. I'm off the booze now for sure. Definitely never doing that again. Until next time, anyway.

This was us at the beginning of the evening, looking all wide-eyed and innocent with some hotel big-wig.


Ooh, party favours! I like party favours!


Steffi broke out her pinstripes for the occasion:


Meanwhile, her brother Dennis made a special trip down from Germany because he knew just how rockin' our New Year's was gonna be.


Seriously, you can't hand out frilly metallic party hats and not expect this to happen.


Cat, enjoying her ice cream.


Letizia insists on taking full advantage of the buffet dessert table. That'll go straight to your hips, girl!


Tanya 2 still looks largely innocent at this stage, but you can just see the glimmer of tequila in her eyes.


Ingrid and Jorg, (that's a Movenpick "o," you know, the weird one with two dots over it. Crazy Germans.) the dive centre managers. (I'm happy to report that they looked as bad as I felt the next day.)





Waaaait a minute... did somebody say "tequila"?


Yup, I definitely heard "tequila."


Nuh unnhh, says Letizia, they distinctly said "mojito."


Definitely "mojito."


And it was all a slip-slidey alcohol-lubricated slope downhill from there.


















Mercifully, none of us remembered to bring our cameras onto the dance floor. But this photo was sent to me later by a couple of dive centre guests...


Like I said, I'm not doing that again for a Very Long Time.

December 21, 2007: Lets go divin now, everybody's learnin how, come on now safari with me

Every couple of days or so, the dive centre runs a full-day "jeep safari" trip down to Marsa Abu Dabbab, an hour and a half south of El Quseir. The beautiful, protected bay hosts a beautiful reef, a dozen or so green sea turtles that can be seen by divers and snorkellers alike, and is home to the elusive dugong (the Pacific sister of the manatee, which I have yet to see).

I'm fresh out of witty commentary for photos today, so this'll have to do:

View of the beach. Note the red flag: it's flippin' windy in winter!


The lifeguard chair sits empty most of the winter while the red flag flies.


As do the sun beds:




Hamada and Adbu, two of the Egptian staff who come with us on all dives to help with the equipment.







Francis, the bus driver (despite the jeep safari, there are no actual jeeps involved, only buses and passenger vans):


Mansour, the pick-up driver:




View from the bus of the long and empty desert road home. No dugong today... maybe next time.

December 19, 2007: Eid

There are two Muslim feasts, or Eids, in the year -- the big one at the end of Ramadan, to celebrate the close of the month of fasting, which straddled September-October this year, and the one that closes the annual Hajj, the pilgrimage to Mecca, which was only a few days before Christmas this year.

Momen, our staff-bus driver, invited my the two office girls, Steffi and Tanya, and me to his parents' place in Safaga for an Eid feast. Why he chose the three of us I'll never know -- he speaks no English (despite ongoing attempts to teach him, but it's all in one ear and out the other so much that I've given up) and my command of Arabic isn't strong enough to really ask him why. Anyway, it was a nice evening in his humble home, with some nice traditional Egyptian food.

Momen reaches for an Egyptian cabbage roll ("chrom," though I'm not sure if this is the word for cabbage or a cabbage roll). Not as good as Brian's, but pretty tasty nonetheless:


Momen, Tanya, Steffi and I enjoying the feast:


A close up of some stuffed zuchini:


Steffi and Tanya Two, full-up and feasted out.







Ahmed, aka Toni, Steffi's adoptive brother.



I gave my camera to Momen's little sister, and ended up with these photos, a bit of an insider view of the house.
The women, where they belong:


Momen's sister Safa'. I love the audacity of her pose. Dig the gold shoes.




Not sure who this girl belongs to, but she looks like she'll cause no end of trouble for her parents in a few years.