North Male Liveaboard Diving

liveaboard diving in North Male

Liveaboard diving in North Male provides you with all you would expect from a dive cruise in the Maldives. With some excellent fish life and stunning soft corals, it is not a surprise many scuba divers will return to this dive destination over and over again to enjoy a diving holiday in the Indian ocean.

North Male Liveaboard Routes

Most Maldives liveaboards start from the capital North Male and make dive safaris to the Northern, Central, and Southern Atolls of the Maldives. Liveaboard itineraries can only focus on one area or choose to combine the central atolls with either the far North or Deep South. Diving holidays can be from 8 days/7nights up to 15 days/14nights.

Central Atolls

Northern Atolls

Southern Atolls

Marine Life

You can expect to see the marine life you would expect on a liveaboard in the Maldives during scuba diving in the North Male Atoll. Such as manta rays, whale sharks, eagle rays, napoleon wrasse, tuna, turtles, and see several species of reef sharks.

But when you look closer to the Maldives’ vibrant reefs, there is more than just the pelagic fish around. Look closely, and you can see ghost pipefish, numerous nudibranchs, and cleaner shrimps, to name a view.

North Male Dive Sites

North Male has more than 70 dive sites to choose from on a liveaboard diving holiday. Here are some of the most popular among divers.

Girifushi Thila

This dive site is also known as Rainbow reef because of the many colorful corals and Abundance of marine life.

The reef attracts an excellent variety of marine life, with small reef fish dancing above the corals, grey reef sharks, eagle rays, and barracuda. That, in combination with the stunning soft corals in blue, orange, and yellow, vibrant colors, makes this thila one of the best know dive sites in this Atoll.

Because of the location between the two outer islands, the current is a permanent feature providing corals and marine life with nutrient-rich waters. Only experienced and confident divers should dive it only by experienced and confident divers.

Maldive Victory Wreck

The Maldive Victory wreck is a 100-meter long cargo ship that supplied the Maldives with tourists from Singapore.

Since it sank on Friday the 13th of February 1981, this wreck became a popular dive site due to its coral growth and abundance of marine life that found its home here.

A good dive plan is to start your dive from the mast area and dive around the ship’s outside. Along the way, you will find three large wholes that are wide-open and can easily be penetrated. Just make sure for this dive to bring a torch.

This an excellent wreck dive that you can easily explore during a single dive.

Lankan Manta Point

A Maldives dive safari is not complete without diving with manta rays. This reef has a cleaning station in the shallows, so it is a dive that every level scuba diver can attend.

While you hang around the cleaning station, where you can often see multiple manta rays lining up, remember to keep an eye out for some other fascinating marine life. Often seen on Manta Point are hawksbill turtles, reef sharks, napoleon wrasses, and moray eels.

Banana Reef

One of the first discovered dive sites in Male was the Obanana reef and is still one of the most popular dives. The Banana shaped reef has an excellent combination of reef diving, wall diving, and cave diving.

The soft corals and giant gorgonian sea fans are a stunning site with giant moray eels and groupers. Also, during your dive, you will see vast schools of more than 1000 bannerfish.

The caves are great to explore, and many squirrelfish will be hanging around there. On the West side of the Dive Site is the wall where you can see grey reef sharks patrolling around.

Kuda Haa

Kuda Haa is one of the highlights of a Maldives cruise. This Thila is best to dive when the current is not so strong; this makes it easy to navigate between the pinnacle sections. Expect to see a wide variety of marine life with lots of macro life, such as nudibranchs, leaf fish, and frogfish. Other marine life you can see are lionfish, fusiliers, napoleon wrasses, barracuda, and Jacks.

Lady Christine

Another wreck at North Kaafu is the lady Christine that sank during work laying communication cables near Gaafaru when it hit Falhu reef, where it sank on April 16, 1974.

Most of the wreck is scattered on the shallow reef at 10 meters, making it easy to dive for all scuba dive levels.

Not only can the wreck be an exciting site, but close by, you can dive into two caves that are connected by a swim-through for this part of the dive; you should have at least have some experience.

Marine life that you can see are turtles, reef sharks, barracuda, and other pelagic fish.

Diving Season

Liveaboard Diving in North Male is available year-round, but the weather conditions are best during the Northeastern monsoon from December until May. The water temperature can vary between 26 and 29 C.

How to Get There

North Male Atoll has the only international airport in the Maldives. You can arrive directly from Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur, Singapore, and Colombo from Asia and Dubai in the Middle East.

When taking a long international flight from Europe, America, Australia, or China, you often have a stopover in one of the airports mentioned above.

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