Arriving on Shark Island 

After we had planned the trip half a year in advance, the time had finally come in April 2024: We arrived in a propeller plane at the tiny airport of this small island of 9000 inhabitants in the very south of the Maldives. There is no atoll around the island and nothing but the beautiful Indian Ocean. Because of these geographical conditions, the island’s reef wall drops to about 2000m, which is why the conditions for finding large oceanic megafauna are particularly good. Below the surface of the turquoise water, the reason we made this long journey awaits us: sharks. Because Fuvahmulah is also known as “Shark Island” and as we left the airport we already came across the first wall drawings on houses with various species of sharks.

And even though with a bit of luck you can meet more than one species of shark in this area, we were mainly here for one of them. The shark we were hoping to meet here is one of the top predators on our planet. It can grow to over 6 m and owes its name to the distinctive stripes on its back: the tiger shark.

In 2023, PWYL offered an expedition to Fuvahmulah for the first time so that people could have the opportunity to experience this majestic animal up close that decorates the PWYL logo. Because their mission is as simple as it is ingenious: you have to know something to love it. You have to love something to be willing to actively protect it.

At the same time, a large part of the proceeds from the expedition goes to local NGOs in order to contribute directly to protection on site.

Our stay on Fuvahmulah with PWYL was planned for 7 days/6 nights with a total of 15 dives. We were accommodated in a hotel on the island and food and transport on the island were all taken care of. After a very warm welcome directly at the airport from Tom Cannon, who leads the expedition, and the rest of the PWYL team, our first magical sunset on the beach and a shared dinner where we also got to know the other 6 participants, we went to bed full of anticipation. Because the next day we would finally get the chance to dive with tiger sharks. The weeks of preparation and planning to experience this were finally paying off.

Face to face with an apex predator

While Tim had prepared for this moment primarily photographically and analyzed countless images from other photographers, Julia had been poring over books for months to learn as much as possible about the animals and watched every video about dos and don’ts when swimming with sharks that she could find on the Internet. Nevertheless, we were very excited when we received our first tiger shark briefing from Tom and Jono the next morning and realized that we would soon be face to face with these top predators.

The first briefing not only included important information about the diving conditions, the procedure and how we should behave if we saw one, but it was also followed by a check dive, during which the guides could assess our diving skills and check the equipment before we went to the sharks. Seeing how much importance PWYL placed on safety and knowing that a total of 4 guides would be diving with our group of 8, which also included a trained lifeguard, took away my initial nervousness, but the excitement remained.

After the check dive and another dive at lunchtime, we were finally told in the afternoon that we would now be going on the tiger shark dive.

The trip to the dive spot seemed to take only a blink of an eye, because directly behind the harbor basin we were told to jump into the water. First, two of the guides went into the water on either side of the boat and made sure that the first shark was not waiting for us directly under the boat. Now we were allowed in. From the moment we landed in the water, we were instructed to keep our eyes down and pay attention to what was around us. We slowly sank down the reef so that we had the reef to our right and the open ocean to our left. And indeed, after diving for just a few meters towards the entrance to the harbor, we spotted the first shark behind us. At first we only saw a big dark shadow coming closer, but it quickly became clear: this is really happening! There are tiger sharks right next to us and they are not comparable to the small reef sharks that we used to see so often on our dives.

With our hearts pounding, we had to force ourselves not to hold our breath in excitement. The shark passed us and disappeared again into the blue. After swimming for about five minutes, we reached the entry to the harbor basin. As previously discussed, we positioned ourselves next to each other, with our backs to the open ocean and our gaze directed towards the harbor entrance. There is a small pile of stones at a depth of about 7-10 meters under which the bait is placed. This prevents the animals from being fed directly from the hand or bait boxes, and at the same time the animals still have to “work” for their food to some extent and cannot get to it too easily. I was one of the last in the group to arrive at the spot, so I only had Dani on my right, who also works for PWYL and is a qualified dive guide. Tim was sitting on my left.

Every few seconds we looked in all directions, but there were no sharks in sight. So Lonu, one of the guides and a legend on Fuvamulah, swam to the pile of rocks and signaled to the surface with his regulator. Shortly afterwards a boat passed over us and a fish head was thrown into the water directly above Lonu. Lonu caught it skillfully, placed the head under the rocks as fast as possible and quickly retreated.

What then seemed like an eternity to us only took a few minutes until the first sharks appeared. And even though we knew they would come close to us, our hearts still skipped a beat or two when the first tiger shark swam straight towards us and only turned away 1-2 meters in front of us. For this first dive with tigers harks, we were asked to do it without a camera so that we could fully immerse ourselves in the moment and enjoy it. And even though our photographers’ hearts bled, we are also incredibly grateful for this decision, as we have stored the dive firmly in our minds.

The tiger sharks of Fuvamulah

The history of Fuvahmulah’s tiger sharks and their connection to the people of the island goes back over 600 years, when fishermen began throwing their fish scraps into the water at the harbor every day, offering the sharks a regular, easy-to-obtain meal. Tiger sharks are opportunists. This means that they take every opportunity to get easy prey that doesn’t require much energy, and they usually choose sick and old animals from schools of fish. This, in turn, is important for keeping fish stocks healthy. In addition to marine mammals and turtles, carrion is also on their menu. With this feeding behaviour sharks prevent the outbreak and spread of diseases. As animals at the top of the food pyramid, sharks regulate the populations of their prey, keep them in a natural balance and thus prevent such species from multiplying too much. Tiger sharks therefore play an important role in the marine ecosystem.

Due to the fish remains that regularly ended up in the water at the harbor, tiger sharks became an integral part of Fuvahmulah and it wasn’t long before fishermen began hunting the sharks, primarily to use the oil from their livers to waterproof their boats. The animals were killed for this reason for many years before shark fishing was banned in all Maldivian waters in 2010 and a brave man from the island decided to go diving with the animals. His name is Lonu and to the amazement of all the islanders, he survived his first shark diving attempt and repeated it again and again until he opened “Shark Island Dive”, the first diving school on Fuvahmulah, in 2015. Since then, shark diving has become firmly integrated on the island and has become its trademark. Shark Island was born. 

Since the sharks have been used to receiving fish remains at the harbor basin for generations, the local diving schools use this to give divers an unforgettable experience with the sharks. If tiger sharks are not already present at the entrance to the harbor basin, single fish heads, which are waste from local fishing, are lowered into the water and placed by the guides under the small pile of stones mentioned above. Once the first sharks have arrived, no more fish remains are thrown into the water, but the animals are observed calmly and with great care.

Problems of Fuvahmulah

So an island with a centuries-old history of shark hunting developed into an island where co-existence with sharks has become an essential part of the local economy. Even if you look at the purely economic side of shark tourism, it is much more lucrative to make money from a shark over and over again by giving tourists the opportunity to dive with them than to kill the shark and thus only make money from it once. However, there are other threats to the animals and all other marine life on Fuvahmulah which are no less dangerous than shark hunting. Even on a small island like Fuvahmulah, the consumption of food packaged in plastic is omnipresent and there are few water filters, so drinking water is mostly drunk from disposable plastic bottles. However, the necessary infrastructure to recycle this waste is lacking. As a result, the island’s mountains of garbage have grown larger and larger over the years and much of it ends up in the sea again and again, either by the wind or washed away by storm surges or thrown directly into the sea by people. And even though eco-tourism helps protect sharks, it also has its downsides. Because more tourists on the island also mean more plastic and there is always a great danger that the dives will quickly end up in mass tourism, where animals are harassed and the safety of the divers is at risk.

Picture by Jono Allen

Another major goal of the foundation is to ban all plastic water bottles from the island. To achieve this, water filter stations are being set up in various places and in cooperation with restaurants and hotels. Of course, such an ambitious goal cannot be achieved overnight and takes time. But with the support of organizations like PWYL, which donate a large part of their income to FMF, 7 such stations have already been installed (as of April 2024). A significant part of the price we paid for this trip will also be donated directly to FMF by PWYL to enable further drinking water filters.

In addition, in 2023 Jono founded together with a handful of local scientists and shark experts the Miyaru Programme, a Maldivian NGO with the mission of collaboratively studying, collecting data and protecting shark populations. An important component of their work is their data-sharing approach, through which they share scientific papers and articles, interviews with experts and an overview of research projects.

What we learned about tiger sharks

We learned all of these valuable facts and background information during our week on Shark Island, when Tom and Jono gave presentations after a day of diving, took us on trips to the island’s garbage dump, or took us to events run by other local organizations and NGOs such as Manta Trust and local shark research projects. And so we learned an incredible amount not only about the efforts to protect the animals, but also about the animals themselves.

What makes tiger sharks particularly photogenic in the eyes of many are, of course, their wonderful stripes along their flanks. The younger the animals, the more pronounced the stripes are, and as they get older they fade more and more. And the stripes not only look great, they also have an important use: they serve primarily as camouflage. Since the young animals in particular spend more time in regions with light and shadow patterns such as coral reefs, seagrass meadows or sandy bottoms, they use the stripes to blend in with their surroundings.

But the stripes are not their only superpower. Like other sharks, tiger sharks have a sixth and seventh sense: the electrical and pressure wave sense. The animals can sense electrical fields via the so-called Lorenzini ampullae on their heads. Since every living creature produces such fields through muscle contractions, such as the heartbeat, tiger sharks can locate other animals, even when they are camouflaged or hiding. With their lateral line and pit organ, however, sharks can sense pressure waves. This helps them to detect injured fish that are moving frantically in the water, even over great distances. These special abilities make sharks real top predators and at the same time require us divers to always be alert when swimming with them. Because even if we are not on their prey list, a curious tiger shark can also be dangerous to us humans if we do not know how to behave towards them.

Around Fuvahmulah you will find mainly female tiger sharks (approx. 85%). And among them there are always pregnant animals. It is assumed that the females visit the place primarily because of the rich food supply and warmer waters, which promote the development of the embryos in the womb. Female tiger sharks give birth approximately every 3 years and are ovoviviparous, which means that although their young grow in eggs, they are incubated in the womb with yolk nutrition and hatch there.

And despite the relatively large number of 10 to 82 newborns with each pragnancy, the tiger shark is classified by the IUCN as potentially endangered. This is largely due to the fact that the animals need 3 years before they are able to reproduce and unfortunately often fall victim to commercial fishing during this time. Not only do they repeatedly end up as bycatch in large nets, they are also specifically hunted for their fins and are also very popular as a trophy among recreational fishermen. More information about threats to sharks and oceanic megafauna can be found on this page.

For this reason, places like Fuvahmulah are of particular importance for the conservation of the species. A place where the animals are admired instead of hunted and everything is done to educate the local population and tourists about conservation measures and to combat other threats such as pollution.

About new friendships, unforgettable encounters & dancing in the rain

Our days on the island flew by and were definitely over far too quickly. But some experiences will definitely stay in our memories forever: Firstly, there was a dive with the best visibility you can imagine and the perfect photos that came with it. Then, on our second to last day, we went on a special diving trip to the edge of the reef, where we could see the animals coming up from the depths. We will never forget the moment when not just one or two, but four beautiful tiger sharks came towards us from below and one of the animals really only turned away at the last second. Together with our small group and our great guides, we danced in the pouring rain on our little dhoni (Maldivian boat) after this unforgettable dive. Full of endorphins and adrenaline, we knew at that moment that this experience would connect us forever and we were happy that we were able to experience this special dive with new friends and like-minded ocean lovers.

Arriving on Shark Island 

After we had planned the trip half a year in advance, the time had finally come in April 2024: We arrived in a propeller plane at the tiny airport of this small island of 9000 inhabitants in the very south of the Maldives. There is no atoll around the island and nothing but the beautiful Indian Ocean. Because of these geographical conditions, the island’s reef wall drops to about 2000m, which is why the conditions for finding large oceanic megafauna are particularly good. Below the surface of the turquoise water, the reason we made this long journey awaits us: sharks. Because Fuvahmulah is also known as “Shark Island” and as we left the airport we already came across the first wall drawings on houses with various species of sharks.

And even though with a bit of luck you can meet more than one species of shark in this area, we were mainly here for one of them. The shark we were hoping to meet here is one of the top predators on our planet. It can grow to over 6 m and owes its name to the distinctive stripes on its back: the tiger shark.

Protect What You Love

At this point, one could legitimately ask why on earth we deliberately want to get close to these animals, which can potentially be dangerous to humans. But there is no simple answer to this. Maybe it is the fascination with sharks since we dived with grey nurse sharks for the first time in 2020. Maybe it was also our photographer hearts that were always particularly enthusiastic about pictures of tiger sharks. But it was also partly because the ecotourism operator Protect What You Love (PWYL), of all people is organizing this trip, as we have been big fans of their mission for a long time. 

PWYL was founded by a group of passionate ocean lovers and underwater photographers from the Ningaloo Reef in Western Australia, at a time when sharks were increasingly demonized in the media and more and more species were threatened with extinction. Their goal is to use the clothing brand of the same name to make their love for tiger sharks visible, to make other people aware of the value of sharks for the marine ecosystem and thus contribute to their protection. They share exciting facts about sharks and other species on the Ningaloo Reef via Instagram and YouTube, educate people about the threats the animals face and infect many people around the world with their enthusiasm for them.

In 2023, PWYL offered an expedition to Fuvahmulah for the first time so that people could have the opportunity to experience this majestic animal up close that decorates the PWYL logo. Because their mission is as simple as it is ingenious: you have to know something to love it. You have to love something to be willing to actively protect it.

At the same time, a large part of the proceeds from the expedition goes to local NGOs in order to contribute directly to protection on site.

Our stay on Fuvahmulah with PWYL was planned for 7 days/6 nights with a total of 15 dives. We were accommodated in a hotel on the island and food and transport on the island were all taken care of. After a very warm welcome directly at the airport from Tom Cannon, who leads the expedition, and the rest of the PWYL team, our first magical sunset on the beach and a shared dinner where we also got to know the other 6 participants, we went to bed full of anticipation. Because the next day we would finally get the chance to dive with tiger sharks. The weeks of preparation and planning to experience this were finally paying off.

Face to face with an apex predator

While Tim had prepared for this moment primarily photographically and analyzed countless images from other photographers, Julia had been poring over books for months to learn as much as possible about the animals and watched every video about dos and don’ts when swimming with sharks that she could find on the Internet. Nevertheless, we were very excited when we received our first tiger shark briefing from Tom and Jono the next morning and realized that we would soon be face to face with these top predators.

The first briefing not only included important information about the diving conditions, the procedure and how we should behave if we saw one, but it was also followed by a check dive, during which the guides could assess our diving skills and check the equipment before we went to the sharks. Seeing how much importance PWYL placed on safety and knowing that a total of 4 guides would be diving with our group of 8, which also included a trained lifeguard, took away my initial nervousness, but the excitement remained.

After the check dive and another dive at lunchtime, we were finally told in the afternoon that we would now be going on the tiger shark dive.

The trip to the dive spot seemed to take only a blink of an eye, because directly behind the harbor basin we were told to jump into the water. First, two of the guides went into the water on either side of the boat and made sure that the first shark was not waiting for us directly under the boat. Now we were allowed in. From the moment we landed in the water, we were instructed to keep our eyes down and pay attention to what was around us. We slowly sank down the reef so that we had the reef to our right and the open ocean to our left. And indeed, after diving for just a few meters towards the entrance to the harbor, we spotted the first shark behind us. At first we only saw a big dark shadow coming closer, but it quickly became clear: this is really happening! There are tiger sharks right next to us and they are not comparable to the small reef sharks that we used to see so often on our dives.

With our hearts pounding, we had to force ourselves not to hold our breath in excitement. The shark passed us and disappeared again into the blue. After swimming for about five minutes, we reached the entry to the harbor basin. As previously discussed, we positioned ourselves next to each other, with our backs to the open ocean and our gaze directed towards the harbor entrance. There is a small pile of stones at a depth of about 7-10 meters under which the bait is placed. This prevents the animals from being fed directly from the hand or bait boxes, and at the same time the animals still have to “work” for their food to some extent and cannot get to it too easily. I was one of the last in the group to arrive at the spot, so I only had Dani on my right, who also works for PWYL and is a qualified dive guide. Tim was sitting on my left.

Every few seconds we looked in all directions, but there were no sharks in sight. So Lonu, one of the guides and a legend on Fuvamulah, swam to the pile of rocks and signaled to the surface with his regulator. Shortly afterwards a boat passed over us and a fish head was thrown into the water directly above Lonu. Lonu caught it skillfully, placed the head under the rocks as fast as possible and quickly retreated.

What then seemed like an eternity to us only took a few minutes until the first sharks appeared. And even though we knew they would come close to us, our hearts still skipped a beat or two when the first tiger shark swam straight towards us and only turned away 1-2 meters in front of us. For this first dive with tigers harks, we were asked to do it without a camera so that we could fully immerse ourselves in the moment and enjoy it. And even though our photographers’ hearts bled, we are also incredibly grateful for this decision, as we have stored the dive firmly in our minds.

How to dive properly with sharks

During the entire time we were observing the animals during the shark dives in front of the entry to the harbor basin, there were always two guides behind our group and two guides to our sides. In addition, the two most experienced divers in our group of 8 were always at the edge. And of course the rest of us always kept our eyes open in all directions, because on dives like this it is the responsibility of each individual to always pay attention to 100%. We quickly realized that our guides are really professionals when it comes to dealing with sharks and learned a lot from them during the week about the correct behavior when diving with predators. The most remarkable thing was that during the entire time underwater, none of our guides ever got into a situation where they had to redirect the shark by touching it. Often it is enough to look the animals in the eyes when they come closer and they turn away. Far too often you see videos on YouTube and Instagram in which divers provoke situations in order to have to redirect the sharks. However, any contact with marine life should be avoided. It is also important not to suddenly move hectically, but to remain calm. And always keep an eye on the rest of the area, even if a shark is approaching, because you never know whether a second shark might come swimming towards you from a different direction.

The tiger sharks of Fuvamulah

The history of Fuvahmulah’s tiger sharks and their connection to the people of the island goes back over 600 years, when fishermen began throwing their fish scraps into the water at the harbor every day, offering the sharks a regular, easy-to-obtain meal. Tiger sharks are opportunists. This means that they take every opportunity to get easy prey that doesn’t require much energy, and they usually choose sick and old animals from schools of fish. This, in turn, is important for keeping fish stocks healthy. In addition to marine mammals and turtles, carrion is also on their menu. With this feeding behaviour sharks prevent the outbreak and spread of diseases. As animals at the top of the food pyramid, sharks regulate the populations of their prey, keep them in a natural balance and thus prevent such species from multiplying too much. Tiger sharks therefore play an important role in the marine ecosystem.

Due to the fish remains that regularly ended up in the water at the harbor, tiger sharks became an integral part of Fuvahmulah and it wasn’t long before fishermen began hunting the sharks, primarily to use the oil from their livers to waterproof their boats. The animals were killed for this reason for many years before shark fishing was banned in all Maldivian waters in 2010 and a brave man from the island decided to go diving with the animals. His name is Lonu and to the amazement of all the islanders, he survived his first shark diving attempt and repeated it again and again until he opened “Shark Island Dive”, the first diving school on Fuvahmulah, in 2015. Since then, shark diving has become firmly integrated on the island and has become its trademark. Shark Island was born. 

Since the sharks have been used to receiving fish remains at the harbor basin for generations, the local diving schools use this to give divers an unforgettable experience with the sharks. If tiger sharks are not already present at the entrance to the harbor basin, single fish heads, which are waste from local fishing, are lowered into the water and placed by the guides under the small pile of stones mentioned above. Once the first sharks have arrived, no more fish remains are thrown into the water, but the animals are observed calmly and with great care.

Problems of Fuvahmulah

So an island with a centuries-old history of shark hunting developed into an island where co-existence with sharks has become an essential part of the local economy. Even if you look at the purely economic side of shark tourism, it is much more lucrative to make money from a shark over and over again by giving tourists the opportunity to dive with them than to kill the shark and thus only make money from it once. However, there are other threats to the animals and all other marine life on Fuvahmulah which are no less dangerous than shark hunting. Even on a small island like Fuvahmulah, the consumption of food packaged in plastic is omnipresent and there are few water filters, so drinking water is mostly drunk from disposable plastic bottles. However, the necessary infrastructure to recycle this waste is lacking. As a result, the island’s mountains of garbage have grown larger and larger over the years and much of it ends up in the sea again and again, either by the wind or washed away by storm surges or thrown directly into the sea by people. And even though eco-tourism helps protect sharks, it also has its downsides. Because more tourists on the island also mean more plastic and there is always a great danger that the dives will quickly end up in mass tourism, where animals are harassed and the safety of the divers is at risk.

But there are many people who are committed to the sharks and are trying to make tourism sustainable. One of these people is Jono Allen, who came to the island for the first time in 2020 and met Lonu there. After a few days of diving together, a fateful encounter occurred. The two were still on the boat when they spotted a whale shark. When Jono took a look at the animal in the water, he saw that it was completely wrapped in large plastic fishing line. He called to Lonu that he needed a knife quickly and Lonu jumped into the water without hesitation with his wetsuit half on and freed the animal, which was already 10 meters deep, from its deadly plastic trap with just one breath. This experience moved Jono and Lonu so much that they decided to fight the island’s plastic waste.

Picture by Jono Allen

Jono and Lonu founded the Fuvahmulah Marine Foundation (FMF) together, whose goal is to protect the marine ecosystem around Fuvahmulah. One of their greatest successes was a joint agreement with the local diving schools to set certain rules to protect animals and divers. For example, several diving groups are no longer allowed to dive near the harbor basin at the same time. Each local diving school has two time slots per day. These can be swapped with each other by mutual agreement. Diving groups from outside, e.g. from liveaboards, have to buy time slots and if no local school wants to give up theirs, they are not allowed to dive.

Another major goal of the foundation is to ban all plastic water bottles from the island. To achieve this, water filter stations are being set up in various places and in cooperation with restaurants and hotels. Of course, such an ambitious goal cannot be achieved overnight and takes time. But with the support of organizations like PWYL, which donate a large part of their income to FMF, 7 such stations have already been installed (as of April 2024). A significant part of the price we paid for this trip will also be donated directly to FMF by PWYL to enable further drinking water filters.

In addition, in 2023 Jono founded together with a handful of local scientists and shark experts the Miyaru Programme, a Maldivian NGO with the mission of collaboratively studying, collecting data and protecting shark populations. An important component of their work is their data-sharing approach, through which they share scientific papers and articles, interviews with experts and an overview of research projects.

What we learned about tiger sharks

We learned all of these valuable facts and background information during our week on Shark Island, when Tom and Jono gave presentations after a day of diving, took us on trips to the island’s garbage dump, or took us to events run by other local organizations and NGOs such as Manta Trust and local shark research projects. And so we learned an incredible amount not only about the efforts to protect the animals, but also about the animals themselves.

What makes tiger sharks particularly photogenic in the eyes of many are, of course, their wonderful stripes along their flanks. The younger the animals, the more pronounced the stripes are, and as they get older they fade more and more. And the stripes not only look great, they also have an important use: they serve primarily as camouflage. Since the young animals in particular spend more time in regions with light and shadow patterns such as coral reefs, seagrass meadows or sandy bottoms, they use the stripes to blend in with their surroundings.

But the stripes are not their only superpower. Like other sharks, tiger sharks have a sixth and seventh sense: the electrical and pressure wave sense. The animals can sense electrical fields via the so-called Lorenzini ampullae on their heads. Since every living creature produces such fields through muscle contractions, such as the heartbeat, tiger sharks can locate other animals, even when they are camouflaged or hiding. With their lateral line and pit organ, however, sharks can sense pressure waves. This helps them to detect injured fish that are moving frantically in the water, even over great distances. These special abilities make sharks real top predators and at the same time require us divers to always be alert when swimming with them. Because even if we are not on their prey list, a curious tiger shark can also be dangerous to us humans if we do not know how to behave towards them.

Around Fuvahmulah you will find mainly female tiger sharks (approx. 85%). And among them there are always pregnant animals. It is assumed that the females visit the place primarily because of the rich food supply and warmer waters, which promote the development of the embryos in the womb. Female tiger sharks give birth approximately every 3 years and are ovoviviparous, which means that although their young grow in eggs, they are incubated in the womb with yolk nutrition and hatch there.

And despite the relatively large number of 10 to 82 newborns with each pragnancy, the tiger shark is classified by the IUCN as potentially endangered. This is largely due to the fact that the animals need 3 years before they are able to reproduce and unfortunately often fall victim to commercial fishing during this time. Not only do they repeatedly end up as bycatch in large nets, they are also specifically hunted for their fins and are also very popular as a trophy among recreational fishermen. More information about threats to sharks and oceanic megafauna can be found on this page.

For this reason, places like Fuvahmulah are of particular importance for the conservation of the species. A place where the animals are admired instead of hunted and everything is done to educate the local population and tourists about conservation measures and to combat other threats such as pollution.

About new friendships, unforgettable encounters & dancing in the rain

Our days on the island flew by and were definitely over far too quickly. But some experiences will definitely stay in our memories forever: Firstly, there was a dive with the best visibility you can imagine and the perfect photos that came with it. Then, on our second to last day, we went on a special diving trip to the edge of the reef, where we could see the animals coming up from the depths. We will never forget the moment when not just one or two, but four beautiful tiger sharks came towards us from below and one of the animals really only turned away at the last second. Together with our small group and our great guides, we danced in the pouring rain on our little dhoni (Maldivian boat) after this unforgettable dive. Full of endorphins and adrenaline, we knew at that moment that this experience would connect us forever and we were happy that we were able to experience this special dive with new friends and like-minded ocean lovers.