Quite remarkable how we could pick the worst weather day in a 16 day holiday to do the one tour of the trip. But alas, that’s how we roll apparently. We’d actually been meaning to go for a couple of days but our host said he didn’t have a boat available the first day and tried to encourage us to join the full day tour for $65 per person which was heading out. It would be a group tour though with 6 or more other people and I hate going on tours, especially to see marine-life as it takes so long to get everyone in and out the water, but the worst part is it leads to a ‘chase mentality’ to see the animal first which I hate because most importantly it’s not nice for the animal but also because I’m a very slow swimmer so I just see the bubbles of everyone kicking in-front of me. The full day tour was also supposed to visit an island on another atoll but instead they offered a visit to Maafushi, aka the busiest local island and it’s only a stones throw from Gulhi where we were staying so it sounded like a terrible tour. Instead we opted for the private half day trip for $50 per person and it included four snorkel sights to see dolphins, turtles, coral gardens and nurse sharks plus a visit to a sandbank.

We had a captain and a helper on board the rather small boat and we set off across the choppy sea. It only took them a few minutes to spot a pod of dolphins who weren’t in a particularly playful mood which is fair enough, their wild animals and not circus acts so you just have to go with the flow and see if they’re in the mood to swim alongside the boat. The captain recommended dropping us in the water ahead of the dolphins and if they continue swimming in the same direction then we’ll get to see them. The boat engine was turned off so as not to disturb them and we just silently floated on the surface, this is how we successfully swam with dolphins previously in Hawaii and Mauritius. We got a brief view of them but then I heard the boatman say there’s more closer to the reef, aka not over the creepy, dark blue water so I looked up for Craig so we could swim that way together but he was in his own world, casually swimming above the original pod in the opposite direction. I felt a bit panicky all of a sudden. I wanted to swim towards the reef to see the next pod coming by but I would get further away from the boat and Craig and I was too scared to do it so the captain helped me back on board and let us have another try, telling Craig to stay with me this time! So we got dropped in again and luckily had a better glimpse of the dolphins, it was nice to see them but they were a little too deep to appreciate.

We climbed back onto the boat and set off towards the sandbank, the sea was quite rough here so all the water was splashing into our faces and it was hard to see because we had so much salt water in our eyes. In the end we decided our best option was to wear our goggles which was quite a funny sight. The captain opted to visit the sandbank now because no one else was on it. He said yesterday he visited a different sandbank and there wasn’t space to step on it because it was so full of people. The only downside of visiting now was that the tide wasn’t quite low enough so it was more of a collection of mini sand islands with shallow water leading between them. The sun wasn’t out either so it didn’t look beautiful like the one we saw on our first trip to the Maldives. It would be quite an impressive sandbank in the right conditions though because it was so long and wiggled like a snake with a lovely deep blue section to one side.

Oh well, we can’t see everything in perfect conditions so after wadding from one end of the sandbank to the other we waved for the boat to come and pick us up. The next stop was the nurse sharks and once again we were the only boat there, it was perfect. Sadly it turned out they fed the sharks to encourage them over which I never agree with, wild animals should be kept wild and maintain their natural instincts to hunt. But it’s an interesting one with the nurse sharks because they literally come to the harbour of our island every evening in the hope of some scraps, yet we only saw a local cutting fish on the boards once so they weren’t getting food every day. Our captain went to the harbour before he picked us up to collect some of the scraps from a fisherman so instead of them going into the water near the harbour they dropped them in the water out at sea. It’s kind of like in Norway when we worked at fishing resorts, all the fisherman were told to take fish scraps at least 100 meters out to sea, I guess there could be fish or otters who know this and expect these scraps daily? So it’s a tricky one, the sharks are getting the scraps either way, whether it’s from the harbour or out at sea. The scraps didn’t just attract nurse sharks though, there were hundreds of fish and stingrays glided along the sea-bed too.

It was time for us to get in the water so we leaped off the edge of the boat, looked up and saw about 12 nurse sharks swimming in-front of us. There was an unbelievable amount of fish, almost too many actually, it was like swimming in an over-stocked aquarium.

Nurse sharks are considered to be gentle giants, they have small mouths a little under their chin, unlike tiger and great white sharks whose whole jaws open wide. They still have a couple sets of small but razor sharp teeth but they tend to be bottom feeders, searching the sea-floor for small prey and using a sucking technique to gobble them up. Apparently if they get prey that’s too big for them they can wrestle with it and shake it to get smaller chunks off, so I guess the key is to keep your limbs away so they don’t suction it into their mouth and begin shaking you like a rag doll.

They were absolutely mesmerising to watch, twisting and turning through the blue water. Some were at eye level while others were gliding beneath us. They were also quite clumsy, I guess they have eyes on the side of the head instead of the front so sometimes they’d swim straight into us which gave us and no doubt the sharks a bit of a shock. It was fascinating seeing their small eyes looking around and staring right at us.

Each shark had a collection of fish following it, mostly under their fins and in-front of their mouth, I assume to get little scraps that the shark misses and also for protection from other predators, although it seemed rather ballsy to swim right at the tip of the sharks nose.

As the scraps ran out the sharks spread out more and the fish began to disperse and this was our favourite part of the experience as we could really watch the sharks swimming circles around us and not have fish blocking the view. A few of the sharks gradually swam off but we still had about 6 or so gliding around us and more stingrays were turning up on the sea floor.

Suddenly most of the sharks just turned and began swimming away in unison. I looked up to see if there was another boat feeding them nearby but we were the only one as far as the eye could see. Kinda bizarre. Maybe they smelt some blood in the distance. A few sharks stuck around though and we ended up spending about 45 minutes admiring them. It was definitely one of my favourite snorkelling experiences.

The next snorkel sight was a vast coral garden where the reef was impressive and abundant but totally bleached as usual. There were tons of fish, a nice deep drop-off and even a very brief glimpse of a speedy reef shark. We didn’t see any turtles but I wasn’t fazed, this trip was all about the sharks and we had such a great time, made even better because we opted for the private trip.