Maldives, July 2004 Part 2: Komandoo

After five nights aboard Sea Spirit, we returned to North Male atoll. Diving was restricted due to flight times on our departure day, so we spent the afternoon in Male itself. The next morning, we transferred early by dhoni to the airport for our short trip up to Komandoo. The 45 minute flight provided some good photo opportunities, limited only by the scratched surface of the perspex windows, and some occasional patches of cloud.

Once checked in to our room (very comfortable and clean), we toured the dive school. We explained that we had just come off a liveaboard, and were allowed to join the afternoon’s scheduled boat dive on Bodu Giri, rather than wait until the following morning to go through a check dive on the island’s house reef.

The dive school

To an extent, being confined to an island was always going to feel slightly restrictive after the liveaboard. Particular things that grated? Normally only two boat dives were scheduled per day. Some special trips required minimum numbers that weren’t attained – our early morning dive scheduled for Thursday was cancelled for this reason.

Prodivers, the dive operation on the island, was extremely competent and run by friendly staff, but felt ever so slightly regimented, with a somewhat incongruous emphasis on punctuality, given our relaxed, tropical island environs. One morning, we failed to put out our dive kit in time for it to be carried to the dhoni by the dive school’s porters: I had the sense that we had made something of a faux pas, even though we happily carried it down ourselves instead. Also, dive time was limited to 60 minutes, whether or not you had air remaining. That sort of restriction is the last thing you want on a shallow, relaxed afternoon dive in the last few days of the holiday.

One other grumble: price. I don’t think Prodivers’ pricing is over-the-top – it’s probably in line with other resorts of a similar standard. A ten-dive package (tanks and weights only) costs USD378, somewhat higher than on Villivaru, for example (USD300), but then Komandoo is a higher standard resort. However, in terms of our perception, the week on Komandoo seemed expensive in relation to what we had paid for the liveaboard. At the end of the week on Sea Spirit, we paid around USD30 for drinks. At the end of the week on Komandoo, we paid several hundred dollars for drinks, diving and snacks. Naturally, we had paid in advance for diving on Sea Spirit, but, given the limited dive opportunities and limited dive times, handing over the credit card at the end of the week was slightly more of a holiday low-light than usual. Caveat emptor: if diving is what you want, think “liveaboard”.

The island

The island was very well kept, had friendly, professional staff and great food. In all, no complaints there. The atmosphere was relaxed and quiet, particularly given that the resort was not at full occupancy during our stay.

The island is small: you can stroll around it comfortably in 15 minutes. There are two jetties and some sea defences on south and west sides. The island (as mentioned here) has sufferred from severe beach erosion at times. We did not dive the house reef, but snorkelled round it several times. The coral was not in great condition, much of it appearing dead from bleaching (presumably following the 1998 event) but there was plenty of fish life. The east jetty was home to a large school of baitfish, which provided plenty of food for the ten or so juvenile blacktip reef sharks that were resident at the time.

Snorkelling around the east side of the island provided some good sights including a school of jacks, bluefin and giant trevally, and a lone tuna. The island has a resident green turtle which we encountered a couple of times. We also spotted a couple of juvenile rock-mover wrasse in the shallows. Visibility off the reef varied with the weather (we had a couple of squallish days), but once the sun emerged, was 20m or more. I found myself suffering from stinging plankton on occasions, which, while no worse than a nettle sting, did curtail a couple of swims.

The diving

We completed nine dives during our week on the island, and much of it was very good indeed. We did a mix of drift dives (mostly channels with the current running into the atoll) and the typical Maldivian mix of giris and thilas.

Our night dive on Tinga Giri was a particular highlight. The more dives we’ve done, the more interested we’ve become in the small stuff: no matter if the shark/whale/dolphin (delete as applicable) doesn’t show up, there’ll be plenty other stuff to see if you stop and look closely enough.

Of course, a night dive necessarily focusses on the small stuff, underwater torches – flashlights, if you must – having limited range. On this particular dive, there was that peculiar atmosphere of expectation and tension that the underwater environment from time to time engenders. Timed correctly, the pre-dinner night dive affords a glimpse of an amazing transitional period on the reef, as fish settle down for the night, seeking shelter from moray eels, reef sharks and the like, and the coral and crustacea emerge slowly to feed.

On this particular dive, I saw an unusual site. At first, I had no idea what I was looking at, I thought perhaps some sort of strange hump-backed shrimp. It was also moving very oddly, making sporadic arcs in open water near a coral head. After a few seconds, I realised it was a fairly ordinary, and fairly dead shrimp held in the mouth of a tiny baby octopus no more than an inch across. The octopus took offense to the light and sought shelter under the coral head.

Of the better known dive sites in Lhaviyani atoll, we dived the Kuredu Express, which was running slowly on the day – certainly nowhere near as fast a current as we’d previously experienced at Furana North. We set out to dive Fushifaru Thila, but the currents were not playing along. The last dive of our holiday, at Kuredu Caves, was very enjoyable with a yellow-green leaffish spotted and a pair of mobula cruising along during our safety stop. We surfaced after 63 minutes, a final three-minute scuba mini-rebellion rounding off the underwater portion of a great trip.

Stephen · Saturday, February 19, 2005, 14:15 · Permalink

Next report: Gozo, August 2005