Diving in The Maldives is not like it used to be
A wellness trip that will fill your head while clearing it? Bio-hacks and a completely invented time zone are just the start of the wonders that await here.
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Tropical sunbeams turn shallow waters into brilliant shades of neon blue on the far side of the window of a rattling seaplane. I watch, bird’s eye, as The Maldives sprawls across the Indian Ocean below. From my lofty vantage point, it’s all oblong circles, splattered polka dots and wonky lines, as if Mother Nature commissioned Jackson Pollock to design the most improbable nation.
If we’re to believe the magazine on board Trans Maldivian Airways, which I’m keen to do on a Google-free holiday, then there are 1192 islands here. Most belong to 26 atolls, which are spread over roughly 90,000sq km off the southwest coast of India. Two hundred islands hold humans, as well as a ballooning number of resorts (176 at last count). Many, like my current destination, Six Senses Laamu, are of the overwater bungalow variety; I can already see their ilk down below.
The propellers whirl as the seaplane lowers toward Olhuveli Island on the southerly Laamu Atoll. The Maldives comes into greater focus in swaths of sand and coral, mangrove and palm. It’s vast and empty, the way few nations are these days. Only 1 per cent of the territory is land; I, for the most part, have come for the 99 per cent that’s sea.
The sun is up no more than an hour the following morning before I’m vertical in the Indian Ocean, fins curving away from two flapping feet. There’s a mask on my face, a weight belt digging at my abs, and a tank of compressed air strapped across my back. Next to me is a blissfully serene hawksbill turtle; IT Needs none of this equipment to glide through the reef past puckering sweetlips, flamboyant parrotfish and huge schools of blue-and-yellow fusiliers.
I later marvel at the ostentatious, porcupine-like dorsal fins of a lionfish, the toothy snarl of a moray eel and the comically swollen lips of a Napoleon wrasse. The water here in the world’s seventh-largest reef system is like a bath, hovering around 28C. It is home to 258 species of hard and soft coral, as well as 1100 of fish. This, in truth, is my first dive in a long time. The bowels of my wallet have held a battered PADI Open Water Diver certificate since 2008. Occasionally over the years I’ve dug it out to plunge into various seas. Yet, here I am on a full dive trip – something I always thought wasn’t for me. Tanking up four times a day, seven days a week strikes me as both obsessive and excessive, so in The Maldives, I’ve opted instead for a more rounded trip, where diving will form the backbone, though not the entirety of my agenda. Turns out, that’s kind of the new norm.
Julie Andersen, senior director of global brand at PADI, says dive trips are much more holistic these days, encompassing things such as wellness, upskilling and citizen science. “We’ve been seeing a lot around regenerative travel lately,” she explains. “Divers want to leave a place better than how they found it, and also get more of an education on their trips.”
At Six Senses Laamu, that means evening lectures from the 10 onsite marine biologists, guided snorkelling on the nearby reef, and visits to the Sea Hub of Environmental Learning in Laamu, or SHELL, a $US1.4m ($2.1m) thatch-roofed facility that opened last year. Inside SHELL is an interactive museum of Maldivian flora and fauna, as well as the offices of three partner NGOs, which collectively work on the Maldives Underwater Initiative.
Scientists from the Manta Trust, Olive Ridley Project and Blue Marine Foundation explain about coral restoration, nesting sea turtles, and the importance of seagrass, which most resorts still pluck to meet aesthetic expectations fuelled by Instagram.
Before diving with mantas, I spend a full afternoon with Miriam Staiger, project manager with the Manta Trust, who leads a PADI specialty course on manta ray conservation. The idea is to learn best practices for interacting with these gentle giants, as well as how to help Manta Trust with citizen science. I take in their threats (mostly targeted and bycatch fisheries), and learn how to differentiate a male oceanic manta from a female reef manta by looking at the spot patterns on their bellies. Our scuba group later identifies an unregistered female (with a healed injury on her right pectoral fin) gliding like an underwater eagle through the Hithadhoo Corner dive site. As a reward, we get to name the reef manta June Bug.
“A lot of the information we have about manta rays – which are big but also migratory and hard to follow – we know from aquariums, which isn’t representative of what’s happening in the wild,” explains Staiger. The Maldives is an ideal place to fill in these knowledge gaps (such as how long mantas live) because it has the planet’s largest-known population of reef mantas (about 6000), plus a healthy population of seasonal oceanics. “You’re able to observe their behaviour in such a unique way here because you have so many dive sites where you can spend hours with them,” Staiger adds, noting that guest divers play a key role in collecting data.
I eventually swap Six Senses Laamu for Six Senses Kanuhura, a sister property that opened in September last year on the Lhaviyani Atoll. While 80 per cent of the 94 villas at Laamu are overwater, at Kanuhura, 80 per cent of its 91 villas are on land.
In fact, my new slice of paradise has what many consider the best beach in the Maldives: a 2.3km ring around the entire island, its sand as fine as icing sugar and white as the inside of a coconut. There are also two private islands just offshore for Robinson Crusoe-style adventures, as well as long lazy lunches with toes curled in the sand.
Both Six Senses properties follow a model of “barefoot luxury”. In practice, that means the only footwear necessary for a weeklong stay is swimfins. Shoes – even thongs – stay in the suitcase. There are no cars, so for longer jaunts between your villa and the five restaurants, you navigate sandy paths on a resort-issued bike. Marooned out here in the Indian Ocean, in this alternate reality, napping in the shade of a perky screwpine, it almost feels like time doesn’t exist. In fact, the resort even operates in a made-up time zone one hour later than Male, the capital, all to capture optimal sunshine.
At Kanuhura, I focus less on citizen science and more on, well, me. When I first landed at the Laamu property, I underwent a wellness screening of 40 biomarkers. The big reveal (after a tough work week) was high stress and low energy. Ever since, I’ve been selecting menu items that claim to calm my nerves or stimulate my mind. I then trace their ingredients back to the source in the hydroponic garden, which has 760 edible plants, plus the traditional garden (rare for an island with no topsoil) brimming with rock melons, fennel, and squash.
Wellness is built into the DNA of Six Senses, and it goes well beyond saunas and steam baths, though they have those, too. There are intention-setting Hatha yoga classes, futuristic “biohacking” gadgets (such as light therapy face masks or compression boots), and deep-tissue massages at the spa, which make me feel like a blob of kneaded dough. There are also sound healing sessions with Tibetan bowls, which emit low moans that pop the post-dive static right out of my ears. Yet, I think the best meditation happens underwater.
“For me, diving is wellness,” explains Marteyne van Well, the regional general manager of Six Senses in The Maldives. “The only time that nothing can live rent-free in my head is when I’m down in the ocean.”
After a week of diving, I tend to agree.
However, maybe wellness on a trip like this is not only about clearing your head, but also filling it with the right kind of information. Perhaps it’s about building context for your experience in the sea, and learning how your actions in the world above affect the parallel universe down below. “Diving is definitely a sport, but we also want it to be a learning experience,” agrees van Well. “We try to make wellness and sustainability more of a conversation than a mandate. The hope is that, by the time you leave, you will have drunk the Kool-Aid, too.”
In the know
Six Senses Kanuhura has beach villas for two from $U935 ($1387) a night, inclusive of half board. Overwater villas for two at Six Senses Laamu from $US975 a night, also including half board. While many activities are free, scuba experiences start at $US105 a dive.
Mark Johanson was a guest of PADI and Six Senses.
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