Maldives (Soneva Fushi) Trip and dive report

4th trip to the Maldives ; the second stay at Soneva Fushi Resort & Spa :
http://www.sixsenses.com/soneva-fushi/index.php . Flight from Paris in
Business Class with Qatar Airways, via Doha ; excellent service on
board.
Idyllic stay in that heavenly island : only 65 villas, set on 111 acres
of lush tropical forest where a network of sand trails leads to one of
the numerous beaches, to one of the 3 restaurants, to the spa or ... to
the diving center ! You can either walk or use the bicycles that are
provided with each villa.
The kindness of the staff, the luxury of the villas, the quality of the
food (and of the wine list !), the peacefulness, the lovely smell of
the forest, ... One doesn't know what to stress out to invite you to
discover that luxurious "organic" resort, bearing a truly unique charm
(see here, a few land pictures :
http://www.aquaphot.fr/SonevaFushi2008.htm ).
9 days - 8 nights of pure happiness.
A real environmental awareness : everything is made of natural
products, the wood used for building the villas or for the furniture
comes only from fallen trees or from plantations ; imports are reduced
as much as possible (there is an organic garden where are grown most
of the vegetables and fruits served in the restaurants) ; no caviar
(!), no foie gras, many species of fishes are protected (blue-fin tuna,
marlin, ...) ; paper and glass are recycled ; no plastic wrapping, etc.
A very active energy saving program and global warming awareness, even
if one comes there by hydravion and not with a rowboat, and if the
diving boat is not a sailboat, but, well ... All these efforts are much
better than nothing.
An what about scuba diving ?
Well, it's true that this kind of resort is not exactly home of
stakhanovist diving, and it's obviously not what one comes here for. No
3 or 4 dives a day like on a diving cruise ; only two dives are
proposed each day : one in the morning at 9:30, the other one in the
afternoon at 3 pm. During my 9 days stay I dove only 6 times ...
One or two boats, depending on the number of divers ; never more than
10-12 divers on a single boat ; one guide for 2 to 4 divers. The Soleni
Dive center (http://www.soleni.com/jsps/homepage.jsp) is owned and
managed, since 1995 (!) by Thomas Wälchli and Alessandra Benini and
their multilingual team. All the staff is very professional and
friendly.
In March, the dives are rather cool (much less current than during our
last stays in december 99 and december 2003) ; the diving profiles are
mostly similar : we dive on "tilas", most of the time slow drift dives
(at least during this stay !), sand is at a depth of 30-35m ; deep
divers, bring your shovel ! The tilas rise from the bottom to very
different depths : ranging from -5m to -17m. A lot of fishes, but not
so many big pelagic fishes (a few large sting rays, a few eagle rays
and tunas, though, but I only saw sharks while snorkeling on the house
reef !) ; a few gorgonian fans. Hard coral is rather healthy (after the
bleaching due to 1998 El Niño), but in most places, the reef is not so
colourful with a few exceptions ...
Due to the current, moderate but always present, and in spite of a
rather "milky" water, I chose to shoot only wide angle pictures, using
a Nikon D200 in an Ikelite housing, and a single lens : the Nikkor
12-24 zoom lens. Two strobes Ikelite DS125. But with only six dives, I
took no more than 50 pics or so. Here is a small best of :
http://www.aquaphot.fr/maldives2008.htm

Enjoy.

Patrick
(I'm French, so forgive my English ...)

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(Pas de plouf pour m'écrire - No plouf to write)
http://www.aquaphot.fr/