Maldives 2001 - Villamendhoo
Not the Red Sea??!! Well it had to happen sooner or later, and we didn't want any disappointments so we thought we would try the Maldives and with the onset of the Northeast Monsoon season we had hoped to catch a glimpse of the Manta Rays......
We chose Villamendhoo (or rather it was the only acceptable resort left at the travel agent), which is on the South-eastern corner of the Ari Atoll. Villamendhoo is considered a large island at 900 meters in length, but despite rumour of all the 130 bungalows being occupied the island did not seem crowded. The accommodation and meals were of good quality and the island was typically Maldivian - white sand beaches, palm trees and turquoise waters.
Our dive pack was booked from the UK with Werner Lau, a German run organisation, which gave us the option of diving the house reef whenever we wanted or taking the boat (Dhoni) trips, of which there were between 3 and 5 daily. We dived the house reef on two occasions when we didn't want to take the boat, but due to coral bleaching in the area this was pretty unexciting. In fact several of the boat tips we went on took us to reefs that had also suffered very badly, and as a result there was a lot of dead coral at shallow depth. It was not all bad news though, several other sites that we arrived at by Dhoni were very good indeed and provided a good variety of corals and aquatic life, spotting a frog fish was a particular highlight. We had established that we were at the wrong side of the atoll to have the opportunity to see Manta's, however a full day excursion was available to the Southwest corner of the atoll that offered the opportunity to spot Manta's, so we signed up. Obviously no guarantees could be given of sighting Mantas but we were informed there was a good chance. It is difficult to find words to describe just how good these two dives were. We had been down for around 10 minutes when our first Manta pulled into the cleaning station. Throughout the day we must have seen 15 plus Manta's, some just fleeting glimpses, others that stayed with us for up to 15 minutes and passed within a meter or two of where we were gripping the rock to stay still in the current. Just fantastic, an unforgettable experience.
The current was a feature of most of our dives with the advent of the full moon not helping matters. Unfortunately this meant that fewer photos were taken as we were busy concentrating on other things. In addition to that flash photography was not allowed at Manta Point, so the few images that were captured are fairly poor. A truly fantastic trip we will go back to the Maldives.

Maldives 2003 - Veligandu
It was always going to be difficult to improve on our first trip to the Maldives as seeing the Mantas on that trip was a fantastic experience. We choose Veligandu for no other reason than the Hammerheads! Veligandu is located on the Rasdhoo Atoll just off the North East of the Ari Atoll and there is plenty of scope for spotting pelagics, indeed of the eleven dives we completed there was only one where we did not see at least one shark.
The trip was booked with Hayes and Jarvis and we opted to go all inclusive in one of the water bungalows. This proved to be an inspired choice as the room was out of this world, even the bathroom looked out over the lagoon. From sitting on the sun deck we were able to spot all sorts of aquatic life, one afternoon we even saw a good sized Eagle Ray cruise past.
We thought the food and service on Villamendhoo were good but Veligandu was something else again. The restaurant has won awards and deservedly so, always different and always very good, there were also fresh fruit and chocolates delivered to our room on a daily basis.
OK, so the real reason we came half way round the world was for the diving. The dive operation is run by the Swiss Ocean Pro dive team. Diving the same (we assume usual Maldives) format as we had on Villamendhoo of one morning boat dive, relax in the sun, lunch, second boat dive. We were given a great introduction on the first days diving at site called Madivaru Corner, we were treated to a spectacle of Greys and White tipped sharks, several Eagle Rays and even a Manta in the distance. We were given the opportunity to dive this site again later in the week but the current was much stronger and it was a less enjoyable but never the less memorable dive! Day two was our chance to dive Hammerhead point and we were not to be disappointed, we hung in the blue for around ten minutes and then there they were! Only three or four of them (one of which was quite big), but they were there and within ten metres or so of us. Not quite as exciting as the Mantas but well worth the journey, really weird creatures.
The rest of the diving was relatively uneventful and on occasions the visibility was quite poor, unfortunately this has meant a lack a pictures from the trip.

Western Australia 2004 - Exmouth and Coral Bay
On our short trip to Oz we had to plan our diving carefully and we decided to miss out the Barrier Reef in preference to the Ningaloo Reef on the western coast. From all the advice we sought the consensus was that there was more unspoilt diving available as well as the lure of the world renowned Navy Pier at Exmouth. We could not have predicted the weather and sadly the last two days diving were cancelled due to cyclone Ken. In total we only managed eight dives, two on the Navy Pier and the remainder on Ningaloo.
We used Coral Coast Dive in Exmouth, these guys (at time of writing) have the exclusive licence to dive the Navy Pier and also took us to the Ningaloo. The highlight without a doubt was the Pier, this place has a reputation and with good reason. Despite visibility of five metres these two dives definitely rank in our top ten, you will see most of our pictures come from the pier. There is a plethora of aquatic life, from Wobbegongs and White Tips to Nudibranchs and pretty much everything between, by far our favourite though were the Angler Fish, at least three different varieties.
As well as Exmouth we also dived in Coral Bay, around 150 kilometres south of Exmouth. The main operator there is Ningaloo Reef Dive. We only managed two dives with these guys thanks to cyclone Ken but from what we did see the coral was absolutely amazing an the aquatic life abundant, including a huge (three metre) Wobbegong.