Emperor Explorer, The Maldive Islands

Dear Fellow Diver,

Magical. A baby shark nursery. Colorful, half-closed anemone nests with a dozen clownfish atop. Circling adolescent white tips. Schools of big-eyes, triggerfish, anthias, and squirrelfish around the pinnacle. Three parading stonefish. A free-swimming octopus. All the colors of the rainbow. No current, decent visibility, and 82°F water -- the best dive of my trip, on a pinnacle to the north, on the next-to-last day.

The 10-day adventure didn't start out so well. For the checkout dive, the guides left two divers on the Maldives Explorer's dhoni (a smaller boat dedicated to diving) and had to return to get them. The dive guide apologized, but failing to take a diver count for the checkout dive, in my opinion, was pretty unprofessional.

We were not far from Male, on a dead reef (why do they do that for a first dive?), and were required to practice deploying our SMBs -- a wise thing to do with the Maldives' currents. I was on a late January "Sharktastic" itinerary, which visited South Male Atoll, Vaavu Atoll, South Ari Atoll, and Meemu Atoll. On our second dive, in a ripping current, we hooked up twice, but I only saw an eagle ray, a blacktip, and a couple of eels. I got nauseous back on the boat, so I skipped the next dive. I was certain better dives were ahead.

Of course, I had done my research beforehand. I didn't want to travel 30 hours from Seattle to Male and burn up mileage points for a business-class flatbed for two weeks just for bad diving. I arrived a day early, insurance against a flight delay that would cause me to miss my departure.

The Emperor Explorer is a spacious, modern craft, as magnificent-looking as an oligarch's yacht, and could become one since it has no dive deck, no camera room, nothing to suggest it's a dive boat. In fact, it isn't. In the Maldives, a second boat, a dhoni, accompanies the main vessel and serves as the dive boat. Posh as the Explorer was, it had a few deficiencies to pair with its amenities, such as my cramped upper deck double cabin, which had a small closet but no storage space for our luggage and a chairless built-in desk. As if to compensate, the shower/ bathroom was twice the size needed -- for whom did they design that? (Lower cabins had much more room and storage space.) However, I spent little time there, preferring to kick back in the shade on the cushy couches and chairs on two decks. The old jacuzzi lay in disrepair.

After we boarded in the late afternoon, I met the cruise director, Russ, a laid-back and experienced Brit, and his partner Katy, a tall German woman. Friendly people, responsive and dedicated, their evening briefing emphasized safety and escape routes and included a fire drill with muster station gathering. Fire extinguishers were located throughout the boat, and at night, a crew member walked the decks. The crews' dive briefings were thorough, with alternative dive plans provided for various current scenarios. We were in good hands.

I came with friends and joined other divers from Germany, Sweden, and six retired Chicago guys. A retired Brit was a good resource about the scores of places he'd dived, but, for some reason, wouldn't share a single photo he'd taken. Two Singapore ex-pats and their 20-year-old daughter, all living in Perth, dived with side mount tanks; the wife had a bad back, but the husband and daughter preferred side-mounts. A passenger who worked for Emperor liveaboards was unable to dive due to an old ear injury. Unfortunately, one of my friends had to join her for topside several days. While at his safety stop, he reached into his BCD pocket, and his ScubaPro wrist computer fell out (the strap had broken during his dive). He deflated his BCD and dived rapidly down to 95 feet to retrieve it. When he surfaced, pink fluid ran from one of his ears. His eardrum had ruptured on the rapid descent. This ended his diving.

When it was dive time, the 24-meter dhoni, with all our gear aboard, pulled up to the Emperor. I would schlep my camera housing and big lights from my room, and the crew would take my rig so I could climb down the ladder into the dhoni. After handing down my rig, if I wished, they helped me dress up, then walked me to the jumping platform. After I took a giant stride, they handed down my camera. Getting back in was relatively straightforward: hand fins and climb the five-step ladder with all your gear. If divers wanted to doff their gear, the helpful crew would grasp and lift their BCD and tank.

True to the trip's name, Sharktastic, we had a variety of great shark dives, with five of us guided by either Chris or Katy, or two others: a young Brit who gave an informative PowerPoint presentation on sharks, and a Maldivian fellow. Many dives, we hooked into the reef -- we had strong currents the first five days -- and I watched parades of white tips, blacktips, occasional silver tips, dog-tooth tuna, trevallies, filefish, and jacks. One dive lasted 25 minutes before our group had to leave, as my buddy was low on air. On another dive, our guide decided to buck a small current, which soon became formidable. My buddy and I were running low on air, so we hit the surface after 38 minutes.

A nurse shark dive yielded a dozen large animals that posed for stills and videos at depths of 30-45 feet. Snorkel boats had arrived earlier and chummed the water, which became cloudy with sand, resulting in visibility from 20 to 70 feet. However, I managed to capture good stills and videos of schooling yellow-striped snappers. A 5:45 a.m. dive for hammerheads produced but a lone eagle ray. You pay your money, you take your chances.

On the fourth day, we made a sunlit reef dive on a healthy, hard coral reef with some soft corals as well. It was a fishy dive, with Napoleon wrasses, surgeonfish, anthias, a flounder, porcelain crabs in anemone nests with clownfish cohabiting, durgons, hundreds of triggerfish, Oriental sweetlips, clown triggerfish, large filefish, jacks, snappers, eels, and a stingray. This was a mild current drift dive in 82°F water and 100-foot visibility for most of the dive. What a pleasure! After three cloudy days, it was our first day with sunshine.

A "richtig" (German for "real") shark dive was in "Shark Channel," where at 95 feet, we hooked in for lots of sizeable white tips, schooling jack, and occasional tunas whipping by. After 20 minutes, I hit five minutes to deco and had to ascend.

This sparked a discussion about the inconsistent No Decompression Limit readings on various divers' computers, which were all over the place. Some of us reached a 5 NDL and had to ascend at 12 minutes, while others were still at a 14 NDL. Sometimes, I got 12 minutes, other times 22 minutes, depending on how deep I was, but my Shearwater Perdix was among the more conservative computers on NDL. Others were highly variable, too. Some of this was due to different diving profiles, but what else? (see sidebar, p. 10)

On another shark channel dive, I hooked in at 101 feet to watch the show -- sharks, barracuda schooling, mobula rays, jacks -- but for only 12 minutes as my no-deco time dropped to 5 minutes. As required, I signaled my buddy and the guide, deflated my BC, unhooked, and drifted across the hardpan to slowly work my way up to join others for a five-minute safety stop. Given how many shark dives we had, a 12-minute dive wasn't worth it. Back on the boat, we were eager for a 70-minute coral reef dive! In fact, over the last four days, we mostly made reef drift dives, and they turned out to be the best.

I expect good food aboard expensive liveaboards, but unfortunately, the galley's meals fell short of the setting's expansive and comfortable salon. It's not hard for breakfast to pass muster, and after the 6:15 a.m. dive, we had eggs to order, chicken sausage, pancakes, hash browns, cereal, and fruit, all recognizable fare. For lunch, deep-fried chicken fillets, heavily sweet-sauced and overcooked chicken, salad, French fries, rice, and mixed vegetables. We had fruit-filled bellies. For dinner, a grilled whole fish might be added, but never pork: this is a Muslim-run country. They proved they could do better with one exceptional 10-course Maldivian dinner (with such dishes as vegetable biryani, Tandoori chicken, tuna gulha, and potato curry) and a beach barbecue complete with sand sculptures of a whale shark, hammerhead, and black tip, which won me over. The first drinks of wine or soft drinks were complimentary at dinner, but beer, liquor, and soft drinks were otherwise for sale.

The reefs I dived were in good shape with plenty of fish. A 1991 sunken fishing vessel had some nice life, but even better was the wall/reef, which had a couple of dozen anemone nests with several species of clownfish. Our dive at Fish Factory yielded a dozen moray eels sticking their heads out of holes, swimming freely, and getting cleaned by blue and black wrasses. On the reefs, we typically stayed down for an hour.

A dusk dive was neither fish nor fowl, so to speak. The night critters had not yet come out, but lots of tropicals cruised the outcroppings and ledges. While the crew suggested using macro lenses, small night creatures were few. In fact, macro lenses were useless in the currents and fish schools, and on the reefs, small critters were oddly rare. I saw maybe 10 nudibranchs the entire trip, and not a single pygmy seahorse. However, it was anemone heaven, with numerous species and vibrant colors.

A dive on the 1999 freighter wreck, the Kudima, in slight current, was a delight, from the 26-foot mast top to the 99-foot bottom. Starting at the propeller, I circled the craft, which teemed with life, featuring tame Moorish idols, numerous glassy fish hiding in holes, and colorful coral- and sponge-encrusted superstructures.

Divers from other boats showed up at Moofushi, home to the Maldives' largest giant manta cleaning station. About 50 of us hooked up in a circle at the stony reef at 45-50 feet, watching 8-10 mantas glide around. I always respect my fellow divers, but two of them here played by their own rules and tried to sneak in front of me without hooking up. However, their divemaster pulled them back in short order. A friendly juvenile eagle ray hovered four feet in front of me for a couple of minutes while mantas flew by in the same video and picture frames. That was a delight!

It seems every trip has at least one significant hassle, and mine started when our dive guide said to expect a "moderate" current on a coral bommies dive. But after I dropped in, I had to kick vigorously to keep up as we descended to 90 feet. Eight of us rose to 70 feet to hook up, struggling mightily in what must have been a 4-knot current. Thirty meters up current, another group hooked in. I tried maneuvering out of the current, but to no avail, and then the up-current group, having unhooked, whizzed past like downfield blockers, some bumping us as they roared by. I signaled my dive guide to abort. He immediately agreed, and our group headed out. Weirdly, as we began our ascent, a small parrotfish bit one diver on the fin, then on the leg, and then bit our guide's finger. As I struggled to rise, I looked up. A down current was pushing bubbles toward me from people above! While I was wearing long, stiff free-diving fins to handle the current, my strongest kicks only moved me a few feet upward. Rather than inflate my BCD and risk a rapid ascent, I kicked with all my strength to rise to my safety stop and held myself there. The guide should have called this long before I signaled him.

All in all, I had eight shark channel hook-in dives during the first six days of the trip, most of which were productive, with white tips, grey reef sharks, and a few silvers. Plus, the parade had giant trevallies, a few barracudas, many triggerfish, dog-toothed tunas, and countless jacks. I certainly wasn't disappointed, but during the channel dives, the sharks were generally 100 feet or more away -- by the fourth dive, the repetition got boring. I wish they had mixed in a few reef dives during the first days of the trip. The last three days of coral reef diving -- they call them tillies here -- were among the best. Ten dives with plenty of sharks, eels, mantis shrimps, robust ghost pipefish, five stonefish, tunas, endless schools of striped snappers and big-eyes, current, no current, great viz, bumphead parrotfish, anemone nests, and baby sharks. The reefs provided me with excellent opportunities for capturing colorful, wide-angle shots of schools of fish, primarily hard coral but also some soft coral.

While the Explorer's crew was excellent, one incident tainted the Explorer's operation. As one of my group members was climbing into a skiff to go to our beach BBQ on Dhangethi Island, the Explorer was dumping sewage at anchor. When he expressed his concerns to Katy, she said it was only "gray water." But when my friend observed feces floating in the water, she made an excuse that the discharge was beyond their control and "automatic," to which my friend said, "BS, cruise ships release their sewage in the open ocean, and you could too." Katy's response was, "It's automatic, and we can't control it," and she went back to looking at her phone. Oh well.

So, if sharks, sharks, sharks are what you want, it looks like January to March will fulfill your desire. It fulfilled mine.

-- D.S.

Our undercover diver's bio: "I got the diving bug watching Sea Hunt as a kid, got certified in 1983, but didn't start diving the world until 1991. I've logged over 1,700 dives in the Caribbean, Indonesia, Australia, Tahiti, Palau, PNG, Maldives, and the Philippines. While I love the convenience of liveaboards, I enjoy resorts for their relaxing pace and beauty. My life goal is to dive on my 90th birthday. (Only 18 years to go!)"

DIVER'S COMPASS: I paid $5,051 for a cabin share . . . Nitrox was included, and they had jumbo aluminum tanks for heavy breathers . . . There is a noon and 4 p.m. pickup from the airport by staff on the day of sailing . . . About $100/night for a basic hotel room before and after the sailing, including transfers. I stayed across the beach, where kids were taking swim lessons at 7 a.m. . . . Local food is inexpensive and mainly Asian/Indian . . . Male has a hyperbaric chamber. There are three others in the Maldives.