Fish Head (Mushimasmingili Thila)

What is Fish Head (Mushimasmingili Thila)?

The Maldivian name is Mushimasmingili Thila; divers have called it Fish Head since the first Ari liveaboards put it on their itinerary. It is a big, isolated oval reef, about a hundred meters long, rising from the atoll's sandy floor at 40 or 50 meters to a plateau between 8 and 15 meters. It sits just inside North Ari Atoll, in front of a large channel: on every incoming tide, the ocean current hits it head-on and pushes plankton, fusiliers and trevallies onto it. The sides are cut with overhangs and cavities where black coral trees grow and clouds of glassfish shelter. In 1995 the government listed it among the country's first fifteen protected dive sites, over 269 hectares.

How many gray reef sharks can you see at Fish Head?

The upcurrent plateau, the one that takes the current, is where the gray reef sharks sit: ten to twenty on a normal day, mostly females, and some days more than thirty. They hold the point of the thila between 15 and 25 meters, swim slowly into the flow and let you come close if you stay anchored at the edge of the plateau without moving toward them. Whitetips, which are smaller, rest under the overhangs and on the sand at the foot of the reef. There is no feeding: the sharks are there for the current and the schools, and that has been the value of the site for thirty years. Since 2010, every shark in the Maldives has been protected by a total ban on catching them.

What else can you see at Fish Head, overhang after overhang?

After the sharks, the dive follows the side of the thila with the current. Bluestripe snappers form tight schools against the overhangs, where feather stars cling to the black coral; glassfish fill the cavities and move as one cloud when trevallies come close. A big Napoleon wrasse, sometimes two, stays with divers from start to finish. Above the plateau, chevron barracudas and trevallies hang still in the flow. Eagle rays and hawksbill turtles pass over the top, where you finish the dive before lifting off into the blue for the safety stop.

How do you dive the current at Fish Head?

Fish Head is dived on the incoming current, when ocean water flows through the channel and hits the thila: that is when the sharks are at the point. The flow can top two knots and comes with downcurrents on the outer edges of the reef. The method is the same as on every thila: an upcurrent entry, a fast descent along the sheltered side, a fixed position at the edge of the plateau at 15 or 20 meters, then a drift along the side and an ascent in open water under a surface marker buoy, away from the reef. Stay above 30 meters, the legal limit in the Maldives, do not enter the cavities and do not hold on to the coral.