Rasdhoo Madivaru

How does the dawn dive at Rasdhoo's Hammerhead Point work?

The hammerhead site, called Hammerhead Point or Madivaru Corner depending on the dive center, is the edge of the Madivaru outer reef, where a tongue of reef meets the deep water of the open sea. The boat leaves in the dark, between 5:30 and 6 a.m., to be in the water at first light. You descend straight to 25 or 30 meters, in open water, and wait in a group, looking out into the blue. Scalloped hammerheads, sharks about 3 meters long that live in schools, rise from the deep at that hour and sink back down as soon as the light settles in. They are shy, and a diver who swims toward them makes them vanish. Around 7:30 a.m. the window closes, and you drift toward the wall to finish the dive on the reef.

Can you still see hammerheads at Rasdhoo Madivaru?

The protected area is the site in the Maldives with the most hammerhead sightings over the year, and the sharks are resident in the Rasdhoo channel system. But encounters have become less frequent. In August 2023, the Kuramathi resort's dive center had dropped the scheduled Hammerhead Point trip from its program because sightings were not regular enough, and the island's dive centers now sell it as a chance, not a certainty. The best period is still January to April, at dawn, in calm seas. Go knowing this, and enjoy the rest of the site, which does not depend on luck.

What else can you dive at Madivaru and in the Rasdhoo channel?

Rasdhoo Madivaru itself is a healthy horseshoe reef whose wall drops past 20 meters with overhangs, caverns and crevices, and sand patches where garden eels live. Trevallies, barracudas, tuna, gray reef sharks and eagle rays pass by all year, with the occasional mobula ray and silvertip shark. Between Kuramathi and Rasdhoo island, you drift the channel at 20 or 25 meters, in a current that opens onto 200 meters of water: reef sharks, rays, Napoleon wrasse, snappers and turtles. At 60 meters, out of reach of recreational divers, the reef is home to Cirrhilabrus finifenmaa, a pink and purple wrasse photographed in the atoll.

Where is Rasdhoo Atoll, and where do you stay to dive it?

Rasdhoo is a separate atoll attached to the northeast tip of Ari, 60 kilometers west of Malé: one local island, one resort, a few islets and a channel. The EPA protected the Madivaru area on October 7, 2018, over 266 hectares, within an area recognized as ecologically and biologically significant under the Convention on Biological Diversity since 2016; entry is free. Rasdhoo island, with its guesthouses and dive centers at US$50 or US$69 a dive, is the budget base. Kuramathi, eight minutes by boat from the site, is the comfortable base, and liveaboards stop here between Malé and North Ari.