Sharks are a group of over a hundred species of fish, some of which are large in size and impressive to look at. On account of their size and fearsome reputation, seeing them is a thrill. Over years of scuba diving, I have seen many sharks, but there were some “interesting” species I had not yet encountered. When I learned it was possible to scuba dive with tiger sharks at the Maldivian island of Fuvahmulah with pretty much a guarantee of sightings, I had to do it.
First, some statistics
The total number of recorded shark-related human deaths in history is of the order of 100. Tiger sharks are considered the second most dangerous sharks to humans (great whites being considered the most dangerous) having caused 39 human deaths in total. These numbers are negligible when one considers that every year i) dogs kill tens of thousands of people, ii) cows kill around 100 people, iii) lightning kills tens of thousands and iv) 300,000 people drown. I have had more than my fair share of dangerous encounters with dogs and cows and I generally give them space.
Of the people who do get attacked by sharks, swimmers and surfers make up the vast majority. Snorkellers and freedivers make up a big minority, but scuba divers do not seem to be on the menu, probably because they can look sharks in the eyes and still breathe.
The last number worth noting is the number of sharks that humans kill annually: 100,000,000.
Maldives
Maldives is an island nation made up of a number of atolls, formations of islets that connect together enclosing a lagoon. The word “atoll” comes from the language of Maldives, Dhivehi. Flying into Maldives, one lands on the airport island, Hulhulé, which is connected via bridges to the islands of Malé and Hulhumalé. Malé City consists of seven islands including the aforementioned three. For my first night, I stayed in Hulhumalé, an island that was almost completely reclaimed from the ocean, starting in the early 2000s. I walked most of the walkable edges of the island – land that did not exist when I was born. Malé itself is a dense skyscraper-filled concrete jungle. It is clear enough that the locals would need living space, necessitating measures like the expansion of Hulhumalé.
I was back at the airport the next day for my flight to Fuvahmulah. As the flight was delayed by a few hours, the airline staff gave the foreigners access to an airconditioned lounge and free lunch. Maldivian is the only airline I recall that asks you your nationality before showing you the price of its flights. Internal flights within Maldives appear to be a monopoly and Maldivian offers foreigners significantly inflated prices.
Sunset at a beach in Hulhumalé. 
An island. The light coloured shallow area is protected from waves with a rock wall. 
A Maldivian flight. Local flights use the smaller propeller-driven planes with four seats per row. 
On the dive boat in Fuvahmulah. 
Sunset at Thoondu Beach, Fuvahmulah. 
An egret at another white sand beach.
As we flew, the atolls came into view – a series of small islands positioned in an oval shape surrounding a patch of shallow light-coloured water with the sea deeper and darker outside the oval. Larger islands, in turn, may have shallow light coloured waters on one side that are protected from the waves of the ocean by the island and its reef. Maldives makes its money from the tourists visiting these islands. Broadly categorised, they may be romantics who want to get away to a remote tropical paradise for a few weeks or scuba divers like me.
Fuvahmulah
I flew into the third biggest island of Maldives. People from my hotel picked me up with a little truck for the 400 metre journey. I saw that the people who worked in the Maldivian tourist industry were often foreigners from Nepal, India, Srilanka, and elsewhere. One was more likely to deal with foreigners than locals at hotels and restaurants, at least in the areas that I visited. Nirmal, the Nepali receptionist, was my go-to guy. He let me borrow his bicycle and umbrella as I wished.
I was at the Southern end of the island, close to the harbour, the airport and scuba diving. I rode the bicycle around the island and discovered the beach at the northern end as well as the pretty decent state of the outer roads. Maldives roads are surprisingly good given that its locations are mostly island based. Despite the island being only 5 square km, I counted a few luxury cars. However, most Maldivians ride scooters.
My scuba attire for the warm waters of Maldives 
There are no dogs in Maldives; cats are all over. 
Maldivians need their scooters; these are everywhere. 
Malé City is filled with skyscrapers. Pictured, a spot on Hulhumalé that could be in Singapore. 
Corals used for house construction in Fuvahmulah 
Maldivian food is heavily influenced by regional cuisine, such as Indian, Srilankan and South East Asian. 
The dive boat in Dharavandhoo 
The bicycle I rode around Fuvahmulah 
Max’s shark presentation
Maldivians are mostly Muslims. They are not legally allowed to drink alcohol; on islands where Maldivians live, such as Fuvahmulah, no alcohol is available. Maldivians are also rather conservative in dress, requiring a certain level of covering up even when going to the beach. Signboards at beaches remind foreigners about the requirements – one cannot go shirtless for a swim. Islands that had heavy tourist presence have designated “bikini beaches” where one does not have to swim in the sea wearing a shirt. Fuvahmulah, surprisingly, did not have one. Maldives has constructed many tourist-focused resorts unconnected to islands inhabited by the locals. Alcohol and bikinis are not a problem in these expensive romantic destinations.
Tiger Zoo
I checked in with my dive school, Fuvahmulah Dive School, and met my dive guide, an Italian named Johnny, who helped set me up with my gear. I met my fellow scuba divers on the boat. There was a group of five Germans and a New Zealander, all more hard-core divers than me. The Germans would visit Egypt a few times yearly to go diving, while the New Zealander was a professional dive guide in the Great Barrier Reef. We were all here to see the tiger sharks for which Fuvahmulah is famous.
The Tiger Zoo dive site is just outside the harbour. We received our dive briefing at the harbour itself, one of the guides explaining the plan for the dive. We kitted up as the boat started moving. Nobody showed the slightest hint of stress. At the site, we jumped into the water.
We saw the tiger sharks swimming around us as we went down. The dive guides placed themselves between us and the sharks as we descended and directed us to the designated spot at 8 m depth, a shallow dive by most standards. There were concrete blocks with handles on them at the sandy bottom. I released the air from my buoyancy control device to make it easier to stay at the bottom. The dive guides brought down a few tuna heads and placed them under a stack of rocks. This attracted the tiger sharks as well as a number of small reef fish.
Yellow snappers, damselfish and surgeonfish (tang) provided the foreground to the main event that was the circling of the tiger sharks around the bait that was placed for them. These were impressively big, with the bigger ones we saw over 4 m long and 700 kg. Tiger sharks are named for the black and white vertical stripes on their sides, inviting comparison to the land animals; probably also because they are a top predator of the sea.
When the sharks stayed low along the sandy bottom, we could look them level in the eyes and wonder whether they were assessing us as we did them. Did they have the brains to do that? Some people believe that sharks are relatively intelligent fish. Perhaps that did not really matter. If a huge tiger shark decided to figure out what I was by actually taking a bite of my GoPro-wielding arm, could I actually stop it? The internet is filled with videos of people gently pushing sharks away and getting off safely, but it still takes a moment for the visceral fear to go away. The sharks got close, swimming just a metre over our heads. Sometimes they turned around rather close, one of them flicking my camera with its tail.
We hung around for half an hour while the guides occasionally released a tuna head. After the last head was released, the sharks stopped circling the stones and spread further out. We ended our dive. Max, the dive school’s resident scientist conducting shark research, informed us in a presentation later that Fuvahmulah was a site where pregnant tiger sharks waited out a part of their gestation period before heading elsewhere to give birth. Max also told us that tigers were primarily scavengers, with turtles being the only prey for which they are known to be specialised. When questioned, he did not explicitly exclude humans from their diet.
Farikede
Often the first dive site of the day, Farikede is relatively harsh. The boat goes out into the sea, where it is unsheltered. The waves make the boat rock heavily. Divers jump into the water and descend immediately rather than wait for everyone to be in the water, regrouping underwater to start moving together. They then dive down close to 30 m depth, looking out away from the reef, into the blue, where there is a chance of seeing large pelagics (ocean-navigating creatures). I was usually fine underwater, but often felt seasick at the surface, both in the water and on the boat.
Thresher sharks are beautiful to watch due to their long, undulating tails and their surprisingly cute eyes. At Farikede, we encountered pelagic thresher sharks on multiple days. Max told us that they had a particularly bad problem with parasites. There is a “cleaning station” at Farikede where cleaner wrasse hang out. The sharks signal to the wrasse with their body posture that they are ready to be cleaned and will be non-aggressive towards them. The wrasse then approach the sharks and eat visible parasites. Cleaning is such an important service that the sharks will tolerate it if the cleaners occasionally take a bite out of their bodies.
As the dives are relatively deep, we had to watch our air consumption as well as the instructions on our dive computers telling us to watch our “no decompression limits”. On more than one occasion, we found ourselves finishing our dive after just half an hour because someone or the other had reached the designated cut-off point for air consumption. Low air consumption underwater seems to be one of my superpowers, so it was never me.
It was on my last diving day that I saw hammerhead sharks at Farikede. With their eyes at the end of stalks that give their heads their peculiar appearance, these sharks may look comical or terrifying, but the uniqueness of their shape makes them must-see sightings either way. We were so thrilled that we chose to go to Farikede again the next dive just a couple of hours later.
That turned out to be a good choice. Underwater, Johnny pointed to a thresher shark. I took it in, then heard him rapping on his tank to point elsewhere – hammerhead sharks! A few seconds later, he was pointing elsewhere again – a tiger shark. We also saw grey reef sharks and white-tip reef sharks, relatively common sharks everyone in the group had seen elsewhere before. Farikede was harsh, but it delivered.
Bad news
I was in Fuvahmulah as the Maldives’ biggest scuba diving disaster occurred – five Italian divers exploring a deep cave (deeper than Maldives’ recreational dive limit of 30 m and PADI’s recreational dive limit of 40 m) died underwater. A Maldivian military diver died a few days later in the effort to retrieve their bodies. It remains the biggest news topic of the scuba diving world as I write this and came up in conversation in the following days, with multiple people messaging me about the topic. I have thoughts about that tragedy based on the information that is currently available, and also how the risks are likely different from any I may have faced during my dives. However, as the bodies have just been retrieved and the details continue to emerge, it is too soon for me to put down commentary in writing.
Conclusion
Fuvahmulah was billed as a great destination to see large pelagic fish and a particular hotspot for tiger sharks. It proved to be both. Nobody in our group left disappointed. In our dive group, with “only” 5 diving days in Fuvahmulah, I was the shortest stayed. I did not limit myself to Fuvahmulah; I moved on to other islands of Maldives for more scuba diving, reef swimming and animal encounters, which I will exclude from the main story.
The search for the next adventure sometimes begins before the plane lands back in Munich. I have ideas, but until I have a plan, I will keep them off the internet.
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One reply on “Tiger sharks of Fuvahmulah”
Great narration👌. And beautiful photos and videos. Awesome experience. One shark almost touched you as it swept past.