Maldives

If you have ever considered learning to scuba dive, the Maldives is the single best place to do it. The conditions that make it ideal for experienced divers — warm, clear, calm water; shallow lagoons with abundant marine life at every depth level; no strong currents in the sheltered atolls used for training — make it equally ideal for beginners. Most PADI-certified dive centres in the Maldives offer the full Open Water certification course over three to four days.

The course consists of classroom sessions and pool work followed by four open water checkout dives. In the Maldives, those checkout dives take you past reef sharks, turtles, and Napoleon wrasse from your very first descent. Most divers who certify elsewhere report that their checkout dives were in murky quarries or harbours. In the Maldives, your checkout dives are in 28°C water with 25 metres of visibility and reef fish at every depth. It reframes what diving is from the very beginning.

South Ari Atoll is the best place in the world to swim with whale sharks. Unlike most whale shark destinations — where sightings depend on seasonal migrations and are never guaranteed — the South Ari Marine Protected Area hosts a resident population of whale sharks year-round, feeding on a permanent upwelling of zooplankton in the atoll's nutrient-rich waters. Tour boats encounter them on the vast majority of trips every day of the year.

Whale sharks are the world's largest fish — they reach 12 metres in length — and they feed exclusively on plankton. In the water, they move with an unhurried ease that makes close approach straightforward for snorkellers: you drop in ahead of the shark and float while it passes underneath you, its spotted hide a metre below your fins, its tail sweeping in slow, powerful arcs. The scale of the animal at close range — larger than most fishing boats — creates a specific kind of awe that photographs don't fully capture.

Lankan Finolhu, a cleaning and feeding station in North Malé Atoll, is one of the most celebrated night dive sites in the world. After dark, underwater lights attract clouds of zooplankton to the surface — and the manta rays follow. They arrive in numbers, circling through the light columns in barrel rolls and somersaults, filter-feeding with their cephalic fins spread wide, sweeping within inches of divers who hover motionless on the bottom watching them. The wingspans reach 4–5 metres. The water is warm and clear. It is one of the most theatrical and moving underwater experiences available anywhere.

Hanifaru Bay in Baa Atoll, a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve, hosts the world's largest known manta ray feeding aggregations from June to November — up to 200 mantas feeding simultaneously in a vortex formation during plankton blooms. Snorkelling and diving at Hanifaru requires a permit and is managed by the Biosphere Reserve to control visitor numbers. Outside the peak season, smaller but still spectacular manta encounters are available at cleaning stations throughout the atolls year-round.

On certain nights in the Maldives, the breaking waves glow electric blue. The bioluminescence is caused by dinoflagellates — single-celled plankton that emit light when agitated by wave action or movement through the water. When the conditions are right — a dark moon phase, warm calm seas, high plankton density — the entire shoreline lights up with each wave, and walking into the water produces a halo of blue light around your feet and legs.

Vaadhoo Island in Raa Atoll is the most famous location, and photographs of its bioluminescent shore have circulated widely enough that it is sometimes called the "Sea of Stars." The phenomenon is not guaranteed and is most common between May and November when plankton concentrations peak. Even when bioluminescence is not visible from the beach, snorkelling at night in the dark (turning your torch off) and moving your hands through the water often reveals it in close proximity.

Spinner dolphins are a fixture in the Maldives — pods of fifty or more are common in the open water between atolls, and they are reliably attracted to the bow wave of moving vessels. A traditional dhoni cruise at sunset — the wooden sailing vessel that has been the backbone of Maldivian seafaring for centuries — combines two of the most reliable pleasures of a Maldives trip: the spectacle of spinner dolphins leaping through golden water as the sun descends, and the particular quality of Maldivian light at the end of the day, when the sky goes through its full sequence of pink, orange, and violet before the stars appear.