Home Travel Diving Running		Sunday 16 February 2003 The Soleni dive centre was extremely well organised with the same level of service as the rest of the resort. Thomas, Alex, Sakki and Sebastian took excellent care of us as we explored different dive sites every day. We travelled to the dive sites by the resort's dhonis taking between 20 and 50 minutes to reach the site. Most dives were on the walls of reefs with caves, gullies and chimneys to explore before ending the dive on the top of the reef, often covered in colourful coral and marine life. The coral in the Maldives was badly damaged by unusually hot currents 5 years ago. Now it is growing back well, especially below about 10m. The fish life is still superb and we saw many sharks, turtles, napolean wrasse and any number of smaller fish. Our only disappointment is that this is not manta season so we will have to return in the summer months for them. Dive groups were limited to 4 or 5 divers plus a guide which allowed you to explore the reefs without crowding. Visibility was excellent - 20 to 25m providing good conditions for photography. I logged my 300th dive while I was here and was most surprised and when the dive school presented me with a certificate - folks I will treasure it. One of the best local sites was the shark nursery. Here after drifting along three consecutive reef walls you climb to the top of the reef to look into a wide gully filled with 20 to 25 circling sharks. We watched for 10 minutes as smaller and larger black tipped reef sharks cruised by. This was the first time that I had seen such a colourful puffer fish. Also interesting was the smaller creatures including the Spanish Dancer (left) and a very colourful and quite large nudibranch (below left). Click the butterfly fish for more info on the Soneva resort.