A week aboard a scuba liveaboard, MV Conte Max

We went a day early to Kooddoo island to meet the MV Conte Max boat for our week of scuba diving.  Kooddoo has a runway so we flew to the island in a Dash 8 from Male, the Maldives international connection point.  Our one-night stay was at the newly-opened Mercure resort.  We arrived in time to do one quick snorkeling excursion.  The reef was not close to the shore so we went to the reef on an excursion boat. 

Most of the rest of the Conte Max passengers arrived about noon the following day.  We met them and the boat crew at the airport terminal and walked to the boat.  We did an introductory dive that afternoon so the crew could assess our skills.  We started doing 3 dives per day the following morning.  Currents tended to range from 1 or 2 mph to 6 to 8 miles per hour.  In the stronger currents we “flew” by the reef until we were through the Kandus .  Kandus are channels at the outer rim of the atoll through which water had to flow to raise the water level inside the atoll when the tide was rising; to lower the water level in the atoll when the tide lowered.  Usually we reached calmer waters after the fly-bys and we were able to explore the reefs at a more relaxed pace.

Kandus tend to be where the large sharks and other animals of the open sea are usually found.  Finding sharks was the goal for all of the advanced divers.  That included all of the passengers except us.  We are not advanced divers.  So we had our own divemaster.  The currents were actually stronger than is appropriate for divers with our abilites and limitations. 

This was our second of three samplings of what Maldives has to offer.
To get an idea of what we saw look at the video below: