Feledhi Atoll - Fulidoo

An atoll.

Gotta love the colours.

Our crew caught fish for some of our dinners.

Yellow fin trevally.

 Nurse sharks.

 A wreck we snorkelled around.

Another great sunset.

Sunday, February 18^th.

Our boat set sail at 7:00 while we were still in bed in order to get to another location before other boats. When we arrived, we were served breakfast and then we went snorkelling. The reason we were here (along with other people) is that there is a resort that has a long pier and around it there are usually a number large nurse sharks. We jumped in the water and immediately saw a large number of jack fish, or blue fin trevally. I took one photo with the underwater camera and then it packed it in (very frustrating). Water got in somehow. Then we swam to the pier and sure enough, there were four or five large nurse sharks. The largest was about seven-foot long. They are harmless because they are toothless and docile. They inhale their prey. I drifted off a bit and came across an octopus. I watched it for a while as it squeezed between rocks, changed shape and colour and then propelled itself over the rocks to another location; very cool. One of the nurse sharks swam directly underneath me as I watched the octopus. Then we swam back to the boat.

We motored to another location where there was a sandbar. We left our boat and swam over and around the reef and into the shallows around the sandbar. It was beautiful white sand and shell pieces. We stayed there for a bit, before swimming along the reef, where I found two large lobsters living in a space in the coral. It is really interesting to see the multitude of colours, sizes and shapes of the fish and to watch where they chose to live, some in rock caves, some just under the surface and still other free swimming around the reef. The reefs all look damaged, by El Nino or global warming but we have seen areas of live coral as well. Most of it is hard coral, like brain or stag coral but there are some soft corals. I saw three large blue anemones, with orange tentacles and four or five clown fish swimming amongst them. That is the first time I have seen that. Then we swam back to the boat. John and I are typically the first in the water and last out.

Then we motored again to a shipwreck. This boat was apparently a ghost ship that had broken its mooring and was drifting through the Maldives. They secured it and sunk it where it is now becoming an artificial reef. We swam around that and it felt kind of eerie. We saw a large grouper living in the bottom section. Then we swam back along a pretty good reef to the boat. From there we motored again for a half hour before we stopped at our location for the night. John and I stayed on the top deck and read our books and typed a bit. I am really enjoying ‘I Contain Multitudes’.