{"id":1259,"date":"2011-01-18T11:25:57","date_gmt":"2011-01-18T04:25:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lisaandtony.com\/?p=1259"},"modified":"2011-01-18T11:25:57","modified_gmt":"2011-01-18T04:25:57","slug":"diving-on-the-m-v-orion-maldives","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/lisaandtony.com\/travelblog\/2011\/01\/18\/diving-on-the-m-v-orion-maldives\/","title":{"rendered":"Diving on the M.V. Orion, Maldives"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Maldives\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Diving the Maldives is all about seeing large animals – gray reef sharks, manta rays and\u00a0whale sharks. \u00a0Finding the large animals – however \u2013 requires getting to the remote dive sites.\u00a0 Enter the liveaboard: a boat where 12-24 divers cram together and basically live to dive for 7-14 days\u2026 that means, sleep, eat, dive, and repeat.<\/p>\n

Since this was my first liveaboard, and since we had been significantly under budget for our trip, we decided to treat ourselves to the MV Orion. \u00a0The Orion\u00a0is a newer boat that boasts an on-board hot tub (which – due to the gelatinous looking water – we did not use). \u00a0We opted for a shorter liveaboard \u2013 7 nights.\u00a0 The views were quite nice…<\/p>\n

\"MV<\/a><\/p>\n

Off we go!<\/p>\n

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For each pre-dive briefing, the divemaster drew out a map of our dive site.<\/p>\n

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On the way to one of our dive sites, we followed a rainstorm… check out the funnel cloud!!<\/p>\n

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We averaged three dives a day and since we were on the hunt for the large guys, we had to endure some boring dives. \u00a0However, the great thing about diving on a liveaboard is that you’re bound to get lucky…<\/p>\n

Check out the mantas. \u00a0We saw about 6 or so coming in to land at a cleaning station.<\/p>\n

\"Manta<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Manta<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Manta<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Manta<\/a><\/p>\n

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Mantas are rare to see in the wild, but what\u2019s even rarer? The whale shark \u2013 one of the largest, if not THE largest, fish in the sea. We, along with about a dozen other liveaboard and day boats, hunted the waters in an area known to have them. Finally, a whale shark was spotted in shallow waters and the boat captain screamed at all of us to get in the water. It was a mad scramble of grabbing whatever equipment we could find and jumping very ungracefully in to the water.<\/p>\n

The whale shark is similar to the manta in that it does not have teeth, it feeds on plankton. The whale shark we saw was a little guy \u2013 about 3-4 meters.<\/p>\n

\"Juvenile<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Juvenile<\/a><\/p>\n

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We also saw a few gray reef sharks.\u00a0 Here\u2019s one of the larger ones we saw\u2026<\/p>\n

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This octopus was fascinating.\u00a0 He was trying to find a new home and went from crevice to crevice and kept changing colors – almost flickering \u2013 like a neon light.\u00a0 So cool!<\/p>\n

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Baby gray reef sharks sleeping under the table coral\u2026<\/p>\n

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Fun fish…<\/p>\n

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But still our favorite… the turtle.<\/p>\n

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But, by far, these two were the strangest creatures of them all…<\/p>\n

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So what did we think about diving in the Maldives? \u00a0Hit or miss. \u00a0We were able to see some big animals, but it took lots of boring dives to find them. \u00a0The visibility was not as clear as we expected and the diving was quite challenging at times (rip roarin’ fast currents, washing machine currents). \u00a0But I loved diving on a liveaboard and am looking forward to the next one!<\/p>\n

\"Maldives\"<\/a><\/p>\n

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\"Maldives\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Check out all our photos here:<\/p>\n

[flickrslideshow acct_name=”tony-chen” id=”72157625931105264″]<\/p>\n

And to see more mantas and whale sharks, click here:<\/p>\n

[flickrslideshow acct_name=”tony-chen” id=”72157625798687657″]<\/p>\n

\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Diving the Maldives is all about seeing large animals – gray reef sharks, manta rays and\u00a0whale sharks. \u00a0Finding the large animals – however \u2013 requires getting to the remote dive sites.\u00a0 Enter the liveaboard: a boat where 12-24 divers cram together and basically live to dive for 7-14 days\u2026 that means, sleep, eat, dive, and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[10],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/lisaandtony.com\/travelblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1259"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/lisaandtony.com\/travelblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/lisaandtony.com\/travelblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lisaandtony.com\/travelblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lisaandtony.com\/travelblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1259"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/lisaandtony.com\/travelblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1259\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/lisaandtony.com\/travelblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1259"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lisaandtony.com\/travelblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1259"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lisaandtony.com\/travelblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1259"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}