Diving Helengeli in the Maldives
Helengeli Island has a wonderful reputation worldwide, for its incomparably exotic house-reef & superb Channel Diving, just meters from the shoreline.
The island has a unique location at a primary entrance to Male‘ Atoll, in the middle of a Channel (channel on both sides of the island) and is also one of the very few islands within the Maldives, which lies perpendicular to the Ocean edge on the border of the Atoll, instead of being parallel to it as in the case of most of the other islands on the ocean reef border. Hence, fish life especially Pelagic are aplenty around the Reef! Each side of the island is perfect for Channel Dives as the current flows into the Atoll, allowing you to observe all the underwater bio-diversity, including pelagic fish category such as Tuna, Shark, Rays & Jack Fish.
Hopefully this will include the Mantas as Paul is a bit addicted to them and is hoping to get his new GoPro camera set up put to good use!
The island also has a very small lagoon as compared to the islands on the Atoll border. Hence, the exotic Helengeli House Reef is just a few meters away from the beach and available for snorkelling.
Helengeli dive facts
Average water temperature is 28°C
Visibility: January-may: 20-40 mtr may-dec. Average 15 mtr
May-Dec is the Manta Ray season with great viewing at:
- Fairy Tale 50 min
- Bodu Hithi Tila (Day trip during January-may)
Between January and May its shark season with great viewing at:
- Miyaru Faru 40 min.,
- KKK 30 min,
- Saddle & Vashimas Tila (full day trip during may-December)
- Whitetip reefsharks can be seen during the whole year.
The most famous dive sites are
- Saddle and Vashimas Thila (great places to see sharks and eagle rays)
- Bodu Hithi Tila (huge tila, speciality are Manta Rays)
The top 20 dive sites are:
- Asdu Canyon 50 Min. (beautiful corals, huge amount of fishlife, canyon and rocks and overhangs full of marine life),
- Miyaru Faru Kandu 55 Min.(Typical channel dive / channel crossing with grey reef sharks, white-tip reef sharks, eagle rays, napoleons, makreles, fusiliers. Drift dive) ,
- Bodu Tila(wonderful tila with excellent coral growth and fishlive) Kuda Thila(a very small Tila huge amount of fish)
- Fairy Tale 50 Min( 2 big overhangs, covered with soft corals in blue and yellow, huge amount of marine life, Manta rays cleaning station, lots of fish, just beautiful!!!),
- Kagi Kuda Kandu 30 Min. (a small channel with nice blocks, rocks and canyons. Good coral growth and big amount of fish.),
- Ali Place (beautiful channel with plenty of overhangs.Excellent coral growth,very rich fishlive)
- Helengeli Corner (a channel dive ,soft corals, beautiful overhang and huge amount of fish live)
- Kuda Helengeli Corner ( (overhangs with fantastic softcrals)
- Doris Cave ( (beautiful overhangs)
- Hani Kandu Thila(a small Tila rich on fish live an fantastic for photographers)
- Maha Thila (a Tila where you can find everything from small nudibranches to stonefish, very nice overhang with black corrals)
- Razzag Place ( a wall with big overhang ,and during Mai to November often seen Manta Rays)
- Guruwa Faru ( channel dive ,sharks and eagelrays are regular visitor during Mai to
- November we see often Manta Rays)
- Märchengrotte (Out reef spot with one huge overhang covert in soft corrals)
- Aladin Reef ( very nice wall rich on fish live and many nice overhangs)
- Silvias Place( a spectacular drift dive during Dec. to Mai)
- Bodu Gaafaru ( a inside dive , easy drift ,colourful wall)
- Hani Kandu (channel dive often we see here stingray and sharks sleeping in the sand)
- Trix Caves 35 Min(soft corrals in all colours, overhangs, huge amount of fish life)
Helengeli Dive Sites
There are many dive sites around Helengeli and the gallery below shows them, the ones Paul dived were as follows:
Luda Helengeli Corner, Body Thila, Hani Kandu Beyru, KKK – Kagi Kuda Kandu and Ghadaffi’s Place.
A compilation video of the dives Paul did is below