Inexpensive Maldives liveaboard suggestions please

Hi,
I'd like to head out to the Maldives this year, possibly last week in July. Can someone reccommend a reasonably priced liveaboard please?

Maldives Scuba Tours are a small, but very good operation. We spent Christmas 2010 on the Sea Queen with them. No fixed intinery - they just followed the fish. Had a cracking trip. Three separate encounters with 'Mr Spotty' and more mantas than we could count. We were hideously delayed by the snow and they were so helpful, even swinging back past Male to get us when we were 4 days late.

The Sea Queen isn't exactly luxurious, but its very much a trip for dedicated divers.

Blue o' Two have Carpe Diem in the Maldives too. I've only ever done the Red Sea with them, but found them very good. Boats are more plush and the price reflects that.

Both will usually have some discounts on the go for LIDS at the end of the month.

Hope that helps!!

I agree re Maldives Scuba Tours. I did Sea Spirit a couple of years ago. Its a bit like a BSAC club weekend in the UK - but warmer. What i mean is that accommodation & food is a bit like a B&B in Weymouth, but the diving is full on.

I did Carpe Vita in Oct 2011. Massively better boat/food etc, & very pleasant diving, but not the hard core ' lets go find some current' approach that made Sea Spirit such a great trip.

Thanks for the tips.
Is Late july/ August a good time to go and can I expect to see lots of Mantas?
Thanks in advance.

mantajohn:

I agree re Maldives Scuba Tours. I did Sea Spirit a couple of years ago. Its a bit like a BSAC club weekend in the UK - but warmer. What i mean is that accommodation & food is a bit like a B&B in Weymouth, but the diving is full on.

I did Carpe Vita in Oct 2011. Massively better boat/food etc, & very pleasant diving, but not the hard core ' lets go find some current' approach that made Sea Spirit such a great trip.

Click to expand...

scubajunky17:

Thanks for the tips.
Is Late july/ August a good time to go and can I expect to see lots of Mantas?
Thanks in advance.

Click to expand...

June/July is one of the wetter periods in my experience but intermittent rain shouldn't affect diving unless it affects surface visibility. Wind is the major problem and that is much harder to predict. I've found Sep/Oct to be very windy months.

Mantas should be in the NE of the Maldives at that time of year as the prevailing wind and current is from the SW which means the plankton should bloom on the NE side.

So how do the Maldives compare to other dive locations? I love Palegic action and am into Mantas at the moment. Will I be satisfied with the Maldives in July/ August? Is there any possibility of just truning up and getting a liveboard on the ground when you are there?
How diving in the Maldives compare to say Mozambique?
Many thanks,
Tim

---------- Post added April 25th, 2012 at 05:57 AM ----------

Southern Equatorial Atolls Huvadhoo to Gan This is the proposed Itinary for July / August ? is it a good one ?

Huvadhoo to Gan (Laamu Atoll) is the southern atolls where I'm based now. I've only been in Laamu Atoll for a few months but what impresses me is the excellent visibility. In general I find there is less bio-diversity than what I saw in Ari Atoll- as a guide it was easy to get lazy up north as there were different fish everywhere. But I guess that's the price to pay for better viz.

I've seen mantas a few times here- one time in 40m+ viz

The season wind is changing now so that may change things as well in regards to fish life and visibility.

Mantas a few times? I thought the Maldives was a mecca for Mantas ?

Mantas aren't seen in all divespots.

Some locations have manta cleaning stations where mantas hover to get cleaned of parasites. Others have bays where mantas may come in large numbers when plankton get funneled in.

Cleaning stations are fairly regular and easy to predict (once you find them). Feeding areas are a bit hit and miss.. but when you hit them there maybe literally hundreds at a time.

scubajunky17:

Mantas a few times? I thought the Maldives was a mecca for Mantas ?

Click to expand...

I was in the Maldives a couple months ago for a 10-day liveaboard trip on the Carpe Vita. In 33 dives we saw mantas once ... and ended up sharing that experience with about a hundred other divers. At one point it was literally raining divers ... they were landing on top of us, crawling around on the bottom breaking corals (what few weren't already broken) ... it was generally an unpleasant experience that completely overshadowed the few mantas that were circling above us.

Worse yet, because almost all the divers down there ... who came off of at least five or six different boats ... were totally unskilled, the dive guides were hovering over the group and pretty much forcing everyone to grab ahold of something so they didn't wander off in the chaos. Every time I tried to get up above the chaos to get a shot, some dive guide would grab my arm and pull me back down to the bottom ... most times it wasn't even my dive guide.

By the time we left the site, I just wanted it to be over. Later, when I mentioned to my guide what a chaotic scene it was down there he just smiled and said "welcome to the Maldives".

While I had a generally good time on that trip, the one manta experience I had wasn't something I'd care to repeat ...

... Bob (Grateful Diver)