North Malé East Rim

Diving in North Malé East Rim, part of the Maldives' North Malé Atoll, offers an exceptional underwater experience, catering to a range of preferences with its vibrant reefs and abundant marine life. This area is renowned for some of the Maldives' most iconic dive sites.

Banana Reef, one of the first dive sites explored in the Maldives in the early 1970s and the country's first protected marine area since 1989, is a ~300 m banana-shaped reef on the atoll's eastern rim. It's celebrated for its diverse ecosystem. Another highlight is HP Reef (Rainbow Reef), often called the "soft-coral capital." This protected MPA thila is nicknamed Rainbow Reef for the blaze of blue, orange, and yellow soft corals, gorgonians, sea fans, and sea whips carpeting it, slotted into a narrow current channel. For those seeking encounters with majestic pelagics, Lankan Manta Point is one of the world's most dependable manta dives. Here, a gently sloping outer-reef flat holds a cluster of manta cleaning stations (~12–15 m) where reef mantas queue over coral bommies for the bluestreak cleaner wrasse. Finally, Nassimo Thila is an oval-topped protected thila (crown ~10–15 m) whose northern edge bristles with big pinnacles, turrets, and pillars where the current bites hardest—and where the soft corals and huge sea fans are most prolific.

Across these sites, divers can expect to encounter a rich array of marine species, including Yellowback Fusilier, Hawksbill Turtle, Reef Manta Ray, Humphead Wrasse (Napoleon), Tawny Nurse Shark, Bluestreak Cleaner Wrasse, Oriental Sweetlips, Bluestripe Snapper, Black Snapper, and Spotted Eagle Ray.