Ari & Rasdhoo Atolls · Maldives · Pinnacle · Reef
Five Rocks
A pinnacle eroded into five separate pieces, 12 m to 40 m
Area photo: John Hepburn · CC BY 4.0
A South Ari pinnacle that erosion has split into five separate pieces over thousands of years, leaving the fragments lying at depths between 12 and 40 metres. The gaps and edges between them hold schools of sweetlips and whitetip reef sharks, with frogfish and stingrays for divers who slow down and look at the small stuff.
Where it is and how deep
3.5685° N, 72.9417° EPublished position for this site.
The dive
The site is unusual in shape rather than size: a single pinnacle that thousands of years of erosion have split into five separate pieces. Those pieces lie at depths between 12 and 40 metres, so the dive is a route between them, deepest first, working shallower as it goes. How many of the five you link up on one dive depends on the profile you can afford, and there is no reason to try for all of them.
Each piece is worth treating as its own reef. Schools of sweetlips gather around the structures and whitetip reef sharks pass along the edges, while the rock itself is good hunting for macro: frogfish sit still where you would otherwise not look, and stingrays settle on the sand between the fragments. The shallowest pieces at around 12 metres are the natural place to end the dive.
Marine life and season
- Reef fish swarms
- Frogfish
- Stingrays
- Reef sharks
| Jan | Feb | Mar | Apr | May | Jun | Jul | Aug | Sep | Oct | Nov | Dec |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Prime | Prime | Prime | Prime | Prime | Good | Good | Good | Good | Good | Good | Prime |
Season follows Ari & Rasdhoo Atolls: The seas are calmest from December to May, but manta numbers peak from August to November.
Sources
- Five Rocks — Scubago
More dive sites in Ari & Rasdhoo Atolls
Mantas at a cleaning station from December till April
Mantas swooping past a reef cut with shelter channels
A small arch and two sea-fan overhangs on a channel-swept thila
Reef
A canyon cut diagonally through the middle of a channel reef
One of the few places whale sharks stay all year
Wall
The best-known whale shark spot on South Ari's outer reef
Pinnacle
A field of table coral crowning a thila of caverns and overhangs
Pinnacle
Manta cleaning station on a pinnacle facing the open ocean
Similar dives elsewhere
Two basalt organ pipes 25 m tall, one pierced by a cave
A 400 m ridge from an 8 m top down to about 35 m
Black-footed and Clark's clownfish in the thila's anemones
Three soft-coral pinnacles that work as a cleaning station