Banana Reef

The diving is on the western curve of the reef, where the wall is cut with caves, overhangs and caverns between 10 and 25 metres. That band is where the dive is spent — in and out of the cuts, along the base of the overhangs, with the reef top above you as somewhere to go if the flow picks up. Below the cave section the reef keeps sloping into deeper water.

Currents can be strong here - the resident bannerfish school flutters in the flow - and one section is called the Washing Machine for its intensity, with occasional turbulence around the overhangs as part of the same picture. That is not a reason to skip the site; it is a large part of why the fish are here. Deploying a safety float is recommended, and the strong corner is a place to be briefed on rather than discovered.

For all the current, this is a fish dive rather than a pelagic one. Giant groupers sit under the overhangs, blue-lined snappers and angelfish crowd the coral, bannerfish move through in schools, and moray eels and lobsters fill the holes in the rock. The site has been dived since diving in the Maldives began — it was one of the first ever found here — and it has stayed a North Male Atoll favourite.