The Maldives is a beautiful tropical paradise in South Asia where many people vacation, but do you need to watch out for sharks?
The Maldives is surrounded by a considerable amount of ocean life, which includes as many as twenty-six different species of shark. These include the hammerhead, oceanic whitetip, and tiger sharks. Strangely, the country has almost no record of shark attacks ever having occurred.
Read on to learn more about the Maldives and the abundant ocean life that surrounds it.
Sun And Sea
The Maldives is one of the world’s favored vacation destinations, owing majorly to it being a tropical island paradise. It’s located off the coast of South Asia and is made up of a series of islands that form an archipelago.
As a nation, the Maldives is almost three thousand years old and has a considerable history. Today, the glittering blue oceans and soft white sands attract thousands of tourists every year.
The area boasts a substantially fine climate, with average highs sitting at more than 86 degrees all year round. There’s very little rainfall, high humidity, and great levels of sunshine that aid tourists in acquiring a mean tan.
Being as it is an archipelago, the Maldives is surrounded on all sides by an expanse of the open ocean. These waters are densely populated with sea life, ranging from coral and reefs to thousands of species of fish, turtles, mollusks, and crustaceans.
When you’re taking a vacation in the Maldives, you’re almost definitely going to interact with this ocean life in one way or another. There are countless services offering scuba diving trips, ocean safaris, and boat rides.
Aside from being an ocean paradise, the Maldives is reportedly a dramatically safe haven. Its proximity to South Asia has presented issues in the past with terrorism, but statistically, it’s a very safe location.
It’s reported that the most common dangers in the Maldives are getting sunburnt, suffering an injury while swimming, or having a coconut fall on your head. The latter occurrence can apparently be fatal, but it’s very rare to be killed by a falling coconut.
Shark Tales
The water around the Maldives is teeming with ocean life, ranging from fish to turtles, and from crustaceans to coral. At any one time, there are around twenty-six different species of shark that populate the area.
However, that isn’t as daunting a revelation as you might think, as the Maldives has little-to-no records of shark attacks ever occurring. Almost all the sharks that swim around the Maldives are either non-aggressive or just plain indifferent to the human presence.
It’s said that the waters around the Maldives have seasons when they’re extremely calm and have incredible levels of visibility. This opens the door to many diving opportunities, a lot of which revolve around the dense shark population.
There are plenty of experts leading ‘shark trips’ in the waters around the Maldives. Tourists can strap on their diving gear and swim side-by-side with what might be the most relaxed sharks on Earth.
In fact, there’s more danger from the water itself than the sharks swimming around. There are suggestions that inexperienced divers may struggle with the swimming aspect – the risk of the proximity to sharks almost never comes up.
A Different Story
While the Maldives has a completely non-threatening shark population, the same can’t be said for other vacation destinations around the world. There are numerous oceanside destinations that also offer a lot of water-based activities, but have a considerable threat of shark attack.
However, while sharks are made out to be quite dangerous predators, their attacks on humans are quite rare. There are almost five hundred species of shark in the world, and only around thirty are actually aggressive toward humans.
Globally, there are around one hundred attacks a year, and only a small percentage of these attacks are actually fatal. It might come as a revelation, but a majority of the world’s shark attacks actually occur in the United States.
There are numerous locations in the United States that are hotbeds for shark activity, especially the species of sharks that attack humans. These include Florida, Hawaii, California, and South and North Carolina.
Outside of the United States, numbers are also high in the Bahamas, Brazil, Mexico, and Australia. If you want to take a hot, tropical holiday, explore the ocean, and remove any risk of shark attacks, perhaps you should stick with the Maldives.