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Are There Tiger Sharks In The Maldives? (Liveaboards With Tiger Shark Tours)

Are there tiger sharks in the Maldives - Liveaboards with tiger shark tours
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Maldives tiger shark diving – Maldives liveaboards with tiger shark tours

Are you a keen fan of scuba diving with sharks? But also are you keen to see tiger sharks in the Maldives on your dive trip there? But are there tiger sharks in the Maldives? Let’s take a look…

Are there tiger sharks in the Maldives? You may see tiger sharks in the Maldives and your best chance to see them is to dive from a liveaboard dive boat. Maldives liveaboards with tiger shark tours visiting Tiger Zoo (Fuvahmulah) include Blue Shark One and the Princess Rani. The Soleil 2 liveaboard has also had tiger shark sightings.

The best way to dive the Maldives is by a scuba diving liveaboard. You can check the latest and best deals on Maldives liveaboards using the following window:

Do you get tiger sharks in the Maldives in more detail?

The warm rich waters around the Maldives offer the perfect environment for tiger sharks.

If you would like to scuba dive with these magnificent stiped creatures, the answer is to get yourself on a Maldives liveaboard trip. But in particular choose one that specialises in tiger shark tours. There are two Maldives liveaboards that seek out tiger sharks at a know dive site visited by these illusive creatures on a regular basis.

Maldives tiger shark diving from a liveaboard with tiger shark tours

There are three liveaboards to choose offering the chance to see tiger sharks. Two of which include tiger shark tours:

  1. The Maldives Blue Shark One liveaboard – Offers tiger shark tours.
  2. The Maldives Princess Rani liveaboard- Offers tiger shark tours.
  3. Maldives Soleil 2 liveaboard.

Let’s take a look at each of these tiger shark liveaboards in more detail.

1. The Maldives Blue Shark One liveaboard

The Maldives Blue Shark One liveaboard - offers tiger shark tours
Maldives Eco Blue liveaboard review – image courtesy of Liveaboard.com.

Review rated by customers 9.5 out of 10 and exceptional. The Blue Shark One liveaboard is a 30 metre (98 feet) Maldives dive boat. She accommodates up to 16 scuba divers across 9 cabins.

The Maldives Blue Shark One liveaboard was custom-built for scuba divers and has en-suite cabins with air conditioning. You’ll enjoy western and local food served buffet style served indoors and alfresco and there’s also a saloon and bar.

Scuba diving trip itineraries range from 8 days 7 nights to 15 days 14 nights with some of the best diving in the Maldives.

The chance to see whale sharks, manta rays, eagle rays and turtles. But it’s the tiger shark tour that is probably of most interest to you.

To see the full review of the Blue Shark One, please take a look at this article here: Maldives Blue Shark One liveaboard review

The Blue Shark One tiger shark tour is as follows:

Tiger Shark Special – 8 days 7 nights. On this trip there are 16 dives in total, where four can be at Tiger Zoo (Fuvahmulah) ($50 US extra per dive).

Sometimes 15 or more different tiger sharks come up from the drop-off. Advanced Open Water – 80 minimum logged dives required.

A quick glimpse of Tiger Zoo (Fuvahmulah) tiger sharks in action

Tiger’s Zoo – the best choice / tiger sharks in Fuvahmulah / Maldives

2. The Maldives Princess Rani liveaboard

The Maldives Princess Rani liveaboard - offers tiger shark tours
Princess Rani Maldives liveaboard with family cabins on board – image courtesy of Liveaboard.com

Review rated by customers 9.4 out of 10. The Maldives Princess Rani liveaboard is 35 metre (115 feet) Maldives liveaboard accommodates up to 22 scuba divers across 10 cabins.

The Maldives Princess Rani liveaboard was custom-built for scuba divers and has en-suite cabins with air conditioning and some have sea views. Western style food served buffet style both indoors or alfresco outside and there’s also an air-conditioned saloon and bar.

The scuba diving includes itineraries of 8 days 7 nights and includes some of the best diving in the Maldives. The chance to see whale sharks and other sharks, manta rays, eagle rays, turtles wrecks and much much more.

But more importantly, on the tiger shark dive tour you have the chance to see tiger sharks. But also with a chance to spot thresher sharks and hammerheads too.

The tiger shark dive is on the atoll of Fuvahmulah (Tiger Zoo). On this dive it’s possible to dive with the large tiger sharks that come up from the deep waters, and almost to the surface.

To see the full review of the Princess Rani liveaboard, please take a look at this article here: Maldives Princess Rani liveaboard review.

Liveaboard.com search Maldives-scroll

The Princess Rani tiger shark tour is as follows:

Tiger Shark Cruise (Addu-Fuvahmulah-Addu) – 8 days 7 nights trip. Approx. 16 dives in total. Advanced Open Water certification – 50 minimum logged dives required.

This is how an excited Canadian scuba diver explained her experience on the Princess Rani diving with tiger sharks:

Land of the tiger sharks!Fuvamulah Island is in the Indian Ocean off the coast of Addu Atoll which is the most southern point of Maldvives. Due to the availability of food that they like, the area surrounding the island is definitely a tiger shark haven! Tiger shark is a solitary hunter,very stealth and it’s got tiger strips on it that make it very distinct and intimidating! It’s huge as it could get up to, like, 6m!

It could be a man-eater as, next to the dreaded Great White, it inflicts more attacks on human than any other shark specie! ‘Princess Rani’ liveaboard, based at Addu Atoll for part of the year, specializes in tiger shark viewing and it delivers! Keep in mind that tiger sharks are very elusive and live in the deep, yet I managed to see them in 4 of the 5 dives that I did in the area specifying as tiger shark dives!

You can check the Princess Rani liveaboard availability and prices here, or you can search the following table of Maldives liveaboards:

Table of Maldives liveaboards

This list of Maldives liveaboards is in descending customer rating order, followed by Scuba Diving Luxury Rating (SDE Lux Rating, see below), so the liveaboards with the highest customer rating and the best SDE lux rating will be at the top of the list. If you want to change the list order, use the “Sort by” dropdown below.

Search
Sort by
Total Records Found: 53, showing 10 per page
Discover LiveaboardCustomer RatingSDE Lux Rating %Flexible BookingDive CoursesDietary RequirementsNitroxGear Rental
Review: MV Scubaspa Yang; Book: MV Scubaspa Yang 9.6 87% YES YES YES YES YES
Review: MV Emperor Explorer; Book: MV Emperor Explorer 9.6 63% YES YES YES YES YES
Review: MV Theia; Book: MV Theia 9.5 85% YES YES YES YES YES
Review: MY Princess Dhonkamana; Book: MY Princess Dhonkamana 9.5 79% YES YES YES YES YES
Review: MV Scubaspa Ying; Book: MV Scubaspa Ying 9.4 87% YES YES YES YES YES
Review: MV Sachika; Book: MV Sachika 9.4 83% YES YES YES YES YES
Review: MV Emperor Serenity; Book: MV Emperor Serenity 9.4 60% YES YES YES YES YES
Review: MV Soleil 2; Book: MV Soleil 2 9.3 96% YES YES YES YES YES
Review: MV Emperor Atoll; Book: MV Emperor Atoll 9.3 77% YES YES YES YES YES
Review: MV Azalea; Book: MV Azalea 9.3 77% NO YES YES YES YES

The Scuba Diving Earth Luxury Rating (SDE Lux Rating) is explained on each liveaboard review when you click the “Discover Liveaboard” link, and is my own Liveaboard Luxury Rating I’ve assigned to all liveaboards. Choosing between liveaboards is helped by customer scores, and if you get stuck choosing between two or three liveaboards, where each one has a high customer score out of 10, you can use the SDE Luxury Rating to help narrow down your choice.

Think about it like using Booking.com when searching for the best hotel. Booking.com also use a customer score where each customer rates hotels out of 10. This is similar to the liveaboard customer rating, which is also rated out of 10. But let’s say you only like to stay in hotels rated 8 and above on Booking.com, but you also want the hotel to have WIFI or parking, or to have a swimming pool etc. The features each hotel has is usually secondary to the score out of 10.

3. The Maldives Soleil 2 liveaboard

The Maldives Soleil 2 liveaboard - sightings of tiger sharks
Maldives Soleil 2 liveaboard – image courtesy of Liveaboard.com.

The Soleil 2 liveaboard doesn’t have a specific tiger shark dive tour. But scuba divers have seen tiger sharks on the dives made from this Maldives liveaboard.

The Soleil 2 liveaboard is review rated 9.3 out of 10 and a ‘Superb’ rated dive boat. She is 44 metres (144 feet) in length and accommodates up to 30 divers across 15 en-suite cabins with air conditioning.

An example dive trip on the Soleil 2 includes:

Ari, Vaavu to Thaa Atoll dive trips – 8 days 7 nights. 15 dives in total. Advanced open water certification required or similar + 10 minimum logged dives.

The chance to see marine life that includes large schools of grey reef sharks, nurse sharks, big schools of snappers, jack fishers, fusiliers, barracudas and dogtooth tunas. You also see eagle rays, hawks-bill turtles, napoleon wrasse and of course the magnificent manta rays, and huge whale sharks.

The customer reviews include sightings of tiger sharks, as follows:

  • Nice boat, nice crews. “tiger sharks” Recommended for: cabin, staffs, meal.
  • Incredible experience. “Diving with tiger sharks, mantas and whale sharks. Amazing fish life on every reef. Incredible wall dives with tons of sharks. Boat owner and crew were amazing and super helpful and friendly, even in a period where the covid-19 was affecting their business. Food on the boat was very delicious as well!” Recommended for: Diving, crew and food.
  • New Year trip. “On the trip had several experiences including Whaleshark, Manta, hammerhead, tiger shark, turtle, rays and much more. It is recommended to be experienced AOW with my 50+ dives, and depths up to 40 m. New Year on boats was good and a lot was done by the crew, with food, decorating and entertainment.” Recommended for: The boat has a good size with large spaces The crew is very helpful without you having to ask for it. They do a lot to get the best diving out of the trip.

The second review is very recent one being that it includes reference to Coronavirus-Covid-19.

Which means that whilst there are never any guarantees you’ll see tiger sharks (even on the dedicated tiger shark tours), at least this is a current sighting.

The reason I include this last Maldives liveaboard is to highlight the fact that there are tiger sharks in the Maldives.

But also, if your reason to dive the Maldives isn’t only about tiger sharks diving, but it would be a nice extra bonus, you may prefer the set up of this last dive boat over the first two which put on specific tours.

You can check the Blue Shark One availability and prices here

I hope you enjoyed this article about are there tiger sharks in the Maldives

I’d love to hear from you. Tell us about your adventures of diving and snorkelling. Please use the comments section below. Please also share your photos. Either from your underwater cameras or videos from your waterproof go-pro’s!

But in particular if you’ve dived either in the Maldives or in particular on the Maldives Princess Rani liveaboard, The Blue Shark One or the Soleil 2, please share your experiences.

If this article hasn’t answered all of your questions. If you have more questions either about snorkelling or scuba diving (or specifically about are there tiger sharks in the Maldives), please comment below with your questions.

There will also be many more articles about scuba and scuba diving safety tips (and on snorkelling too) for you to read and learn about this fabulous sport.

Have fun and be safe!

Are There Tiger Sharks In The Maldives? (Liveaboards With Tiger Shark Tours)

Article written by Russell Bowyer who has been a scuba diver since diving on the Great Barrier Reef in Australia in 1989. After his first dive he trained as a BSAC diver in the UK. He attained his Diver Leader certification with BSAC. He then went on to become a scuba diving instructor, teaching others how to dive and was voted as Diving Officer and Treasurer for the Saffron Walden BSAC club too. Russell has dived all over the world, including the UK, on liveaboards in the Red Sea, the Caribbean, South Africa and the USA. Russell is experienced in all dive types, including drift diving, deep dives that involved decompression stops and recreational dives too.

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