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Ultimate Islands: The Maldives
Miles of Isles (cont.)


	The infinity pool at the Four Seasons at Kuda Huraa (Courtesy, Four Seasons)

ON THE SECOND DAY, after a breakfast of pancakes, pineapple, and yogurt, we board the dhoni and putter out to Fushifaru Kandu for a channel dive. Between every set of islands there's a kandu, where bustling currents press through narrow openings lined with jagged walls, submerged pinnacles, and overhangs. In the Maldives, way out in the Indian Ocean, currents are not to be trusted. As we drop anchor, Niyaz pops overboard to make sure this one won't catch us in a whirlpool.

We swim on our backs, staring up at the electric-blue fish. The reef and the ocean are blotted out in a piscine eclipse.

While we wait, I fret with Bernardo, the Brazilian bank owner, about the state of the reef. He's also noticed the sad lack of color. "It seems haunted," he says. In 1998, thanks to global warming, one of the worst worldwide episodes of coral bleaching left the Maldivian reefs in a pathetic state. A healthy reef is a riot of color: violet, periwinkle, orange-red, maroon, ocher. A bleached reef is a graveyard, bone-white in the places where it isn't enshrouded in rusty brown algae.

Coral isn't a plant, but a colony of polyps. Each polyp is a tiny greenhouse for zooxanthellae, a species of algae. Coral is as temperamental as a racehorse: The least change in water temperature causes the resident algae, which provide coral's color and 90 percent of its food, to panic and flee. Coral in this state starves to death, unable to live without the zooxanthellae it hosts. In the 1998 bleaching episode, 90 percent of the branching coral on some reefs was wiped out. And as the reefs disintegrate they cease to provide the wave break that keeps the low-lying Maldives from eroding and disappearing entirely.

Niyaz gives the OK sign. The current is dreamy; the dive will be a nice, slow drift. We descend to 90 feet and I float near the reef, looking for signs of life. I'm certain that I'm missing the so-called action, the sight of a big shark cruising by, and sure enough, once we're back on board I hear about a trio of small black-tip reef sharks and a large and unusually friendly hawksbill turtle. I wipe my face with my lemony washcloth. I have nothing to report.

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