Where the whale sharks are, and when.
The Maldives holds one of the few whale shark populations on earth that never leaves — and almost every travel calendar gets it wrong by calling it seasonal.
3 atolls have published science we can cite for this. The others are not missing — nobody has studied them.
Baa Atoll
A UNESCO Biosphere Reserve, and the one atoll where the timing is measured rather than remembered — Hanifaru Bay has been surveyed for over a decade and tracked with acoustic tags.
Feeds here in the southwest monsoon alongside the mantas, drawn by the same plankton — but in far smaller numbers than South Ari: on the order of 95 sightings of 53 individuals across a decade.
South Ari
Home to one of the very few whale shark aggregations on earth that never switches off — and the reason is more interesting than a season.
Present year-round — the single most widely mis-stated fact about Maldivian wildlife. The South Ari protected area works as a resting and development ground for juvenile sharks rather than a stop on a migration, so the population persists instead of arriving and leaving. The record runs to over 6,000 sightings of nearly 400 identified individuals across two decades.
Gnaviyani
A single oceanic island with no lagoon and deep water at its edge — which makes it unlike anywhere else in the Maldives, and the only place in the country with a resident tiger shark population.
Peaks February to April, from a smaller and female-biased record of around 90 identified individuals.