The Aldabra Group Diving: An Overview
If you were to spin a globe we'd bet our bottom dollar you wouldn't spot the Aldabra group of islands. And yet these remote atolls, with their wild, uninhabited islands and virtually virgin waters quietly host some of the most iconic marine species to grace the oceans.
Some of the first ever scuba exploration was conducted in the Aldabra Group (by Jacques-Yves Cousteau, no less), and with world-class dive sites still being discovered, not much has changed in the years since.
As the rule goes, the more remote you go the 'fishier' a place gets and, located 700 miles south of the main island of Mahé in the Seychelles, the Aldabra Group - comprised of the Cosmoledo and Aldabra Atolls as well as the islands of Assumption and Astove - are about as remote as you can get.
Diving here means being submerged in a blizzard of marine life, from plumes of barracuda and colourful clouds of anthias to dogtooth tuna, wahoo, dorado and sailfish, to name but a few. Focus your eyes beyond the buzz and glimpse impressive coral colonies - some of which have spanned millennia - that flourish in gardens and cling to dramatic drop-offs set against the deep blue.
And while the regular sightings are extraordinary in themselves, it's the surprise encounters that truly trump, from thresher sharks at 14 metres to a pod of over a thousand melon-headed whales; catching a passing hammerhead at the beginning of a dive to climbing back on the boat above a breaching humpback whale. Of course, none of this is guaranteed, but the real rule here is to expect the unexpected, safe in the knowledge that no dive will ever be the same - this is truly original diving.
