Look — but do not touch

The regulation opens this part by observing that the Maldives is a country surrounded by sea and that a great many vessels are believed to have sunk in the atolls. Then it states the principle, in quotation marks, as a phrase:

“Look — but do not touch.”

And it gives a reason that is not the one you would expect. Touching does not only damage the object; it obstructs the people who come in future to see it. The interest being protected is partly the next diver's, twenty years from now.

The principle applies to individual sunken objects as well as to whole vessels — so a single artefact on the sand is in scope, not just an identifiable wreck.

If you find something for the first time, the procedure is specific: mark the place where it lies, then inform two institutions — the National Centre for Linguistic and Historical Research, and the Ministry of Finance and Treasury. Not the Ministry of Tourism, and not the police.

Usefully, the regulation also says a list of sunken vessels is available from the Ministry of Tourism. We have not seen that list and cannot tell you what is on it, but it exists and it is worth asking for.

Part 12 goes further than the wreck rule. It is prohibited to take any object lying under the sea, and a cultural structure especially. Same two institutions to inform if one is found.

Clause 2 then names three separate prohibited acts for people who dive: destroying cultural structures, taking such objects, and taking them out of the Maldives. Export is called out on its own, which suggests it was a real problem rather than a hypothetical one.

Research on underwater cultural resources requires permission from the relevant government parties, and the regulation states plainly that how such matters are dealt with is not included in this regulation. So if you are planning survey or research work, this instrument is not where the answer is.

Environmental protection is written as a duty on the instructor, before the dive. Divers must be given information about the matters they are responsible for, and the regulation lists what that briefing must include:

• controlling buoyancy
• staying away from things that cause damage to the life of the reefs
• what happens to corals and to marine creatures when they are touched

That third item is our best reading of a passage that is garbled in the source — and identically garbled in both of the independent decodes we work from, which makes it a defect in the original rather than in our decoding. The sense is clear enough to report; the exact wording is not. Treated as unresolved.

Then, flatly and with no qualification: feeding sharks is prohibited — for people diving and for employees of the dive service centre. It binds the staff explicitly, not only the guests.

Clause 2 reaches outside the diving regulation entirely, to the Law on the Protection and Preservation of the Environment of the Maldives, Law 4/93. Under it, anything that may cause damage to protected marine areas, to protected creatures, or to the environment those creatures live in, is prohibited.

And here the phrase appears a second time. The regulation says the message for divers in protected areas is, again, “Look — but do not touch”. Only permitted activities may be carried out there.

Clause 3 is the operational one, and it is a duty to enquire rather than a duty to comply: permission may be required to dive in a protected area, and before diving it must be checked whether it is.

That pairs with the prohibited-areas rule in our notes on when not to dive, where the regulation admits that security areas are not always marked on charts. Between the two, the compliant habit is the same: find out before the boat leaves, not from the plotter.

This part is not in the table of contents, and it is the most distinctively Maldivian thing in the instrument.

Catching bait for the pole-and-line fishery is described as an important matter, and the regulation acknowledges that divers will sometimes encounter fishermen doing it. In the interests of both, it says it is desirable — not mandatory — that diving is not conducted in those areas while bait is being caught. If a problem arises, it is reported to the Ministry through the dive centre, not by the diver.

Then a duty that has nothing to do with safety at all: dive centres must give divers information about the economic activities the people of the Maldives have carried out from long ago. A briefing obligation about the traditional economy, written into a diving regulation. It is the clearest signal in the whole instrument of what it thinks diving is for.

Part 16 first, because it sets the boundary. Diving to seek and take marine resources, and diving for marine research, is not included in this regulation. Permission from the relevant government party must be obtained before doing either. So the recreational rules simply do not cover that work — which is not the same as it being allowed.

Part 17 is short and worth reading twice. If a diver takes an object by diving in breach of the law, the armed forces have the power under Maldivian law to confiscate it.

And then: the equipment used for the diving will also be confiscated, if it was used in breach of the law. Not only the object — the kit.

For a centre, that reads differently than it does for a diver. If the breach happened on your gear, on your boat, the exposure is not only your guest's.

We have not seen the Ministry's list of sunken vessels, so we cannot tell you which wrecks are on it. We still have not read Law 4/93, so we cannot give you its statutory definition of a protected area or a protected creature, or how permission to dive one is obtained — only that the diving regulation says to check. We can now evidence two of the creatures: sharks and turtles, in what is protected in Maldivian waters. And the touching passage in Part 13 clause 1 is genuinely unresolved in the source.

Nor does the regulation say who decides that a dive was "in breach of the law" for confiscation purposes, or what happens to confiscated equipment afterwards.

Every section names its chapter, part and clause. Three of the parts on this page — 15, 16 and 17 — are absent from the regulation's own table of contents, which lists fourteen where the body runs to seventeen. If you are checking us against a copy, do not stop at the contents page.

One caution about who to ask. The responsible department has been renamed at least twice across these instruments — Ministry of Tourism in 2003, Ministry of Tourism, Arts and Culture on the 2013 amendment, and ފަތުރުވެރިކަމާއި ތިމާވެށްޓާބެހޭ ވުޒާރާ, Ministry of Tourism and Environment, on the March 2026 procedure. For anything current, that last name is the one to go by. Finds on the seabed go to two different bodies again.

A briefing that has to cover buoyancy and traditional fishing, a permission to check per protected site, and a find that has to be reported to two institutions — this part of the regulation is mostly about knowing things before the boat leaves. Have a look if it is useful.