Sharks, turtles, and one date we cannot check

The protection was built up over thirty years rather than declared at once, and the sequence is worth knowing because guests ask:

• 1981 — shark fishing prohibited during daytime in tuna fishing areas
• 1995 — a ban on fishing for whale sharks
• 1996–97 — longlining for sharks banned around seamounts important to the tuna fishery
• 1998 — a ten-year moratorium within 12 nautical miles of seven atolls
• 2009 — shark fishing banned throughout territorial waters
• 2010 — banned across the entire EEZ

The 2010 decision goes further than a fishing ban. It also prohibits retaining sharks in any fishery in Maldivian waters — so a shark taken incidentally by a vessel fishing for something else cannot be kept.

The plan describes the Maldives as the first shark sanctuary in the Indian Ocean. Unlike the turtle measures below, no expiry term is stated for the 2010 ban.

This sits alongside a rule from the diving regulation itself, which we cover in our reef and heritage notes: feeding sharks is prohibited for divers and for dive-centre employees. Two separate instruments, pointing the same way.

Turtles have been protected for decades, but through a different mechanism, and the difference is the point of this section:

• 1978 — Bill 24/78 prohibits catching hawksbill under 61 cm carapace, other turtles under 76 cm
• 1979 — Bill 31/79 prohibits export of raw hawksbill shell
• 1995 — a Presidential Decree bans killing, fishing and harvesting of all species — for ten years
• 1995–96 — export, import and sale of turtles and turtle products all banned
• 2006 — the Ministry renewed the moratorium for another ten years
• 2010 — the Maldives signs the IOSEA Marine Turtle MoU

A ten-year moratorium renewed in 2006 runs to 2016. The document we are reading was published in 2016. We do not know what happened next, and we are not going to guess about the legal status of a protected species.

So the honest statement is this: turtles have been continuously protected since 1995 by a measure that has been renewed rather than made permanent, and our most recent source takes that story only to the point where the second term was due to end. If you need the current position — and if you are telling guests anything about it — that is a question for the Ministry of Fisheries, not for us.

Egg harvesting was banned from fourteen islands identified as significant nesting sites. Unlike the diving regulation's prohibited areas, which name no places at all, these are listed:

The ban stated is on egg harvesting specifically, and the period given runs 2006–2016 — the same expiry question as the moratorium above. Treat the list as where the significant nesting sites were identified to be, which is useful regardless of the legal position.

A detail worth surfacing, because it is easy to miss in a scientific report. The in-water survey component of Turtlewatch Maldives — the national citizen-science turtle programme launched in 2015 — was carried out entirely by tourist resorts, with marine biologists stationed at resorts collecting data with assistance from resort dive centres.

So dive centres are not bystanders to this. The country's turtle abundance estimates were built in part on dives run by centres like yours.

Two briefing duties in the diving regulation are the reason any of this is a dive-centre matter at all.

The environmental briefing. Instructors must brief divers on buoyancy control, staying away from things that damage reef life, and what happens when corals and creatures are touched. Knowing that sharks and turtles are protected is the substance behind that.

The traditional-economy briefing. Part 15 requires dive centres to give divers information about the economic activities the people of the Maldives have carried out from long ago — and it sits in the part about not diving bait grounds while fishermen are working.

The Maldives Marine Research Institute publishes two identification posters that are almost purpose-built for that duty. The baitfish poster covers thirteen species with their local names — Gumbalha, Mushimas, Miyaren, Rehi, Nilamehi, Rimmas, Thaavalha, Karaverimas among them. The tuna poster covers the four common species: skipjack (Kalhubilamas), yellowfin (Reendhoo uraha kanneli), frigate tuna (Raagondi) and kawakawa (Latti).

Those are the fish the pole-and-line fishery is built on, and the bait it depends on. A briefing that names them in Dhivehi is doing exactly what Part 15 asks, and it is a good deal more interesting than a sentence about respecting local customs.

We still have not read Law 4/93, the environment law the diving regulation points at. So we cannot tell you the statutory definition of a protected species or protected area, or how permission to dive a protected area is obtained. Sharks and turtles are the two we can evidence; there will be others.

We cannot tell you the position after 2016 on the turtle moratorium or the egg-harvest bans. Both had ten-year terms running to that year and our source stops there.

We also hold two coral reports — the 2016 bleaching status and the 2022 reef report. Neither contains any prohibition, obligation or offence, so neither is written up here. They are science, not law, and we have kept them as background rather than dressing them up as rules.

These are government publications rather than instruments, so the citation is to the document rather than to a clause. The turtle expiry question is the one we would most like answered, and we will update this page the day somebody tells us.

One caution about who to ask. Unlike the rest of these notes, the responsible body here is the Ministry of Fisheries and Agriculture and its Marine Research Centre — not the tourism ministry. The Maldives Marine Research Institute publishes the species posters.

Which species are protected, which sites are sensitive, and what your guides say about both — briefing content is the part of compliance nobody writes down, and it is assessed on the day by whoever is holding the clipboard. Have a look if it is useful.