Cocoa Thila

Overview

Cocoa Thila — many operators call it Kandooma Thila — sits on the eastern channel edge of South Malé Atoll, near Cocoa Island (Makunufushi). It is best known as a shark cleaning station: grey reef sharks come in to hover, sometimes almost vertically, while cleaner wrasse work them over. It’s a teardrop-shaped thila, roughly 300–400 m long, with a top around 14 m sloping to a 30 m drop-off and sand beyond, its western and northern sides carved with overhangs, caverns and ravines and dressed in soft coral. (A separate nearby site, Cocoa Corner, is the one better known for resting nurse sharks.)

The dive

This is a current dive, and the current is everything. Divers work the western and northern faces where the overhangs sit between about 8 and 19 m, holding position to watch the sharks be cleaned and the schooling fish stack up in the flow. As one guide put it: no current, no fish — but too much current and the divers are gone in a minute. It rewards good positioning and, on a strong day, a reef hook.

Marine life

Grey reef sharks are the signature, drawn to the cleaning station and sometimes present in numbers on a strong current; white-tip reef sharks rest in the caves and under the overhangs. Add Napoleon wrasse, hawksbill and green turtles, eagle rays and stingrays, dogtooth tuna and bluefin trevally, barracuda, snapper, grouper, sweetlips and fusilier schools, over walls of soft coral.

Conditions & who should dive it

Current runs one to four knots and can be very strong, which makes this an advanced dive — most operators expect an Advanced Open Water certification and suggest enriched air. Visibility is excellent in the dry season, around 25–40 m, but can drop to 5–15 m off-season, with water at 28–29 °C.

When to go

The northeast monsoon dry season, December to April, brings the best visibility and shark activity, with the peak around January to March.

Getting there

COMO Cocoa Island resort sits right beside the thila and dives it regularly. It’s also reached in about 25 minutes by boat from the local island of Maafushi, and by South Malé and shark-focused liveaboard itineraries.