The Maldives

A UNESCO Biosphere Reserve and the world's most important feeding aggregation site for reef manta rays, Hanifaru Bay between June and November hosts hundreds of mantas feeding on plankton in a swirling vortex that is unique in the ocean. Whale sharks also regularly attend this spectacle, and snorkelling (diving is restricted to protect the mantas) here is one of the most extraordinary marine experiences on earth.

The atoll with the world's highest year-round concentration of whale sharks — the ocean's largest fish, reaching 12 metres — South Ari's outer reef channels are the most reliable place on earth to snorkel with whale sharks in open water. The atoll is also home to some of the Maldives's finest manta ray cleaning stations, where schools of smaller fish remove parasites from the mantas' wings in a daily ritual of extraordinary intimacy.

Famous worldwide for its bioluminescent beach — where single-celled marine plankton emit blue light when disturbed, turning breaking waves into electric-blue fire after dark — Vaadhoo is one of a handful of places in the world where this natural phenomenon is regularly visible without optical aids. On moonless nights, the glow of the phytoplankton can be strong enough to read by.

The reef systems of North and South Male Atolls, within reach of the main international airport, hold some of the finest accessible dive sites in the Maldives — including Banana Reef, one of the first protected reefs in the country, where Napoleon wrasse, grey reef sharks, and enormous schools of snappers move through channels in the coral wall in dramatic, close-up encounters.

The southernmost atoll in the Maldives and the only one where land connects the islands sufficiently for bicycles and scooters to travel between communities, Addu is the least tourist-developed of the major atolls and one of the most ecologically pristine. The British Loyalty shipwreck — a fuel tanker sunk in 1946 — is one of the Maldives's most spectacular dive sites, encrusted with coral and hosting enormous schools of fish in its holds.

An inhabited island of exceptional natural beauty with a long white beach and house reef of remarkable health, Fulhadhoo offers the genuine Maldivian local island experience that private resort islands deliberately filter out — fishing dhows returning at dawn, communal evening swims, and the kind of unhurried hospitality that existed throughout the archipelago before it became one of the world's top luxury destinations.