Dhonfan Thila

A typical drop lands ahead of the oval pinnacle, and a mild current carries you onto the structure around 20 to 22 metres. Circle it and the thila shows two faces. The exposed outer edge is where grey reef sharks hold in the current and schools of jacks and barracuda orbit at mid-water. The leeward side is calmer, with hard corals on the overhangs and Napoleon wrasse drifting close out of plain curiosity.

The centrepiece sits on the east side. A passage opens near 30 metres and climbs through a narrow, overhang-lined corridor to about 18 metres, where it spills into a sheltered interior pool. The shift is physical: the current that pushed you along the outer wall drops away as you emerge into the calm. A canyon falls to 25 metres on one flank, with overhangs at 27 metres east and 20 metres north framing the deeper ground for confident divers.

If the monsoon manta window is open, rays may appear above the shallow reef at 7 to 8 metres or hold at a cleaning point while wrasse work them over. The top itself stays busy with schooling fish whatever the season.

This is the manta site you actually dive. Hanifaru Bay, a short boat ride away, is a snorkel-only feeding bay, so Dhonfanu Thila is one of the few places in Baa Atoll where reef mantas can be watched from scuba depth rather than from the churn at the surface. The encounters here are calmer and more deliberate than Hanifaru's feeding cyclones.

The swim-through is genuine architecture, not a crack to squeeze through. A 30-metre opening, overhangs framing the corridor, and a clean exit into still water at 18 metres make it the kind of passage divers remember. Grey reef sharks round out the appeal. They are the steady presence here, on every dive on the outer wall, which makes Dhonfanu the bigger-stuff dive of an atoll better known for gentle reef diving.

Carry an SMB. Current on the outer edges is variable and can sweep you off the pinnacle, so a dive can end in blue water with the boat tracking your marker. Buoyancy is the skill that matters most: the swim-through entry near 30 metres is no place to be fighting your trim, and good control keeps you off the coral and overhangs throughout.

For mantas, dive in the morning during the May-to-November window and work the lunar tides, since the plankton that draws them concentrates around the full and new moon. Bring a wide-angle lens for the rays and the fish schools. Mantas are seasonal and variable, so treat any encounter as a bonus rather than a certainty. The site is not one for novices when the current builds.