Sea turtles in the Maldives: where to see them

The Olive Ridley Project, a sea turtle charity working in the Maldives since 2013, lists five species in Maldivian waters:

• Green turtle. The one you’ll see most often on shallow reefs and in seagrass, grazing calmly. It has a smooth shell and a small, rounded head. Greens lay most of the nests found in the country.
• Hawksbill turtle. Also seen often. Look for a narrow, pointed beak and overlapping shell plates with a jagged back edge. Hawksbills feed on sponges and soft corals, so you’ll often find one with its head pushed into the reef.
• Olive ridley. Less common. Usually seen in deeper water, and sometimes found tangled in drifting nets.
• Loggerhead and leatherback. Rare visitors. No confirmed nesting by either species has been recorded in the Maldives.

The Maldives National Red List (2022) classes the green turtle as Endangered and the hawksbill as Critically Endangered in the country. There is too little local data to rate the other three, so they are listed as Data Deficient.

Telling green turtles and hawksbills apart

You can see turtles all year. Being in the water at the right spot matters more than the month you come. What the weather does affect is visibility and how calm the sea is. Our best time to visit the Maldives guide covers the monsoons.

Good places to look:

• Reefs near local islands. Most guesthouse islands run snorkelling trips to reefs where turtles feed.
• House reefs. Turtles turn up on shore reefs too; only snorkel from the beach where it is safe and allowed.
• Dive sites. Turtles rest under overhangs at many sites. See our diving guide.

On Dhiffushi, the island’s Turtle Point snorkelling trip visits a reef where green turtles often come to feed. As with any wild animal, sightings are never guaranteed. For more about the reefs around the island, see diving and snorkelling in Dhiffushi.

Float quietly and scan the reef edge, as resting turtles are easy to miss.

If you’re new to snorkelling, start with our snorkelling in the Maldives guide.

Turtles do nest on Maldivian beaches, but far less often than they used to. In January 2026 the Olive Ridley Project published a study of nesting records from 2018 to 2024, covering 18 of the 20 administrative atolls. It found:

• Green turtles laid most of the nests, on beaches in 16 atolls. Key areas included Baa, Laamu, Lhaviyani and Noonu.
• Fewer than 50 hawksbill nests were confirmed in seven years. That is a steep fall from the hundreds or thousands a year estimated in the 1980s and 1990s.
• Olive ridleys were officially recorded nesting in the Maldives for the first time (14 nests).

Green turtle nesting peaks around June to August, but it can happen in any month. The main reasons nests fail are flooding and beach erosion. Illegal egg taking and ghost crabs are also threats.

If you find a nesting turtle or hatchlings

Females come ashore at night. If you’re lucky enough to see one:

• Stay well back, keep low and keep quiet. A disturbed turtle may go back to sea without laying.
• No torches, phone screens or flash. Light confuses nesting females and hatchlings, which head for the brightest horizon to find the sea.
• Never touch eggs or hatchlings, and don’t carry hatchlings to the water. Let them crawl the beach themselves.
• Tell your guesthouse or the island council. You can also report sightings to the Olive Ridley Project’s research team.

Maldivian law protects sea turtles, and visitors should know the basics:

• Catching and killing turtles has been banned since 1995. The ban was later extended and now covers the whole country.
• Eggs. For years, egg collection was banned only on a set of listed islands. Illegal egg taking is still recorded as a threat, so never buy or eat turtle eggs.
• Trade. Every sea turtle species is listed by CITES, the global treaty on trade in endangered species. The Maldives joined it in 2013 and passed its own law to put the treaty into effect in 2022 (Act No. 13/2022). Buying or exporting turtle products can break both Maldivian and international law.
• Exporting marine products. Maldives Customs says many marine products need a permit to leave the country. The simple rule: don’t buy or collect them.

Turtles need to surface to breathe, and a stressed turtle uses up oxygen fast. Follow these rules:

• Keep your distance. Stay at least a few metres away and let the turtle decide how close it comes.
• No touching, riding or holding. Never touch a turtle, not even its shell.
• No chasing. If it swims off, let it go. Don’t dive down on top of it or block its way to the surface.
• No feeding. Feeding changes how turtles behave and can make them ill.
• No flash photography. Use natural light and keep still. Don’t crowd it with a group to get the picture.
• Stay off the reef. Never stand on coral, and fin gently. Turtles depend on healthy reefs, so read our coral reefs guide before you go.

A good guide briefs you on these rules before you get in.

The biggest everyday danger to turtles in Maldivian waters is lost or dumped fishing gear, known as “ghost nets”. Maldivians fish mainly with pole and line, and fishing with nets is restricted by law. Even so, nets drift in on the currents from elsewhere in the Indian Ocean, and turtles get caught up in them.

The Olive Ridley Project reports that most of the injured turtles brought to it had been tangled in ghost gear or plastic. Its rescue and rehabilitation centres in the Maldives care for injured turtles, many of them olive ridleys pulled from drifting nets.

What you can do:

• If you see a turtle caught in a net, tell your boat crew straight away. Don’t try to cut a large or active turtle free on your own.
• Cut down on single-use plastic during your stay, and take your rubbish back with you from sandbanks and picnic islands.

Our responsible travel guide has more ways to tread lightly.

Tortoiseshell comes from the shell of the hawksbill turtle. Don’t buy anything that looks like tortoiseshell, turtle shell, or anything made from turtle parts, eggs or oil, whatever the seller says about its age.

The same goes for coral and shells. If you want something that genuinely supports island life, look at our guide to Maldives souvenirs and shopping.

You can help researchers even on a short holiday. Each turtle’s face has its own pattern of scales, a little like a fingerprint. Researchers use side-on photos of the head to identify individual turtles and follow them over the years. If you get a clear photo of the side of a turtle’s head, note the date and place and send it to the Olive Ridley Project’s sea turtle ID programme.

For the bigger picture of what lives on Maldivian reefs, see our guide to Maldives marine life, or start planning with the Maldives travel guide.