One protected reef, a domestic runway, and a row of large resorts — an atoll where the development arrived before the conservation did.
IFU
Airport
May – November
Best months
Raa is thin in the register and thick in resorts, which is an honest thing for a directory to say about it. One area is protected: Vilingili Thila, a shallow pinnacle declared in 1999, its top platform covered in soft coral and anemone and its walls dropping forty metres to the atoll floor. The ministry's description lists napoleon wrasse, snappers, barracuda and frequent sharks and mantas.
That is the whole of the protected estate here, and it sits against an atoll that carries several of the larger recent resort developments and a runway at Ifuru. The contrast is the point rather than a criticism: protection in the Maldives arrived atoll by atoll and in tranches, and Raa's tranche has not come.
For a visitor the practical consequence is small — one protected dive site does not mean one good one — but it does mean fewer places here carry the anchoring and fishing restrictions that a declared area brings with it.
Raa Atoll has one airport. The nearest to Velana is Ifuru Airport on Ifuru, 178 km north of it. The runway takes turboprops rather than jets, so every arrival connects through Malé or comes by seaplane.
Ifuru Airport is in the atoll and takes turboprops, so a domestic flight and a speedboat is the usual route and is not bound by daylight. Seaplane from Velana is the alternative. Seaplanes fly between sunrise and sunset only, and the operator asks guests who want to reach the resort the same day to be in the Maldives by 15:30.
A huge shallow pinnacle, which able to explore ½ on a dive. The either end of the pinnacle goes slope and side wall a drop of down to the atoll bed 120ft/40 meter. Fully live soft corals on the top platen and entire platen is a field of Anemone in variety. Side wall full covered with patch corals, gorgonian, black corals and spongy corals. Napoleon, Red Snappers, Sting Rays, Yellow Snappers, Barracuda, Trigger fish, Needle fish, Trumpet fish, parrot fish , dimsel and gobies. Sharks and mantas are frequently sighted.