Beach Loving

The Maldives is a country comprising of hundreds of tiny little islands, each of these islands is at least partially, or in our case completely surrounded by a beautiful white sandy beach. The islands are so small and there are so many of them that I would be willing to bet that the Maldives has one of the highest beach-to-land ratios in the world. I am a devout lover of beaches. Pebbly ones, sandy ones, black ones, white ones, big ones and small ones, I love them all. The Scottish town of St Andrews where I studied marine biology for four years has one of the most famous beaches in Britain, mostly thanks to the iconic title scene of chariots of fire. While I was a student, there was a daily attempt to retrace the steps of the Olympic hopefuls running in the movie, but as is fairly obvious from my less than Olympic physique I was never very successful. The tendency was to start off on an invigorating run, which usually turned into an impromptu marine biological study of the exciting things washed up on the high tide line. I am easily distracted in the face of physical excursion.

Every beach tells a story and every beach has the capacity to deliver something exciting, be it a message in a bottle from a shipwrecked pirate, a beautiful shell or a scuttling crab. Best of all, each beach will replenish its bounty twice a day. The Hadahaa beach is no exception and full of treasures, fragments of coral skeletons, shells housing shy hermit crabs and the buoyant seeds from hopeful native plants. If you take a walk along the beach at dusk you'll see hoards of ghost crabs diving for cover as you stroll along, chasing the ghost crabs is on my list of favourite guilty pleasures.

Shells are a favourite for many beach goers, prized for millennia, the Maldives historically made their mark on the international community by providing most of the world’s supply of money cowries, a little shell used as currency all over the world for thousands of years. Collecting beautiful and exotic shells has been popular with the well-travelled for generations, but as with so many natural resources, things have started to get a little out of hand. The demand for shells and shell products has ballooned out of control, so much so that the Maldivian government has had to ban the export of shells or coral. Both big and small, shells can fetch a high price, so understandably, people all over the world, trying to make a living, are venturing onto the reef to forage for shells whilst their creators are still alive, which can be extremely detrimental to the finely balanced ecosystem.


Molluscs are important members of the food chain. Most marine snails feed on algae, like sheep in a meadow; they graze on the plants, helping to control their habit of reproducing exponentially and overgrowing the coral.


The Triton, a huge carnivorous snail, inside a spectacular and especially prized shell, is practically the only predator of the crown of thorns starfish. The bad boy in the starfish world, it has an impressive armoury of poisonous spines, they eat 16 m² of coral each per year, and have a tendency of breeding rapidly forming herds which sweep over the reef in terrifying coral chomping herds leaving nothing but rubble in their wake. The decline in the number of Tritons has led to Crown of Thorns starfish becoming a serious coral destroying force in much of the Indo-Pacific.

So although collecting shells that have died naturally and can be found washed up on the beach is not directly damaging to the environment, I think its sensible that the government has taken the all or nothing approach to protect the animals that make beautiful shells. My suggestion to our guests is to enjoy their beach finds while they are on the island, take lots of lovely photos, and return their collections to the beach when it's time to go home.

Hadahaa island and our beautiful beach