Are Fuvahmulah’s Tiger Sharks Really Wild If Food Is Used?

Where the food comes from

It helps to start with honesty. The famous tiger shark dive at Fuvahmulah happens at a site called Tiger Harbour. The research team that studied these sharks for seven years explains that after the harbour was built in 2004, fish waste started to pile up in the surrounding area, and that the site has been used for tiger shark diving since 2017. Fish heads, guts and bones from the island's tuna fishery are thrown out there every day, all year.

Between December 2016 and September 2023, the same team identified 239 individual tiger sharks, using photo identification and laser photogrammetry. They describe it as, as far as they know, the largest documented number of individual tiger sharks in one small, defined area. About 84.5% of them were female. They are also clear about the reason: the large number of tiger sharks at Fuvahmulah "is likely driven by the daily, year-round provisioning activities". So yes, food is part of this story, and it would be wrong to pretend otherwise. What divers really want to know is what that food does, and does not do, to the sharks.

What does "wild" look like for a tiger shark?

A wild animal decides where it goes, what it eats most of the time, when it breeds and when it leaves. On those points, the Fuvahmulah data are quite reassuring. Adult females spent an average of 60.7 days around the island and were then away for an average of 110.4 days. The researchers think these long absences are likely due to far-ranging migrations, for feeding or for reproduction, and they say openly that nobody knows where the sharks go.

The sharks also keep breeding on their own rhythm. The team documented 54 pregnancies in 39 individual females, and the timing fits a cycle of roughly two years. We explain this in more detail in why so many of Fuvahmulah's tiger sharks are female, and you can read about the species on our tiger shark Atlas page.

So the picture is not of a shark that gave up its ocean life for an easy meal. It is of a far-travelling animal that includes this harbour in a much bigger life, for weeks at a time, and then leaves again.

What other feeding sites teach us

Fuvahmulah is not the only place where this question has been asked. At Tiger Beach in the Bahamas, where tiger sharks are also attracted with food for divers, scientists put satellite tags on female tiger sharks and compared them with tiger sharks tagged in Florida, where there is no such tourism. The Tiger Beach sharks did not stay close to the dive site. Some made very long migrations, and the authors concluded that, over large distances and long periods, the tracking data did not show the behaviour changes many people feared.

The same authors added an important warning. The effects of feeding for tourism are likely to depend on the scale, the site and the species, so their result should not simply be copied to other places. A broader review of studies on sharks and rays at feeding sites found that the most commonly described change is in the animals' local movement patterns. It suggested these changes can spread to group and community level, and even to the animals' health and their behaviour towards people.

A third large review took a balanced view. It concluded that, under the right conditions and done in a careful, responsible way, shark diving can give a net conservation benefit for some species. We look at the wider debate in baited shark dives: ethics and evidence.

What we still do not know

Honest answers include the gaps. Nobody yet knows where Fuvahmulah's sharks go when they leave, or where they give birth. The Bahamas tracking looked at large scales, so it cannot tell us how the harbour changes the sharks' daily behaviour around the island itself. The Fuvahmulah researchers also suggest that pregnant females may use the island partly for the year-round warm water and partly "to access low-effort food". How a diet that includes fish waste affects their long-term health has not been measured.

So our answer to the title is simple. Fuvahmulah's tiger sharks are wild animals living in a place that people have changed. They travel far, breed on their own cycle and leave for months, but at the harbour they meet a food source that humans created. Both things are true at the same time, and that is exactly why good rules matter.

The ethical layer: food, rules and the law

The same 2024 study raised a clear concern. At the time, shark provisioning and diving at Fuvahmulah were unregulated, with no official national guidelines, and the authors warned this could threaten both the sharks' welfare and the long-term future of the tourism itself. Since then, through the Ocean Country Partnership Programme, whose documents are published by the UK's JNCC, four shark-diving codes of conduct were developed in 2024 and 2025 with the local dive community. One is for thresher sharks, one for other predatory sharks, and two for the provisioned tiger sharks at Tiger Harbour, one written for divers and one for guides.

The codes themselves note something many visitors do not know: the Maldives Diving Regulation, which comes from the Tourism Act (No. 2/99), prohibits the feeding of sharks. How that rule sits next to a harbour where fishery waste is thrown out every day is exactly the kind of grey zone we want guests to understand, not hide from. Rules can also change, so please check the current regulations and the current version of the codes before you travel. Our piece on the Maldives shark rules and Fuvahmulah follows this more closely.

We could not confirm every detail of the codes (exact distances, group sizes, bait handling) from the published text for this update, so we do not quote numbers here. The codes are linked in the sources below, and a good operator will be happy to explain how they apply them.

How to experience it respectfully

This is guided scuba for certified, experienced divers, never a snorkel with tiger sharks. Choose a team that follows the codes and is happy to explain how it runs the dive, including what it does with bait. Once in the water, stay with your guide, keep your place, and let the sharks decide how close they come. No touching, no chasing, no flash in their eyes. Our guide on what scuba divers should know covers the practical side.

Wildlife encounters are unpredictable. Diving with tiger sharks should always follow local regulations and experienced professional guidance.

A boat day in the far south of the Maldives is long and sunny, and the small things matter. A roll-top dry bag keeps your phone and logbook dry between dives, and a mineral sunscreen for the surface intervals means fewer chemical UV filters going into the water.

If you would like to understand these sharks before you meet them, start with our Maldives Ocean Atlas. And if you are curious about the island itself, our Fuvahmulah page gathers what we know so far.

Questions people ask

Wildlife encounters are never guaranteed and never forced. Ocean Calling works only with vetted, ethical local operators, and every animal is free to approach, or not, entirely on its own terms.