Every so often you come across a sight underwater that just takes your breath away. Here are some photos of the most amazing collection of anemones I’ve ever seen.

The site is known as Anemone Thila, from one of the northern atolls in the Maldives. A “thila” is the local name for shallow reefs that are roughly fifteen meters or so underneath the surface.

This thila was just barely visible as a blueish structure from the boat and as I dove down, I could see the mantles of the Heteractis magnifica ‘nems. The weather was quite poor, so the animals had partially closed up, thus revealing the wide variation in their mantle colors.

Amphiprion clarkii

As you can see, there are literally hundreds of individuals packed into quite a small area. In fact, I have never seen such a high density of anemones. I can only assume that the conditions found here are just right; an anemone ‘Goldilocks zone’ to steal an analogy.

A. nigripes

As you can see, if you look closely, fish life is quite common here. There are clowns of course, which have the rare ability to travel quite far and wide amongst the anemones, though I witnessed several pairs that were quite definitely defending their own ‘nem.