http://passion2luxury.blogspot.com/2013/02/the-residence-maldives.html

Both pictures illustrate how the atolls are completely surrounded by coral reefs.

Maldives is a group of islands that sit off the coast of India at 3° 15' N 73° 00' E. Although there are twenty-six distinct atolls in Maldives (all of which have twenty to sixty inhabited and uninhabited islands) the total land area of the republic is only about 300 km squared, or about 1.7 x the size of Washington D.C. Maldives bisects the Indian Ocean and the Arabian Sea and sits on top of a submarine ridge that is approximately 963 km long running North to South (which suggests the original hotspot is in the North). The ridge was cause by a divergent plate, or sea floor spreading. This is to say that there is a magma hotspot in the asthenosphere which funnels, then fans out in the upper half of the lithosphere until it breaks through the oceanic crust. This creates a rift zone and spreads the ocean floor creating a raised ridge on each side of the rift zone. In the case of Maldives, the highest point the ridge rises is 2.4 meters making Maldives the flattest country in the world or the country with the lowest high point. The Mid-Atlantic ridge in which Maldives is situated consists of coral reefs made from calcium carbonate secreted by corals and sand bars. According to Darwin, coral reefs start to form after the oceanic ridge is no longer active (with respect to being located on a hotspot) and the coral reef creates a fringing ring around the island. A fringing reef is characterized by a shallow or nonexistence back reef. As the decay of the island continues, the fringing reef becomes a barrier reef with a larger and deeper lagoon within the boundaries. In the end, the island sinks below, or in Maldives case, nearly below, sea level and the barrier reef becomes an atoll completely encasing the lagoon. An atoll then, as all the islands in Maldives are considered to be atolls, is a lagoon island. In other words, the reef creates a ring-shaped coral growth that circles a lagoon either partials or completely.

http://news.nationalpost.com/2013/02/27/15-year-old-girl-in-the-maldives-sentenced-to-100-lashes-for-premarital-sex/

(Ignore the story that goes along with this picture.  There are many social injustices that will be addressed when I get to the hazards that threaten the long term existence of Maldives.)