Big stuff…
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Well it’s guiding this week, so off to Ras Katy first for a shake down dive with our guests. Things got off to a good start with plenty of stuff to see, even something I have never seen before! A fire clam. It looks like a small clam (funnily enough) covered with an orange anenome… hence the name fire I guess. It was quite cute, kind of dancing its way along the sandy bottom. We also got five blue spotted rays, three Napoleon wrasses and a free swimming moray eel on our safety stop, so all was quite cool. After an early lunch, we headed out to whale shark territory, Pinky’s Wall and Sodfa to look for some big boys. I have decided that if I am on the bow looking, they don’t turn up, because the second I went inside to make a phone call, they decided to show up. Once again I had to hang up on someone “sorry whale shark… bye!” before jumping in the water. This time we got about ten minutes with the beauty, I must find out how to tell if it’s a male or female. And all but three of the guests got a good chance to swim with it, so that was really cool. To see some pickies of what we have been swimming with, pop along to our facebook page. On the dive, my group didn’t get another sighting, but Mark’s did, just as they were heading to their safety stop, one decided to show up! Nice one. Thankfully we had decided to dive Sodfa which is the prettiest of the reefs along this stretch (none of them are particularly amazing), as it has a few pretty pinnacles on the headland. So at least we got the chance to bimble around and look at glass fish for a bit. Day two found us diving White Knight and second dive was Ras Bob to Nasrani drift… one of my favourite dive sites. Well during our very pretty dive, one of my divers points out to the blue. I look a little too far away at first and then adjust my focus to clap eyes on the biggest whale shark I have seen!!! I would say that the tail fin from tip to bottom was the same as my height!!! The beast just ambled past us on its way to eat more plankton as we screamed and whooped. Not such an easy thing for myself as I had lost my voice this week… it disappeared even further after this dive! We carried on to have a beautiful dive, as I always do on this site… it really is full of such pretty coral. As we called the boat, it looked like the Marie Celest… bereft of divers, only the skipper on board, ferrying the boat towards us! All the rest of the group were back in the water, snorkelling with another whale shark!!!! We did head back to Manta city (Pinky and Sodfa) and did get a turtle on our third dive, but no mantas. I am beginning to think the mantas have moved on. Day three was Tiran. But we have a new trip there for the summer. An early start with rib support… no not something you wear around your chest, a zodiac with our boat, so that we get a 95% chance of getting around the back of the reef on that first dive to look for hammer heads!!! (For those who have never been here, the North side of the Tiran reefs, is normally off limits due to the prevailing wind and swell preventing our dive boats from getting around there. However a rib changes things). So despite the bay playing its usual trick of appearing flat flat calm, we encounter huge winds and swell once we are out in open water and on our way North. Hmmm I know we have a rib, but this was rough. Several times the skipper had to cut the engine as we hit a particularly large swell. And we were on Seagull which is one of our larger boats and able to cope in pretty big water. Oooo. Because of the conditions, mooring up was a bit of a mare, and Mark and I both had slight reservations about going around the back even with the rib. Or was that just because we were so used to the conditions needing to be pretty flat? Anyway, we decided to give it a go. We always had the option to call the dive and head around the front of the reef instead. And… after a few minutes of heading round into the swell, we saw the rib turn around and plan B was put into action. Unfortunately, by the time we got in, the normal boats had started arriving, so the dive ended up being a bit on the busy side. Agghhh… not ideal. By noon, the wind had died a fraction, so we decided to give it another go. It was still pretty swelly, as we rode the waves round to the back of the Lara and dropped in. Because of the conditions, we had to drop and descend quite a way off the reef, right in the blue. Ooo. As we dropped, we could see Mark’s group still out there looking. It is amazing how your eyes can play tricks on you when you are doing this kind of dive. After a while of looking at nothing but blue stuff, you start to see odd shadows moving around, or weird shapes, all of which are nothing but your imagination. We sat there for quite a while, occasionally circling back in towards the reef a little, just so we didn’t lose complete sight of it. And then I got the 100 bar sign… Noooo! I signaled that we would just do another mini round out before heading back to the reef, and thank God I had done this, as two minutes later I spot a huge hammerhead. The big scout, gliding along not far from one of my divers. Having only one free hand (smb reel being in the other) I point and scream, jumping up and down (as much as you can whilst underwater!), but don’t actually make the shark signal, so at first am ignored!!!! Doh. Thankfully, the penny drops and all my guys get a good sighting of the big guy… yeee harrr! That is my cue to head back to the reef… my voice once again lost for sure! On our way back, a couple of my guys see another couple of hammer heads, so a great dive all around I feel. It was quite amazing whilst on the safety stop, looking up at the state of the surface. Seeing waves crashing on the reef above our heads was quite fantastic! In normal circumstances, without the rib, there would be no way that we could be in the water in these conditions. The pick up was interesting. We surfaced only just behind the first team, so had to wait on the surface whilst the rib went back to the boat, drop them off then come back again. I reckon this took a good 15 minutes. How tiny did I feel, five little dots and an smb floating up on the still 3m swell! We all kept close, with our eyes on the wreck of the Lara so we could gently fin away from the reef and not find ourselves washed up onto it. Ooo we could only see the boats moored up when a particularly big wave put us high enough to look over the rest of the swell! Finally the rib was back and we were able to off-load and get back on the boat. What a dive! For our last dive of the day, we did a gentle drift along Ras Ghamilla which we haven’t dived for a while what with all the whale shark action happening local, we have been heading back to Pinky’s wall for the last dive of the day, even on Tiran days. But this was perfect. A nice sandy plateau, dotted with pretty corals. A nice chill out for everyone after all that adrenaline of the morning. Sadly, whilst my lost voice started to come back, I started to feel totally crap by the next day, so ended up unable to dive for the rest of the week. Gutted… |