So I struck lucky this week and found myself guiding a group of experienced divers on Monday. This usually (but not always) means that you are on the boat guiding all week. Sometimes the same boat, so I can unpack all my bits n pieces, leave them on board, so I hardly have to carry anything around when I go home in the evenings. Cool.. the wetsuit gets to dry out in the evenings too, instead of being bundled up in a box overnight.
So Monday was the local day, with buoyancy checks and two nice gentle dives to ease everyone into things. This week for a change, we decided to do the afternoon dive as a drift from Near Garden back towards Middle Garden (it is usually dived the other way around). Well what a lovely dive. At about 20M the plateau is dotted with coral pinnacles, adorned with biiiig gorgonian fans covered in glass fish. And then in the shallows back towards Middle Garden we got the big fat puffer fish and hordes of fusiliers.. very nice.
The next day was Tiran, sadly not a flat enough day to head around the back of Jackson, so hammerheads were off the menu, however we had a lovely time and a big turtle on the southern garden of Thomas in the morning, and had Jackson garden all to ourselves on the second dive. Again this was heaving with fish. Sometimes there are so many fish there, that it almost feels overcrowded. The current was very kind and allowed us to bimble about on the coral garden for ages, which was lovely. Our last dive was on the back of Woodhouse reef where we got our favourite baby white tip reef shark in one of the caves… again very cuuute.
Today we were off to the wreck of the Dunraven.. my favourite day out. The Dunraven is a nice easy dive, especially good for those who have never been in a wreck before, and it sits on reef, so there is still plenty to see in the shallows at the end.
We dived Shark n Yolande reefs first and landed smack bang in the middle of the wall of snapper fish… lovely! We hung there admiring the crowds of snappers, then bat fish a little deeper, then unicorn fish a little deeper than that.. We then drifted with the current across the front of the reef… Lovely lovely dive.. although we didn’t see the barracuda or shark.. but never mind. We had napoleon wrasse, and yet more hordes of fish as we reached the front of the Yolande reef. Finally a turtle greeted us on the safety stop.
We saw quite a few battle worn, scarred fish today.. a few with big teeth marks on their side, and a huge napoleon with a big bit of flesh missing.. eeew. Just makes you wonder what big stuff is out there…
The Dunraven was good as always… although I had to ascend with a guest low on air before I got the chance to find any of the infamous stone fish dotted along the reef at the end of the dive. I did get to find a small scorpion fish though that was cute and we got several morays. Very cool.
Our last dive was on Ras Za’atar and what a great dive that was. We did it in reverse starting inside the big bay and working our way out towards the headland. As we came around the corner there were soo many feeding fish.. we had big tuna, small tuna, jackfish, trevallies, it was all going on. And.. to cap it all we came across a whole bundle of masked puffer fish! About 20 of them all in a huddle bimbling towards us all looking a bit confused. This happens only once a year. For about a week they start shoaling… and it just looks soo cool when you see a horde coming your way. They get all confused as you cross their path, lose track a touch and then regroup once you have passed them by, funny.>br>
Lovely day out
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