|
Well the shortie worked… I was warm!!! And it was lovely to be in the sea without being totally wrapped in neoprene. That’ll be me in shorts for the rest of the summer I think, great stuff. Well, I shouldn’t be surprised look how hot it was on land today:
It is no surprise I got 28ºC on the dive (helped a little by the fact that I was shallow and I was in the bay, which is also warmer than anywhere else… hehe. |
|
|
Funny, another day, and I have another DSD session to do. Yesterday I had just one lady, who very bravely made it to two and a half metres (quite an achievement considering she never likes to put her face underwater even in the swimming pool). Today I had a little group of four divers wanting to give it all a go. And likewise they too did really well, this time coming down to 8 metres and getting to see a fair bit of reef out there. We found Nemo (for some reason in this particular area of the beach, they are more chocolate brown than orange!) along with many other fish, including a whole pride of lion fish lounging in the shadows of some coral reef. A nice day was had by all. Finally the sea is warming up too!!! Woo hoo! I got 27º on my computer today, so think I am going to brave the shortie tomorrow.. Oooo. And I am now due to complete the Open Water course that one of my Scuba Diver students has decided to complete. Cool. |
|
|
This week, I seem to be doing the rounds on the DSD rota. Certainly making up for lost time. But.. the good thing is that the water is finally warming up!!! Yes I got 27ºC on my computer yesterday! Woo Hoo, and I was not cold at all. About time too, we area almost in July! We also have a new confined area off the beach, which means that we can now use the bit of water very close to our dive centre (we used to have to trudge along the beach to the Red Sea College area which was quite hard work for all involved). It is also nice to know that even when you are doing your open water dives there, for the skills part of the dive, there is no risk of boats trundling over your head (phew!). The dive itself is quite cool. You have a large shallow area where skills can be done, and even a little section of reef at 2M which you can visit if people have problems going any deeper. Also if you can get deeper, there is some really quite good stuff to see, a whole field of eels snaking out of the sand, several coral heads all containing a few lionfish and their fair share of other bits n bobs. And finally as you approach the jetty (from the side that the boats don’t go, I hasten to add) the chains leading up from the bottom look quite spooky cool. We just need to clear up the litter a bit. I think a good clean up session is in order. Another good thing about doing Discover Scuba Diving is that you generally get to finish a little earlier than usual, giving me time to actually catch up here on DiveBunnie, or do the slightly less interesting, but equally important things like flat cleaning or washing… Oooo. |
|
|
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… |
|
|
Well it has been another week of plankton feeders! Not always for me, but the whole of Sharm has been whale shark crazy at the moment. I had another open water course so was quite limited with the sites that I could dive, with Pinky Wall sadly not being very suitable for Open Water students, certainly not on their actual course dives, with no places where skills can be done. So, we did 2 dives before lunch giving us the option to snorkel whilst the experienced divers dived the wall. Sadly we weren’t really very successful on this one. Never mind. Then we discovered a little sandy alcove with a plateau of shallow water perfect in which to perform the skills of Open Water dive #4 (I wouldn’t really take anyone to this site at any stage before that, as there is quite a slope once you get to swimming around. It is also a drift dive, so fine with a single student, or an advanced course, not so fun for a group of novice students). Again, sadly, whilst divers in the water before and after us got the pleasure of the company of whale sharks and massive manta rays, we were blessed with plenty of plankton. Mandy and I even jumped in again, whilst our now certified divers snorkelled the site, and the two of us sat in the blue, surrounded by plankton for 40 mins, with no joy. Then yesterday, having thought I might have made the wrong choice of going on a Tiran boat (the weather was bad) we were graced with another sighting, literally as we pulled out of the jetty! This wasn’t really close enough to warrant jumping in, as all we could make out was a light green smudge quite deep down. However five minutes later the boat stopped, and I could hear shouts of “whale shark!” again. Fins on, mask in hand, all I needed was the nod that it was safe to jump in, and in I went! I was alone with the shark for quite a while whilst the rest of the team got their stuff together and joined me. It was awesome!!!! We swam with this giant for 25 whole minutes until it decided to drop down too deep for us to duck dive. At one point I had over taken and could see right into the mouth, just before realising I was really right in the way and at risk of being bumped into!!! So scurried out of its way, and again realising I was a little close to the tail which could have whopped me a whopper. What a start to the day! I didn’t need to get in the water again really. I did do the last dive, as we had Jackson Reef to ourselves, which is always a rare thing. And again had a lovely dive, it is soooo pretty there. And we saw a couple of turtles which was great. What a day. |
|
|
So this last week has been a bit of a teaching fest with an advanced course, straight on to an Open Water referral which led on to another advanced course! But throughout all this we had some great dives, with a day in Ras Mo and one in Tiran during the advanced courses. We had some great stuff too, with the highlight being an enormous manta ray on one of our rarely dived local sites! Pinky’s Wall. This site was named after the lush covering of soft pink corals that used to adorn the wall of this dive, however sadly due to over diving, snorkelling and probably most damaging of all, hotel construction, the wall itself is now pretty barren. In fact it is a site I had never dived, simply because it was not worth it, so none of the boats ever went there. Well, this site has had a sudden replenishing of its popularity due to the arrival of a group of manta rays! They have been here for a few weeks now, so every afternoon, you will see three or four dive boats hanging around waiting to collect divers on a quest to see mantas. And when we dived it, we were not disappointed. We were graced by the presence of an enormous manta gliding below us. It was a good 4m across and barely moved, yet was flying so fast we couldn’t keep up. Amazing! Sadly after a few weeks of daily whale shark reports, I haven’t heard of any for a couple of days. On another note we are inches away from having our own range of funky DiveBunnie Tees available for retail! Those of you popping over to Sharm will be able to sport your own Sharm el Sheikh DB Tees, showing you don’t have to be dull to be a diver. |
|
|
Oh wow!!! My fun diving day in Tiran turned out pretty fine in the end. I will skip straight to the end of the day first though, because I had the most wonderful experience of swimming with a whale shark!!!! We were on our way back from two lovely dives (had a biiiig eagle ray on one and on the second, we had Jackson reef to ourselves, which is quite a rarity in itself). As we passed Ras Nasrani, we got the shout from Tariq our skipper that there was a big shark ahead!! So out we all leapt to the bow to see whether it was actually a whale shark, and yes it was. Well that was our cue, back we ran to the dive deck, rummaged through all our neatly packed boxes for masks and fins etc and threw ourselves into the blue with the grace of a herd of elephants (hmmm cue reference to my previous career there!). And then our out-of-this-world experience began. Steve and I basically flanked this quite small (4M) whale shark and swam with it for around ten or fifteen minutes!! At one point I duck dived down beside it and it actually turned to face me, looked at me, and opened it’s mouth (was that a smile???). How beautiful it was. What a wonderful end to a wonderful day. |
|
|
Who says that diving off the beach is dull?? We had a lovely dive yesterday off Naama beach which turned out to be a bit of a ray fest. At first there was nothing much to see, and I had begun to think that it was going to turn into a pretty dull dive. Next minute, I caught a glimpse of exactly what I was hoping for, an eagle ray. Two in fact, one of which was a good 2 or 3 metres from wing-tip to wing-tip. They are soooo graceful, what I can’t get over is the fact that they simply glide along with barely a flick of the wing, yet they can move! After that, anything was a bonus, but we got to see a nice crocodile fish and four bluespotted rays, so a very nice dive all around. I was really quite chuffed with my dive until I met up with the other local divers on the bus, all of whom had spent a good 10-15 minutes with a whale shark!! Wow!!! Tomorrow I’m off fun diving in Tiran, let’s see what that brings. |
|
|
So Jilly is about to join the big boys and is doing her cave diving course in Mexico… somewhere in the region of Cancun and Playa Del Carma to be precise. Renowned for it’s underwater cave systems and centoes, this is the Mecca of all cave divers. Basically the rock is kind of porus, think of a giant sponge, full of holes big enough for a person to swim through. Allow this giant sponge to gradually fill with water, and you have the cave systems of this area. Fantastic caves link up together accessible via inland pools known as cenotes. Here the land has dropped into the cave system and created a pool along the sides of which are entrances to the caves themselves. Because they were previously dry land, you even get trees under the water that have now been submerged. And in one of the caves you can see the remains of ancient civilisation, where residents way way back in prehistoric times have had campfires, the remains of which can still be seen during your dive. Jilly is keeping a diary of her time in Mexico, in particular her cave diving course, so you can follow her progress here. |
|
|
So off we went to the wreck today… and what a lovely flat day it was!! Seriously flat, so much so that the boats were able to moor up alongside each other. Those of you who have been to the Thistlegorm in the past will know what a rare event that is. Having said that the Thistlegorm prides itself on never having totally ideal conditions, so just to challenge us, there was the strongest current I have ever encountered!!! Literally, if you did not grab the rope the second you landed in the water, you would be whisked 10M away from the boat. The new moorings are actually visible from the surface (sitting at only 5m or so), but despite this, it was impossible to swim down to it against the current, so George had to swim down to the bottom for shelter against the current, swim around and then drift back onto the line in order to tie it. As we went down the line, we were like little flags hanging off it (not uncommon for here) and even the swim to the wreck itself was a bit daunting once we reached depth. Hmmm all good for a challenge I guess. As always of course, the wreck was particularly spectacular, with big tuna milling around and all the usual stuff to see (although the dives proved to be a little on the short side, due to the current). Back on the surface, the crew were there ready to help us the second our heads popped up, providing a drag line to the back of the boat. We had already watched a batch of divers floundering on the surface trying to get back to their boat after the dive. Ooo it was certainly interesting. Hehe. |
