Devilish Diving in Musandam - Greg Raglow begins AOW course on Octopus Rock, devil rays at Ras Morovi and Lima Headland

My logged dives #1456-1461

Friday, June 17 & Sat Jun 18, 2016

The first video shows a compilation of 3 dives done on June 17, 2016 on a liveaboard dhow arranged by Emirates Dive center. Bobbi and I were diving with Greg Raglow, who was starting his PADI advanced open water course with his deep dive on Octopus Rock. That's where I took the cameo of a batfish being cleaned and where we found our first school of jacks, which I placed at the end of the video, which actually ends with my shots of surfacing from our 2nd dive on Ras Morovi.

That next dive was on the channel side of the island just east of Ras Morovi. Here we saw the free-swimming moray, the big marble ray, and the devil rays covorting in the channel. I video'd the fish life on the south point as we were ascending and used it at the end of the video here, where it appears we were ending one long dive.

Our third dive was on Lima headland. I had requested Lima Rock but didn't mind once I was in the water since the headland was hopping. I put the videos for this dive at the start of the compilation because they show us descending in swim-throughs, followed just 10 minutes into the dive by at least 20 devil rays swooping onto the reef from deeper water. I chased them, caught up with them at 20 meters, and got them to pose for me for a few seconds until they worked out the guy in the back with the camera wasn't one of them :-) We saw the slipper lobster (cigale, or scyllarides latus) near the point at Lima headland.

The fourth dive of the day was a night dive. On the dive, I noticed that a lion fish was using my spot light to help him find his prey so I helped him find another morsel. The first was by chance, the second was on me :-)

Then next morning we made an early morning dive on the north side of Lima Rock. Bobbi and I were first in the water on the first speedboat to reach Lima Rock on Saturday, June 18, 2016, and we found the rays undisturbed and squids playing in the water.

The video below shows our 6th and last dive on Saturday, June 18, 2016. We put in around the Fishhead Rock caves area , and found the rays undisturbed even there (and left them that way). We also came on a small turtle.

In all these dives, I'm diving with favorite dive buddy Bobbi Stevens, on a trip arranged by former students Joe Broeker, Keith Kennetz, and Jon Nichols, pictured at the end of the Lima Rock dive, and on the boat at the end of the caves one.