Fun diving with whale sharks and other impressive creatures in Musandam with Nomad Ocean Adventures

I've been doing a lot of diving lately but I've been working on an article for TESL-EJ which I just finished and this has put me behind  in my dive blogging. Meanwhile I've got videos still backlogged from the previous week's dive trip in May. Oon Friday / Saturday May 15 / 16 I conducted an advanced course on Dibba Rock at Blue Planet Diving.  I'm hoping to get these posts and videos up shortly, but for the record, these would be:

My logged dives #1365-1368

But this past weekend the diving was quite special, and with that article out of the way, I'm posting

May 15-16, 2015, my logged dives #1364-1367

This weekend I had long planned to conduct an open water course but one of the students had an ear problem that the doctor would not sign him off on, so both students postponed their course to June.

I went ahead to Dibba and crossed the border to the humble yet dynamic compound of Nomad Ocean Adventure. Happily and coincidentally, I chanced to meet some good friends there from Al Ain, divemaster David Muirhead, and experienced instructors Bruce Ora and Gerry McGuire, and I was invited onto their boat. We departed next day for Lima Rock, which we dived on both Friday and Saturday. There had been whale sharks spotted in the vicinity the past few weeks and when the whale sharks are around, there's always the chance we will see one. The visibility was as good as I've seen it for a long time. Check out this video:

This video is a compilation of a stunning dive conducted on Friday, when we swam with a whale shark, and one on Saturday where we saw an eagle ray but no whale sharks (though there was one seen that day nearer shore on the headland opposite Lima Rock, off Ras Hamra).  

Our first dive on Friday May 14 was on Ras Sanut, what we also call Wonderwall. On this day the visibility was remarkably good. The video starts with Gerry McGuire easing through the water with no wetsuit, and me in my 5 mm !!!, followed by his buddy Bruce Ora and then by my buddy, David Muirhead, who joined me in a selfie at the start of the dive. From there the diving was full of marine life, as can be seen from the video:

Below is the video from our dive on Octopus Rock May 15. Visibility was excellent and current benign. David Muirhead and I followed Bruce Ora and Gerry McGuire to the east of the rock down to where the seahorses were (or as we observed, the seahorse was). David and I worked our way back up to where Abdullah was taking photos of flatworms and nudibranchs (he'd found several in a 10 meter square area). We found lots of moray eels, and batfish being cleaned by their blue wrasse friends. The dominant fish here are the blue "red-tooth" triggers, but there are jacks schooling in shallow water near the top of the rock, and I ended my dive amidst a large school of beguiling batfish. See for yourself:

Fun Diving Musandam at Nomad Ocean Adventure: Lima Rock, Wonder Wall, Octopus Rock, and Morovi Island

My logged dives #1353-1356

Here are some videos from a pleasant dive weekend back on home turf, or waters, or whatever that stuff was, wth Nomad Ocean Adventure, the weekend of April 17-18, 2118. We went as a group comprising Nicki Blower, Chris Gawronski, Kelly Harris, Bobbi and I, and one of my open water students, Bonnie Swesey. We were possibly diving with Bonnie for the last time for a while, since she is heading off to a new life in Honduras, where the diving is superb (so we hope to visit her there one day).

It's always good to be back home with Nomad, good food and sound sleeping, especially when our responsibilities are nothng more than to conduct safe dives. Our sites and dive times were negotiable, no one telling us where to go or when to come up, and the last day I suggested to our Nomad Pro Cedrick that we do our last dive on the outside ocean side of Morovi Island, where currents can be interesting, but there's lots of blue coral and blue triggers on a 20 meter wall with no telling what's in the sand (and he agreed, so we got to choose a rarely dived site, and Cedrick seemed quite happy with the choice - he's working at Nomad temporarily, commissioned to paint a mural of a whale shark on one of the walls there). We didn't see much on the wall ourselves, but we certainly enjoyed these dive sites:

April 17 - 

• Dive 1 - North side of Lima Rock, decent vis and lots of interesting creatures there
• Dive 2 - Wonderwall (Ras Sanut) poor vis, chilly, and a couple of giant rays (worth seeing)

In the video posted here, all shots are taken on Lima Rock, except the video of the huge ray at Ras Sanut, in poor visibility

April 18 - 
Nicki was sick last day and we were joined on our dives by a lady from Finland, a petite (but tatooed) guard on the Ukraine / Russian border, down for a first visit to UAE, and discovering the diving is not bad here :-)

• Dive 1 - Octopus Rock, always a great dive, only a slight current, great vis, great fish life

• Dive 2 - Outer (east side) Morovi Island, good vis, tricky currents especially where we ended at the south corner, but a pretty dive. It's especially nice when you can move back north in the channel itself. We saw some baraccuda there today (they love current), and at other times rays, including eagle rays. But today the current prevented our northward progress and we had to end the dive on the corner.

Diving with Mermaids in Musandam, August 29-30, 2014

My logged dives #1300-1303

No one, not even me, seemed to notice that I made my 1300th logged dive with Bonnie Swesey, the kind lady who put Bobbi and I up, or put up with Bobbi and I, in her flat for Bobbi's last year teaching at ACS in Abu Dhabi while we both resided in Al Ain and Bobbi commuted occasionally, but not every  day, thanks to Bonnie's hospitality. In return I offered to help Bonnie get back into diving with an intensive refresher course. We didn't do an official course, I just took her diving, and by the end of it we had restored her to compos mentus with her basic diving skills.

Also in our group were my lovely wife Bobbi, our best dive buddy Nicki, and a newcomer to our team, Kelly. We dove for two weekend days, Friday and Saturday Aug 29-30 from Nomad Ocean Adventure in Dibba Oman, always a relaxing place to stay, eat, and check Facebook.

We joined with MSDT Rosien and two of her student divers, so our dive spots were conservative, but still enjoyable. Our first dive was at Ras Morovi where in the cove where we usually begin fishermen had strung a net right up against the reef so that Bonnie and I had to go over it. That was the easiest way without risking damaging it, pull it down to our level and then ease over it.  There is some tension between divers and fishermen. Nets on the reef are not good for it, and what's not good for the reef is not good for the fisheries. Still the fisherman has to feed his family, so despite the fact that fish are caught helplessly there, best not to interfere in the local economy, so we left the net alone. Bobbi and Nicki and Kelly were lagging behind Bonnie and I (we were going at Bonnie's pace to let her get comfortable) and  I'm not sure what they did at the net, but we didn't see them till after we had come to the surface. It was a pretty dive as usual. There is a cave at the start of the dive, an alcove really, that used to have a couple of crayfish in it, but then there was just one, and last few times I checked, none. Eaten I supposed, until on this  dive I found more big ones thriving in the rocks nearby. It's a pretty part of the dive, swirling with fish from the top of the reef down the wall to the blue. The video above begins with that view.

Our next dive was at Lima Rock, the  north side, which was calm relative to the south, which was getting swells. The north was calm enough for Rose's students, but she put us in with the usual warnings about currents at either end of the rock. We didn't see much on the dive (as I commented on our exit, which I put at the end of the video) but we did see the nudibranch there, and as we came to the eastern edge, we had some excitement as the current picked up. There is a point of no return there where you either go back or go with it. I was ahead of the group buddied with Bonnie. The others I thought were following but they went conservative and turned back. It wasn't a strong current, just a mild sweep toward the point, and with just Bonnie in tow it was easy to keep an eye on her. Often we find barracudas there, but not this time, not much to see on this trip. We hugged the reef as we went around the corner to where the wall begins to the west, but Bonnie was low on air and it's a sheer rock wall for 5 minutes, so I guided her through the gap back to the north side where we surfaced and picked up the others, as you see at the end of the video.

Next day the seas had calmed a lot though not enough for us to dive Lima Rock south with beginners, and maybe not that pleasant for experienced divers challenged by rolling seas. Many are susceptible to seasickness, so we dived the more peaceful Lima Headland and Ras Sanut on the way home. We saw rays in both places, cowtail or feathertail (is there a difference? we debated this over lunch on the boat). On Ras Lima Bobbi  called us all over to see a large coronet fish, and I found a large lionfish with whom I practiced buoyancy skills while I hovered next to him getting GoPro closeups. We saw a lot of crawfish as well and I ended the Ras Sanut dive at a shallow ledge where I found some crayfish and then panned to a swim-through where some batfish were sheltering. I swam through and on the other side found another crayfish. It's all on the film.

Not the best diving we've experienced here but good enough for a few video souvenirs. The weather was fine and sea temperatures amenable to shorties, though I was comfortable in 3 mm. It was great to get Bonnie back into diving and to dive with Nicki again and Kelly from ACS. Hope so see more of these people under water in the near future.

Started PADI o/w course with Tim Chambers in Musandam with Nomad, Feb 17, 2012

My logged dives #1110 - 1113
Tim certified Feb 21, 2012

Through the grapevine I got put on to the fact that Tim Chambers was looking for someone to teach him diving, I agreed so he was put in touch with me, and we decided that the Nomad 1800 dirham deal for certification in one weekend all dives, accommodation, and meals included, would suit him.  He had done the elearning and he lived not far out of my way home from work, and he had a pool at his compound, so it made sense for me to pile some gear in my car and swing by his place one day after work to meet him and relax after a long day in the office in at least one pool module to start off his course.  That module went so well that as long as we were there with air in the tanks, I suggested we do the second one, which also went smoothly.

That put us two modules up on the course when we arrived at Nomad Thursday night.  Traffic was bad out of Abu Dhabi and we were delayed in creeping jams, so when we arrived we found our dinner waiting for us, the other half dozen guests having eaten already, Nomad uncharacteristically quiet, and even Ivor having gone to bed, having exhausted all his jokes for a change.

Tim and I agreed to meet at 7:30 next morning back at the hot water fountain for a cup of Nescafe before kitting up for the pool.  We had only module 3 to do, which we got through quickly since the pool thermometer showed 16 degrees, no urge to linger there.  But it wasn't actually that bad in 5 mm wetsuits and when Suzanne, one of the other instructors who would be diving on our boat with us, showed up with students at around 9:00 or so, we decided to push ahead with module 4 rather than sit around waiting on them.  It was very relaxing having got two modules out of the way before arrival at Nomad that weekend, not the usual rush to complete the minimum 3 modules before our first two ocean dives Friday morning.

We were all aboard the boat by 11 in good order, about a dozen of us, Aliona in charge, with intent to dive Ras Morovi and Ras Sanoot.  However, seas were rough and dark skies loomed offshore; Ivor said later he'd seen a water spout out there.  We were getting spray aboard increasingly as we neared Lima Rock, and it was clear that all the south and east facing rock faces, including Ras Sanoot (Wonder Wall) were taking crashing waves. At least it was warmer than the previous month.  I didn't put on anything over my t-shirt on the trip out until it started getting soaked, and I was warm enough even then in damp flannel and fleece.  We were glad to arrive finally in the sheltered bay of Ras Morovi, having been batted about for the past hour and rinsed with sea spray.

Aliona had no students and she invited Bobbi to accompany her to see the barracuda.  I think I know where they are now, to the right or west of the tongue starting south underwater, not on the east side as I'd presumed last time with Nicki and Luke.  But Tim and I down for his first dive ever were not going so deep as to see them.  We took our time entering the water and meandered out into the sand looking for rays, found none, and headed back to the picturesque reef at Ras Morovi, teeming with snappers and blue tang surgeon fish.  I pointed out bream and ten minutes into the dive we came upon a school of batfish at a cleaning station where one of them was getting a makeover by an accommodating wrasse.  We found a few eels, including a small honeycomb moray, and in the sponge coral past the saddle heading north, we came on a turtle who seemed not to mind that we came to watch him munch on whatever it was he was eating.  We also found a huge crayfish under a rock ledge relying on armor for protection, as he was fully exposed in my torch beam and had he been a sea cucumber I could have reached in and grabbed him.  But then had he been a cucumber, I wouldn't have bothered.

Tim did well on his first dive and was properly amazed by it all, but we lasted only 31 minutes plus a 3 minute safety stop before having to return to the surface.  This would improve with better buoyancy which for Tim had been quite good for a first time diver, and he certainly enjoyed it.

The weather was turning for the worse and we encountered light rain as we motored across the bay to the shelter of the Ras Lima headland.  There we found a massive red tide.  We had lunch and then motored around looking for an end to it, but eventually decided to return to Ras Morovi, the only sheltered sea cove in the region with known decent visibility.

We did our second dive there.  This was a skills dive for Tim.  We started on a surface compass heading and did snorkel / regulator exchanges over to shallow water, then descended on a patch of raspberry coral.  I stopped short of the coral and took Tim through the module 2 skill set in the sand there. At the deep side of the coral patch we found a rope attached to a metal object and decided to use that for our controlled emergency swimming ascent practice.  Returning to the depths we used the rope as a landmark to do a compass heading to the south and return to the north, Tim spot on.  All that out of the way we went for a dive in a westerly direction, a direction I've not dived before, and we found rock walls there, looking nice with trigger fish and some lion fish in the sand. We followed our noses down to 16 meters before returning the way we had come, as we'd been asked to meet back in the cove where we'd started.  We found a honeycomb moray and near the raspberry patch a huge coelenterate the size of a basketball with pulsing tentacles and a floater chewed into by turtles.  That was interesting to watch for a while.  This dive went for 47 minutes, and we arrived at the surface just in time to see the boat round the point to the east so we had to wait ten or 15 min for it to return.  Tim did his tired diver tows while we waited.

That night back at Nomad Ivor informed us that dives next day were cancelled so Tim and I decided to get our last pool module out of the way before dinner and see if we could get in any shore diving next day at Freestyle where they have a breakwater that might have offered some protection.  But in the morning we found seas raging with white water waves all up and down the coast.  No boats were going anywhere that day.  We went over to Freestyle but found it deserted and no chance of a shore dive in the cauldron the sea had become.  We drove back over into Oman and headed up Wadi Bih and tried to gate crash the road to Zighy Beach, but this exclusive hotel had a no riffraff rule and somehow we didn't pass muster and without a booking they wouldn't let us in the gate.  I'm not sure I'd want a booking at that resort though it's reputed to be nice (no riffraff there I hear :-)

Anyway we gave up, mission unaccomplished, all we could do was head back to Abu Dhabi and hope to regroup later to complete Tim's last two dives of his course.

----------------------------------------

Four days later, we finished the job.  We used a stretch of beach opposite the highway from Ikea on Yas Island, Abu Dhabi, and got wet in about 8 meters of water with a clay bottom that stuck to my dive boots.  It was cold and windy with white horses on the water, but actually warmer in the water (at least with 5 mm wetsuit) despite its being about 21 degrees.  We did two dives of about 15-20 minutes each.  On one of them I saw a feather-like tail in the sand and saw the body of a small stingray bolt just as we got in sight of it, leaving a cloud of silt to conceal its exit.  Apart from that we found not much apart from a few rocks, not many fish.  Tim ran through his remaining skills and we got him certified.

Started PADI Advanced o/w course with Luke Ingles in Musandam with Nomad, Jan 20, 2012

My logged dives #1105-1106


It was just Luke and I, Luke driving, as we set out on Maroor Road in Abu Dhabi just before 7 a.m. and arrived at Nomad Ocean Adventure just after 10 a.m.  We got Luke a 5 mm wetsuit and before heading for the harbor we plotted a multilevel profile on the giant presentation wheel at NOA which Luke would execute on his first advanced deep dive.

The profile was

• 27 meters for 20 minutes
• 18 meters for 10 minutes
• 18 meters for 40 minutes is allowed, but we decided to limit ourselves to 20 min at 12 meters
  which would put us in W pressure group

In the event, we didn't have enough air for a 50 min dive including some time at 27 meters, and we came up from the first dive at 40 minutes, or 43 including the safety stop at 5 meters. But since we didn't have a wheel with us and couldn't recalculate, we went with the conservative measure and used that to calculate how long we could stay down on our next dive.  If we had a 2 hour surface interval and limited our next dive to 16 meters we would have 59 min dive time. As it turned out we went down with only 1:45 min surface interval which I realized as we were descending on the second dive.  But we were carrying tables with us and were able to recalculate as we descended that after surfacing from a first dive as W divers, with a 1:45 min surface interval, we would be ok at 16 meters with 55 min dive time.

I'm really cheeved at PADI for discontinuing production of the wheel, a remarkably versatile instrument for such situations.  The new electronic planner can't be taken underwater so it's impossible for beginners to recalculate on the fly underwater unless they are carrying computers, in which case no recalculations necessary. But there is great value I think in knowing how close you are to DCS, and in being able to visualize that, whether you have a computer or not.  Of course my computer was mostly showing 99 minutes of no-deco time on these dives, but if you're diving tables, then an electronic dive planner that can't be taken with you in the water is a really poor replacement for tables and wheels.

So much for the technicalities of our diving.  The dives themselves were not great but were pleasant and replete with fish.  On the first dive at Ras Sarkan we saw a large cow-tail ray trying to hide out in the sand.  The others on the boat saw turtles.  On the second dive at Lima Rock we saw not much more than a moray eel plus the other fish you normally see there, triggers, batfish, snappers, trevali, etc.  Vis wasn't great, the water was cool, but with 5 mm wetsuits we were fine. It was much colder up on the boat.

Seas were calm but skies were overcast.  That night it rained, and it was drizzling in the morning so the gear we cleaned and left out to dry stayed wet.  I had an email from Freestyle telling me they had cancelled their Inchcape trip for Saturday due to expected bad weather.  We assumed the UAE coast guard had restricted boating.  The Omanis don't impose such controls for Musandam but Nomad weren't going out either, except maybe to the caves, so Luke and I decided to make the best of a less than perfect situation and get home and do things we needed to get done back in the real world.  We re-booked our dives for the following weekend and headed back to Abu Dhabi.

To be continued (next week) ... 

Certified Tim and Laura Charge with Nomad Ocean Adventure December 8 thru 10, 2011

My logged dives #1101-1104

We had another lovely weekend in the company of our friends at Nomad Ocean Adventure this weekend. The occasion was the training of Laura and Tim Charge, recommended to me by Graham Mullen through the grapevine at the British Embassy. Laura and Tim agreed to do the elearning online and meet me at NOA on Thursday. Bobbi and I managed to get there by around 7:30 pm even though I had to go back to town and pick up my passport (new 3-year UAE visa!) and Bobbi who was able to get off work before 4 pm. We had to leave Nicki behind though, we would have arrived in Dibba too late for pool training, but she came up with Andy the next morning.

Laura and Tim had completed their test and form filling by the time I got there, so we were able to get confined water dive #1 done in the NOA pool Thu evening, before sitting down to a delicious meal of Mauritian cuisine. A winter chill has touched the evenings and mornings in the UAE and we had to get up at 7 am to do modules 2 and 3 in the icy pool, so we were tired before getting down to the harbor and motoring out to the dive sites mid-Musandam.

December 9 we went to Lima Rock and Ras Lima with Theo in charge. Vis was poor in both places. At Lima Rock we got our team into the water for what was actually my students' second time ever on Scuba since they had done a discover scuba course previously in Malaysia. Still they were well aware of their limitations. Plus to counter the cold 17 degrees in the pool and 24 degrees in the ocean, Laura and Bobbi and I all had 5 mm wetsuits which are like balloons in shallow depth, requiring more than the usual degree of buoyancy control, so the new divers were going up and down between our max depth at 16 meters and the surface whenever I led the dive shallow. Still we saw batfish being cleaned by blue wrasse, a copious variety of trigger fish, morays, and many more of the usual fish suspects. It was not an exciting dive for Bobbi and Nicki and I but Laura and Tim seemed to enjoy it. Their air lasted not bad for new divers, around 42 minutes, and when I took them up to the boat, Bobbi and Nicki waited for me below, since we three still had 100 bar. As I was delivering my student divers back onto the boat at the surface Theo warned me about a down current to the west of Lima Rock, the direction we were headed, and when I submerged I found Nicki and Bobbi not below me where I had left them but at the edge of my vis in that westerly direction. I was able to call them over and get them headed back to the east, the way we had come. Thus we dived another quarter hour without incident, apart from Nicki finding a nudibranch on a rock that I wouldn't have seen had I looked straight at it for 5 min, but she's good at spotting small stuff in busy backgrounds. Back on the surface, we heard tales of divers who had been swept deep by that swift westward down current, so lucky we turned back.

We motored over to Ras Lima for the surface interval and had lunch moving in and out of sunshine as the boat drifted into the shadow of the headland, and divers complained of cold and the boatmen moved out into the sun again. We did our dive from where we were on the headland. Bobbi and Nicki went on together and I took Laura and Tim to do some surface interval skills but conditions weren't right, there were stingers in the water, and we didn't accomplish them at the beginning of the dive. So we went underwater and did the dive #2 skill set, and then dived in shadow and through algae bloom in kind of dreary conditions, limiting ourselves to 14 meters. We had another 45 minute dive, relaxing, and with much better buoyancy control from Tim and Laura. When we surfaced the boat was nowhere to be seen. Conditions were better though, so we completed our surface skills there.

The boat ride home was cold so when we arrived back at our accommodation we just wanted hot showers and cold drinks, and then another great meal at NOA. There was a french group there who had been diving all week from Chris's place, showing slides each evening of what they had seen that day, and today one of them had promised photos of a 'petit poisson' which turned out to be a whale shark that just two of them had seen and photographed that day at Octopus Rock (not a good place to take beginners unfortunately).

The next morning we started again at 7 am, a lie in for Bobbi and I these days, with Laura and Tim doing much better in the pool than previously, completing the last two modules well before 10 am. An hour and a half later (after Pascal showed us where they hide the espresso machine at NOA) we were motoring off toward Lima Rock on an exceptionally lovely morning. Aliona was in charge of the diving for the day. The sea was calm and glassy, and we could see Lima Rock from just out of Dibba, the sky was so clear. Usually it's too hazy to see it before we reach Fishhead Rock.

We weren't actually going to Lima Rock through. We had mostly students and novices on board so we agreed to start in the protected bay on Ras Morovi. Aliona was proposing to lead the advanced divers out to a place where barracudas are almost always seen. I didn't know that spot and offered to take my students there by following Aliona as far as 18 meters. Most of the divers wanted to do something similar so they all went in the water together. Nicki and Bobb were in that group but delayed descent waiting for Tim and Laura and I, who were last in the water. When we were in position at the surface they had all gone down and we were set to follow, but we had adjusted weights in the pool that morning and despite best guesses for needs for an ocean dive. Laura was underweighted, and since the boat was right there and we hadn't descended yet, I surfaced and got 4 more kilos from the boat, stuck 3 in my pocket weight belt, and gave one to Laura, which made her descend perfaectly, but by then the divers had all gone. So we set out on our own dive.

It was a nice one and the best of the course. The coral at that spot is lovely, green whips, cabbage coral, purple soft corals, green tree coral, and coral boulders, all swarming with fish, triggers, big pufferes, surgeon tangs. I led into the sand looking for rays but turned back when we reached 18 meters. We continued a very pleasant dive, rounding the far underwater mountain, heading back to the north, and encountered Nicki, Bobbi, and Pascal, who were chasing a moses sole (flounder). I noticed then that my divers had gone down to nearly 50 bar, so I conducted them up the reef into the cabbage coral patch, sometimes a good place to see turtles. They controlled buoyancy sufficiently to make a safety stop there, and then I had them ascend on alternate air source. Their dive time was 31 minutes, 34 with the safety stop.

I still had 100 bar so I went back down to look for Bobbi and Nicki. On this foray I saw a turtle, and after I'd caught up with Nicki and Pascall, I spotted a scorpion fish hidden in the coral. Pascal photographed it and we all got a very close look..

Back on the boat, we had lunch against a setting of karst rocks rising from placid water, skies of blue, and warm sunshine to counter the chilly breezes. Winters in UAE can be quite pleasant.

We planned a last dive at Ras Sanut (Wonderwall) utilizing Nicki as divemaster. Nicki would go in first with her reel and set me up a line for CESA. Bobbi joined her at the surface and the students and I followed. I left Tim to do cramp removal, and weight and BCD replacement at the surface with Nicki while I took Laura down for her CESA. She was having ear problems and breathed on the ascent as often it happens that students need to repeat the exercise. She didn't want to do it right away because she seemed slightly overweighted. She was on her third BCD from NOA. All of them leaked and this one didn't support her properly at the surface, which contributed to her distress. So she gave her weight belt to Nicki to remove a weight while I took Tim down.

It wasn't that nice a dive actually. The algae was blocking out most of the light and there wasn't anything interesting to see apart from a moray eel. My students completed all their skills for dive number 4, Laura led us in a compass heading over the sand and back, and we carried on for half an hour underwater before people got cold and tired. When we surfaced we found we were last on the boat, so it was time to motor home to port, and from there drive 4 hours to reach our flat in Abu Dhabi, have dinner, and get 5 hours of solid sleep before crawling out of bed at 5 in the morning and head for work.

Bobbi and Vance fun diving in Musandam, Oman: Fanaku, Musandam Island, Ras Sarkan, Ras Morovi, Lima Rock, Sept 9-10, 2011

My logged dives #1077-1080

We had a great weekend diving with our good friends at Nomad Ocean Adventure. We had been planning a trip to the far north of Musandam for weeks beforehand, to have three dives, starting Friday at Fanaku or Kachelu, and then doing two more dives as we worked our way back down the coast toward home port. This was set to start at around 8 a.m. Friday so we'd be driving down on Thursday. As soon as people could get home from work Thursday evening, Bobbi and I started collecting them. Nicki rode with us in our car and we met Gillian at the Club entrance for the 3-hour drive across the UAE to Dibba on the east coast, arriving over the Oman border just in time for a dinner of baked chicken served at Nomad. After a bit of conviviality with our friends we went to bed and slept very soundly till time to grab coffee and a croissant and meet at the harbor for our three-dive day.

We set off with 12 divers and 36 tanks. Divers included Bobbi, and I, Nicki, Ian Wing, Daniel and Randa, Gillian Hendrie, Jonathan Seda, Bob, April, and Lucy and Sara just there for the day. Sea conditions were a little bumpy on our bums as we endured the hour and a half up the pristine coast of Musandam till we finally shot the gap between the mainland and Musandam Island and steamed ahead to Fanaku sitting all on its own just to the west of smaller Kachelu. We pulled alongside the east side and while Ivor was giving the briefing the boat was swept the length of the island, so we decided that divng there was maybe not that good an idea. So we swung around to the calmer west side and selected a likely spot at the northwest point for an entry. Here the current was mild and we had no problem entering the water and forming into buddy teams before descending in our groups.

Diving conditions were excellent all weekend. First of all, it was a relatively warm 27 degrees in the water with cooler temperatures in thermoclines at depth. I was wearing my thin lycra under my three mm overalls, plus long-sleeve top to complete the combo, for a total of 6.5 mm on my torso, but it was warm, so for the next dive I replaced the 3 mm top for a half mm rash vest, and the following day I skipped the lycra and just wore the combo. I was warm at the surface but glad I had it at depth. Bobbi started off wearing her 5 mm wetsuit but had changed that for 3 mm the following day. And secondly, the visibility was excellent, 15, maybe 20 meters in some places, and no less than 10 meters in case silt was at all present.

Depths in these islands are as you like them. Bobbi and I were diving in a group with Nicki keeping an eye on Gillian. Bobbi and I went ahead and down and stopped short at 30 meters with no end to the wall in sight. Not much to see there so we angled up to pick up Nicki and her group, who had made it to 27 meters as Bobbi and I angled up to conserve air and no deco minutes. It was everyone's first time at this site and no one knew what to expect, so we were all probing, wary of current (in the briefing Ivor warned us about our bubbles going down, indicating a down current, and meanwhile back at the hostel, Chris told us a story about how he got caught in one with two advanced students, managed to catch them at 35 meters and shepherd them to the surface, had them both breathe from his only two oxygen cylinders, and the following day himself developed symptoms of decompression sickness and he had to go into a recompression chamber).

It was a lovely dive, lots of bright red rust coloring the reef, masses of reef fishes, and pretty easy despite a current which at its worst Bobbi and I pulled ourselves through with the help of a long rope someone had lost on the bottom. This caught us up with Sara Gough and Lucy, the only others from our group that we saw from that point on in this dive. We outpaced them, hit a still stronger facing current and rode back on it till we reached the end of the island in a colorful coral patch, and had to come up, near the end of our hour. All our dives on this trip were an hour or more with safety stop.

We retreated to Musandam Island for our lunch break, to a place that Chris and Ivor have christened Sphinx Bay due to the profile of a guano-covered rock in the vicinity. After sandwiches and pasta salad consumed in the 1 hour surface interval, we dropped in for our second dive over a bottom pockmarked from thousands of hollow footprints left by coral since disappeared, and strewn with nudibranchs. We saw a few dozen of the thousands that must have been there. Again Bobbi and I pushed to 30 meters depth, found it just kept going, and turned around to angle back up the reef and meet up with April who had joined the other two girls Lucy and Sara. A remarkable feature of this dive was a fault seam at 8 meters that we followed for some distance, where we found caves, not just alcoves, but actual tunnels you could swim into. One of them had a huge batfish inside sharing space with an oversized puffer. Another ledge had two very large crayfish inside, unreachable, yet fully visible in their lair.

It was 3:30 by the time we came up and joined everyone back on board and motored south. It took us an hour almost to reach Ras Sarkhan on our way home. Ivor suggested we dive the point and work our way back toward the mountains. Meanwhile the boat drifted back from the point and people started entering the water. We were no longer at the point but they were stuck with it but Bobbi and I and the three ladies were still on board, so we had ourselves taken back to the point as planned. The point is where the action is most likely to be, but it is risky because there can be currents here (that's what brings the fish) and you never know if the current will be coming in or going out, though Ivor thought it would be a return current. So I briefed our divers to be prepared for anything and we all went over and down.

We were lucky. The current was slack, and we had no trouble finding our way to the point, with its constant swirl of fish in the blue soft coral. We found a huge turtle sitting on the bottom at 30 meters, his back covered with white barnacles. We angled up and out the point and found ourselves surrounded by hundreds of treveli swirling past. At the point itself a stiff resistant current told us it was time to go back. We stayed high on the reef and came across another turtle. Toward the end of the dive we found a large cow-tail or feather-tail ray in the sand. He let us settle in next to and in front of him before he started to ripple, taking his time to eventually rise out of the sand, turn, and head out to sea. We followed close behind and he turned and headed back to the reef, then headed up it, silhouetted nicely against the bright surface, putting us on a nice show in graceful motion for 30 memorable seconds.

That was it for diving for the day. Unfortunately the gear box on our boat malfunctioned and we limped back to Lima over the next hour, but Ivor got on the satellite phone and the boat owners sent another boat out to get us, intercepting us just off the town of Lima. We transferred our gear to the new boat and it was 45 minutes before we finally made it home in the darkness. Back at NOA there was still time to chill out in the pool before dinner, which occupied us until time for bed.

Next morning we had arranged an earlier than usual boat departure so we might get back to port earlier that evening for driving back to Abu Dhabi, but we were still able to sleep in past 8 in the morning. Bobbi and I rolled up in the dining area to check email and have our coffee and meager breakfast. We were joined this morning by Nicki, Ian, Daniel and Randa, Jonathan, Bob, and April and Gavin, her chef boyfriend. Lucy and Sara had returned to Dubai the night before, and Gillian had developed sinus problems and couldn't join us diving. The boat was supposed to leave the harbor at 10 and it was only a quarter hour late when it finally did pull away, not bad. An hour later we were passing Lima Rock on our way to Octopus Rock, but we found the current there a little strong, so we retreated to Ras Morovi to start our first dive in the bay where I often take my beginning divers. There was almost no current there, and the visibility was again excellent. Had there been rays in the sand we would have seen them. We went south along the reef without seeing much of anything, but at the point where you can opt for the saddle to the left to take you into the channel or keep going south to round the submerged island, we came onto a large school of barracuda.

We rounded the submerged hilltop keeping at about 25 meters, a bit high off the sand at 30 meters. It was beautiful, but again nothing striking until Bobbi found a crayfish in a rock, and then spotted a turtle ahead. Later she found another big crayfish under a rock, I spotted the second turtle, and we found several morays and lion fish. We came all the way up the channel to the north but as we rounded the corner we hit a stiff current. Although 40 minutes into our dive we both had plenty of air left so we dropped to almost 18 meters in the sand and just powered through it. Eventually it slackened and we ended our dive in a bay full of coral and fish life, especially swarms of blue triggers. When the boat finally came for us over there we got some oblique compliments from the younger divers regarding our stamina in finning through that current, as they had all turned back at that point.

We had our sandwiches and a tasty potato salad listening to Ivor's jokes (and Gavin's, and a few of mine), bobbing gently in the water, in the bright sunlight surrounded by mountains rising out of clear blue seas. Then we headed over to Lulu Island just across the bay toward the fishing village of Lima but there was a boat there already picking up divers way north of the rock, suggesting they were having trouble with currents, so we decided to go to Lima Rock.

Here on the sheltered north side we had the best dive of the weekend, thanks to Bobbi's sharp-eyed fish spotting. The first thing we saw was a turtle and we were following that when Bobbi pointed into the void. That's how she and I were the only ones to see at least two devil rays passing. As on all our dives we saw coronet fish, and batfish and puffer fish being cleaned by cleaner wrasse. The most fun part of the dive was when we encountered a school of squids. They entertained us in midwater and later we found them gathering around a rock. They seemed to want to get under the rock, Nicki thinks to lay eggs there. Due to their focus on whatever they were doing there, they didn't seem to mind us coming close and hovering. They were captivating. We spent 5 or ten minutes watching their antics, motionless, breathing little air. At the end of the dive we found a large honeycomb moray and did our safety stop above its lair. He was being cleaned inside his gaping mouth by a tiny blue wrasse, which escaped unharmed.

Our Roster

1. Vance Stevens (PADI instructor)
2. Nicki Blower (PADI divemaster)
3. Sarah Gough - (PADI divemaster)
4. Bobbi Stevens (PADI rescue)
5. Ian Wing (SSI Master Diver, including SSI Deep Diver, with PADI Nitrox)
6. Bob McGraw (PADI advanced o/w)
7. Gillian Hendrie (PADI advanced o/w)
8. April McMahan (PADI advanced o/w)
9. Jonathan Seda (PADI advanced o/w) - driving up Friday morning
10. Daniel Jewers (PADI advanced o/w)
11. Lucy Hives (BSAC sports)
12. Randa (o/w)

Well, ten days of the month our gone, and we have to be out of our apartment by the end of it, so apart from helping Kathleen with an EDA beach cleanup next weekend, Bobbi and I won't be doing much more diving until we emerge into October.

Certified Jay Fortin as PADI Rescue Diver August 25-27, 2011 in Dibba Rock and Musandam

My logged dives #1068-1072


I know that Kathleen is seeing whale sharks and manta rays in the Maldives during these Eid holidays, before breakfast even, but meanwhile back in the UAE, someone's gotta churn out those certified divers :-)  This week it was the turn of Jay Fortin, who flew over from Doha to engage me for a one-on-one rescue course.  Bobbi had to work on Saturday to prepare her classroom for the coming school year, so I was missing her company this weekend.

I picked Jay up from Abu Dhabi airport on Thursday and we drove over to Dibba, reaching Freestyle Divers in plenty of time to kit up and enter the water for some self-rescue practice, and dealing with disoriented and distressed divers underwater and at the surface.  At one point a turtle passed by, in the shallow water just off the beach. We ended up with handling the unresponsive diver at the surface, ventilation and equipment removal, and finally experimented with effective carries to exit a victim from ocean to shore.

We then shopped for dinner at Lulu's, their Indian chat concoctions are to die for, and ate our purchases accompanied by duty free beverages at Seaside apartments, occupying just two of the three beds for only 250 dirhams in Ramadhan, very cheap.  Next morning we drove 15 minutes up the road to Freestyle Divers to knock out the rest of the rescue diver exercises in three dives there, planning the scenarios for the following day with Nomad Ocean Adventures.

Dibba Rock was a lovely dive at 9 a.m.  Jay and I started off with two exercises: simulated underwater recovery and surfacing the non-responsive diver.  I entered the water with a yellow shopping back I carry as a simulated victim and I left Jay at a place I could find again near the aquarium where we often start our Dibba Rock dives.  I then conducted a square pattern, just me, on which I concealed the 'missing victim.'  It was Jay's job then to find it.  He did this in a U pattern and speedily accomplished the goal, but focused on the task he missed spotting the large cow tail ray that was wondering what these silly divers were doing finning up and down like madmen.

Once Jay had found the victim, we conducted the exercise where we surfaced it, me in this case.  I survived so Jay passed that one, and then we descended for a fun dive.  We passed back by the aquarium and then headed over the reef where I almost immediately saw a shark cross our bow.  The schools of barracuda haven't been seen here in some time but there was one big one hanging out in that area.  Some German snorkelers on our boat asked me later what the big long fish was.  When we reached the western end of the reef and turned south on the L we found 7 or 8 turtles all together there.

We did two more dives on the reef, completing response from the boat to swimmers and unresponsive diver on one of them (saw a shark swim by a turtle right at the end of that dive!) and conducting the last one where I went down with the missing diver bag, hid it, surfaced, and called Jay to come find it using a square pattern, and then surface me to complete the scenario.  On all the dives we saw turtles and sharks.  On the last dive we hung out where the raspberry coral is coming back at the south end of the L and I saw three meaty blacktip sharks buzz by while hovering there (different ones, different sizes).  Nice diving on Dibba Rock that day, and highly productive from a Rescue Diver course perspective.

We checked out of the Seaside and took ourselves across the border into Oman where we turned up at Nomad Ocean Adventures in time to relax over cool drinks and then enjoy a beef stew buffet.  Next day we dove Lima Rock and Octopus Rock.

The dives were good ones.  We didn't see much on the sheltered north side of Lima Rock (I do recall a batfish, hovering mouth up, enjoying the administrations of a blue cleaner wrasse) but most of the divers in the group felt confident to push the currents at the east end of the island.  Jay and I went to the end and found a saddle where we hung out in the surge hoping for some devil rays or big barracuda.  There were jacks or trevally, or some kind of carangidae out there http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carangidae and lots of blue trigger fish, but nothing amazing, so I led us over the saddle to the south side of the island.  Apart from a huge honeycomb moray hiding in the saddle, again nothing amazing here, so I took us back hard against the current this time and led around the rock where I knew the current would spit us into the ocean.  Again I was hoping for schools of barracuda here but they were not there that day.  However the boat was waiting at the surface collecting all the divers who had opted for the freight train exit.

We did our remaining scenario during the surface interval, recovery of diver at the surface, getting the diver to and onto the boat, and then reviving the diver on board, during the surface interval.  Jay did well but the boat was crowded with 15 divers and most of those aboard treated the procedure as lunchtime entertainment, not doing much to help or clear space to receive the victim, so the scenario broke down at the point where in a real situation we would have thrown the bcd's overboard to make space to treat the victim (they'd have floated on the surface, but understandably no one did that, and had we pushed it we could have become a different kind of victim :-)

Rescue course out of the way, Richard requested Octopus Rock for the second dive, and since the currents were relatively benign, the request was granted.  Relatively benign but not absent, Jay had trouble following me down our first attempt at descent there and we had to meet up at the surface, then regain position for descent, which worked well the second time.  The trick was to descend into the current to where I correctly discerned that the current would be relieved near the bottom, which it was, leaving us free to wander into the valleys to the east of the rock.  We swam amid a school of big barracuda there and found clear vis, but no rays where they ought to have been in the sand at 25-30 meters. Also my compass was not rotating properly so I couldn't properly orient.  We circled one submerged rock which I realized only after coming a second time on an encrusted anchor whose boat had long departed.  I changed direction and tried to find our way on estimated compass direction but this led into the blue, so in the end I used the upwardly sloping bottom to get us back to the rock, which was swarming with fish, really beautiful, again nothing amazing for us, though others on our boat came across rays and for one lucky group, even a guitar shark.

For the record our dives on Dibba Rock lasted around an hour each and were conducted to 8 meters or so.  In Musandam we dived to about 25 meters each dive, and each lasted 50 minutes.  Water temperatures were warmer than the week before, maybe 26 degrees in Musandam, warmer at Dibba Rock.  Visibility was decent.  And Jay got certified, congratulations! my student in open water, advanced, and now rescue, well done!

Certified Luke Ingles in beginning open water August 18-20, 2011 in Musandam

My logged dives #1064-1067



Nice easy weekend planned with just one student, Luke, who turned out to have about the smoothest passage conceivable through the PADI open water dive course.  He did his elearning prior to our picking him up at his office Thu after work, 3 pm ramadhan timings.  We went over all the course explanations of what we were going to do in 3 hours on the road together, and we had him at Nomad Ocean Adventure by 6:30 that evening and in the pool an hour later.  Two hours after that we were having cook's delicious beef stew with appropriate liquid accompanyment, and two hours after that we had played some guitar and gone to bed.


I overslept the time to meet Luke in the morning but he was so proficient at his skills that we only needed 15 minutes in the actual water to get him through the module 3 skills and ready for the open ocean.  This was a bit harder to arrange in a boat with 14 divers in choppy seas, waves crashing up against the musandam coasline the whole hour in transit.  We skipped Lima and tucked in to the shelter of Lima headland.  We did a first dive there, touching near 18 meters at depth, 48 min. before Luke ran low on air.  Our second dive, for the record, was on the relatively sheltered north shore of Lima Rock, getting even closer to 18 meters this time, 51 minutes.


Both dives were pleasant in cool 25-26 degree water. Luke had picked up a 5 mm wetsuit but Bobbi was wearing a shorty over a lycra suit and I was wearing 3 mil long over lycra with a half mil rash vest on top, and on the 2nd dive I was chilled.  The vis was good.  There were tableaux of lion fish floating in full panoply and morays here and there, in including a large honeycomb on Lima.  There we saw large batfish, lots of puffers, and a small monarch bull ray in a cave.  It was a great day for Luke, a kind of mediocre one for Bobbi and I, but not a bad day out at all for any of us.


We got Luke through his dive #1 and #2 o/w skills and a few of the flexible ones as well, and after enduring the choppy ride back against an oncoming sea, I took Luke back in the pool and finished off his last two pool dives and 200 meter swim and float.   Luke asked if he could do the float in one of the inner tubes there while sipping on a beer, and I thought that was such a good idea I went and got one myself and kicked back in the center of the pool while he swam his laps around me :-)


Next day we slept at will, all rising in time for diving at 10 or 10:30.  You never know exactly but with Ivor in charge and not so many people on a Saturday, things ran more like clockwork and we were being asked to get ourselves down to the harbor at just after 10.  Seas were still contrary but the sun came out on the last half of the trip north and sea conditions ameliorated as the day progressed.  


Our first dive started in the same cove on Lima headland (Ras Lima) we had been in the day before.  The first day we had gone to the back of the cove and eased down through the sloping corals there to give Luke plenty of reference for his first ascent, but today we found a sandy patch and dropped onto it at 5 meters depth.  We then moved down to 8 where I tied off my SMB and ran it up for CESA.  I had Luke do his compass heading out and back and complete his other skills for that dive there in the sand before completing the CESA so when we arrived up top I could grab my marker and carry it back down with me deflated, and then pack it up as we went on our dive.


We had good luck with animals today.  We saw lots of lion fish and snappers and much larger species on all our dives, and several morays, plus a small torpedo ray on this dive, and a small ray poked head first into an alcove that was half as deep as he was round.  I think it was similar to the ones with darker coloring here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blotched_fantail_ray.  We also found a flounder on the dive, a curiosity to first time divers.


Sea conditions were still not settled but dropping to the point where Ivor decided we could head over the bay to Pearl Island which was still getting waves on its east face, and some surge but not so bad on the western sheltered side.  Bobbi and Luke and I took our time getting in the water so as to be C divers with a surface interval of 1:32 min with 53 min NDL at 16 meters after having spent 50 min at 18 meters our first dive (which put us in T pressure group).  To prolong the SI we got Luke's weight and BCD removal out of the way at the start of the dive, in the sheltered part ol Lulu Island.  


Lulu is a nice dive.  The idea is to round the island to the north and then head east over the sand to arrive at the second island further out.  It's a nice spot that sometimes has barracudas.  Not today thoough we did find a large crayfish in a lair when we arrived at the submerged arm of the outer island.  We also found morays and a large marble ray there, without a tail, impressive creature, and the regular suspects such as trumpet fish, trigger fish, placidly improbably puffers, and tiny blue striped wrasse cleaning everything from eels to batfish to all of the above.


Back on the boat one of the divers in another buddy pair who had also seen the marble ray said its tail wasn't missing, "it was a cow tail," as if it was born without a tail.  Garbage, we looked it up: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cowtail_stingray but these don't look like the ray we saw. The cow-tails at that link look flatter than the one we saw, which had a prominently raised head area, more like the marble ray here: http://news.scubatravel.co.uk/2010/03/marble-ray-is-creature-of-the-month.html. There's no end to fish identification, especially after the fact, :-)


Nice weekend, nice people at Nomad as usual.  Good food, good company, some dodgy guitar in the evening and even dodgier jokes, but we all laughed politely and had a good time.

Certified Steve and Anna in beginning open water, and Roger as advanced open water, June 24-25, 2011 in Musandam

My logged dives #1053-1056

Another great weekend, what else to do when temperatures are in the 40’s in the UAE.  Water temperatures in Musandam can be only slightly less, in the warm 30’s near the surface, or a bracing 20’s, depending on which thermoclines you pass through.  Visibility varied in the thermoclines as well.  Sometimes the cold water brought clarity; other times the cold water was green-brownish with algae.

A whale shark was spotted on Friday off the east end of Lima Rock while we were there but not by us.  On Friday there were slightly rough seas. When we came up to Lima Rock on the south the swell was not pleasant for my novice divers Steve and Anna, on their o/w course on the eLearning package.  We had Dusty and Michelle with us, and Nicki to dive with Bobbi, plus Roger completing his advanced course with Peak Buoyancy diving.  Also we had three pleasant and experienced Arab divers who were agreeable to whatever we wanted or needed to do. 


I got in the water to test the current, not bad, but vis was poor, so I suggested we move to the north side where there would be shelter.  All other dive boats had reached the same conclusion so there were dozens of divers in the water when we went down there, including some BSAC people with mechanical scooters.  The scooters were annoying but effective.  It was they who spotted the whaleshark, and they said they found a pod of dolphins to boot.  I guess the scooters are just the thing for the currents at either end of Lima Rock, which I usually try to avoid with my students.

I was doing dive #2 with Steve and Anna which has a set of the basic skills in it.  When we got through those I led along the rocks and Anna discovered a huge honeycomb moray.  There were a lot of swim-throughs for Roger to practice his peak buoyancy skills in, and more morays and I can’t recall what else. It wasn’t a great dive, but a pleasant one, in decent vis.  When Steve and Roger ran low on air and we surfaced together at over 50 min into the dive, Bobbi, Nicki, Dusty, and Michelle were not yet on the boat. Anna and I still had 70 bar so we decided to go back down for another 15 min, extending our dive shallow, very pleasant and cooling.

For the second dive I suggested Ras Morovi, a good place for open water skills.  Steve and Anna had done a discover scuba course with me on June 11 (2 dives) and had completed modules 2 and 3 in the pool the night before and that morning, so according to PADI standards they were “qualified” to do just one more dive on their course that day, and the first dive on Lima Rock was technically their 2^nd PADI O/W course dive.  Thanks to the flexible skills system we could continue diving a second dive that day and record the skills they did against dive #2, although this was their 4^th dive in their logbooks.

We had lunch while being buzzed by wasps, sitting ducks for them on an open boat in the small bay in Ras Morovi.  It was nice to escape them by getting in the water for surface work.  We worked on compass headings, cramp removal, and snorkel regulator exchanges and then found a rope attached to a fish pot on the bottom in 8 meters of water that I thought would do nicely for a controlled emergency swimming ascent.  With those skills out of the way we went over to the wall and headed down to the sand.  We found a nice outcrop and Anna led us west from there and then returned us to the east to approximately the right spot, given there was a some current pushing us south.

We proceeded on a very pleasant fun dive.  I know the site quite well. If you follow the wall you come to a flat spot where you can go left and come up the tongue on the other side or keep going and circumnavigate a submerged hill.  I had briefed everyone to check their compasses to understand where they were headed, since if you keep the reef on your left, you don’t notice otherwise when you are rounding the hill or coming up the other side, going from a southerly to northerly heading. In our case when we reached the saddle we had a current preventing our further movement south so I led us over the saddle and down the other side.

Here we came onto brilliantly dancing squids and their counterpart cuttlefish. We also saw morays during the dive, and I can’t remember what else. Maybe Steve or Anna can leave a comment here if I’m leaving anything out.  We surfaced in the channel, the boat collected us, and whisked us back to port.

Anna and Steve and I refreshed in the pool that evening, finishing our last two confined water dives in plenty of time for communal dinner. Over beverages afterwards, Ivor pulled out a guitar and showed us more of his talents.   I’ll need to practice for the next time if we’re going to start that nonsense.  Steve played a mean Red Hot Chili Peppers song that used to be covered by Voodoo Hedgehogs.  Nicki produced a platter full of smelly cheeses but many of us avoided that because we had sampled the night before and we all had awakened groggy with headaches, presumably from the cheese.

With the pool work out of the way we had a relaxed start on Saturday morning.  I got Steve and Anna to do their swim tests, but that was all there was to do before heading down to the boat.  We were booked with Ivor the divor today.  Sea conditions were flat, finally, for a change, it would be a good day for the near side of Lima Rock.

The dive started on an excellent note.  We put in to clear water and were just easing over the edge when we found ourselves confronted by two large eagle rays coming right at us.  The lead one looked almost like a manta as he curled his wings on approach, then noticed us, and warped in muscular contraction to turn suddenly and speed to open water.  I watched their shadows circle in the distant water and disappear.

Unfortunately there was a dhow anchored there at just that moment discharging at least 30 divers aboard, and they caught up with us in the direction we were about to go, so I didn’t go to the east as I’d thought but went back to the west toward the middle of the island. I hoped to avoid currents as well.  We saw lots of fish here, particularly bat fish, and fusiliers, snappers, parrotfish, angelfish, damsels, jacks in midwater and morays in the rocks.  Nicky and Bobbi had moved on so it was only Roger and I and Steve and Anna. Suddenly I saw another eagle ray cross just ahead of us and head to sea.  I noticed rocks there we could hover over so we went there and all my group hovered comfortably, not seeing the ray again, but surrounded by biomassive schools of fish.

As we neared the west end of the island the current picked up and I decided to try and avoid that so I reversed our direction and to conserve air led higher up the rocks, 9 meters or so.  I was hoping to return to calm water but perhaps there had been a current all along, unnoticed, and now we seemed to be swimming incessantly into it.  This was wasting breath and tiring us, so I changed my mind again and decided to take them with the current on around the island.

Using hand signals I tried to get the three of them into position for the quickening current.  I couldn’t tell them in words, but I wanted us all together, low down where I was, and next to the reef.  Venturing into open water would be anathema here.  They did well. They weren’t sure what was coming, but when we were caught in the current they followed me well.  We started getting knocked about a bit as we came to the edge of the island and the critical moment was to turn a sharp right and get into shelter out of the current and start heading up the back side of the island.  My divers were right behind me.

We found a last honeycomb moray back there, and a large crayfish, but we surfaced on the opposite side of the island where the boat would be looking for us.  Nearby there was the crack in the rock with a keyhole passage to the other side that I’ve often seen but never really visited.  It had surge in it but it was gentler than it looked and wouldn’t really smash us on its ceiling.  I entered and the guys followed.  We passed through this beguilingly aquamarine passage and on the other side encountered the swirling current we’d just left, ready to sweep us clear of the island. Anna was not with us so I pointed the three of us back into the gap and we reentered and swam through to where Anna was waiting for us, hesitant because of the surge. Later we found that Bobbi and Nicky had used this passage to scuba to the north side and thereby avoid the worst of the current at the end of the island.

The boat eventually picked us up on the north side and once we’d recovered Bobbi and Nicki, we headed for the shelter of Ras Lima for a calm-water lunch.  The wasps were not so bad here. Steve and Anna were but one dive away from completion of their o/w course.  This dive would be at Lulu Island, which is interesting because we always put in from the shelter of the first island off the mainland and then swim underwater to the EAST to arrive at the second island.  Steve and Anna had tank and weight belt removal and replacement at the surface, tired diver tows, and then Steve could demo his compass skills by leading us to the east to the underwater island.

All worked like a charm and we arrived at the island after the easterly heading right at the sweet spot.  I led us to the north along the wall and on around the island from there to come south on its far side. We saw lots of morays here, sometimes surrounded by lion fish. It was interesting but the vis was murky with algae and the thermoclines here were the coldest yet.  As we turned into the current I hoped for barracuda but there were none.  Heading back west now it was time to bail to the other side of the island but the current was against us for getting over there.  I tested it, made headway against it, and figured I could get us where it would dissipate.  This worked well, my divers followed again despite conditions marginally poor for beginners.  However when I finally found shelter from the current on the west side I was surprised to see we had arrived back at the sweet spot we had reached by going east from where we descended.

So we rounded the island again, slightly higher this time to avoid the chilliest of the water. We continued to the point where we again confronted the current and basically got boxed in there and surfaced. 

Congratulations to the newly certified divers Steve and Anna, and to Roger for completing his advanced open water.

Photos from Steve Elwood's Facebook photostream

PADI advanced and rescue courses, plus Discover Scuba Diving, in Musandam June 10-11, 2011

My logged dives #1049-1052

I had a lot going on this weekend. I had a guy who wanted to do an o/w course on the elearning program and Graeme and Rachel wanted to work on their rescue course so I tried to book them in at Nomad Ocean Adventure. Nomad was fully booked and couldn't actually accommodate everyone so the elearner decided to postpone. Graeme and Rachel still wanted to dive and our mutual friends Steve and Anna decided to join us snorkeling, so I offered to give them a discover scuba course just to sweeten the appeal and they accepted. And then Roger whom we had given our Blazer to decided to join as well and start on his advanced course, so in the end we had an interesting mix of agendas that made for some fun diving and plenty to keep an instructor fully entertained and busy.

Logistically we started out with Roger's deep dive as dive #1 on Lima Rock, north side. He rode up with us in the car that morning so I was able to explain the dives he'd be doing in the car on the way up. We worked out a nice 24 meter 24 minute multilevel profile with a second level at 16 meters for 16 minutes, followed by 12 meters for as much as 35 minutes, which is to say, until the air runs out. The profile was so mnemonic I don't know why I hadn't hit on it before, and next day I proposed he use it to conduct a multilevel dive for his 3^rd advanced course dive.

The deep dive itself was pleasant but not exciting. Vis was excellent for a change. Sea conditions were rough, with wind, and whitecaps foaming off the south of Lima Rock, which was why we went for the back or north side. It was fairly calm there. This time last year we had seen whale sharks here (on the front or south side), but there were none today. Roger and I went straight to depth and did his exercises in the sand, leaving the others behind, but then we returned to the rocks and found the others. We continued until at about 40 min into the dive, our first divers needed to surface. I remember a huge barracuda swimming amongst us at about that time, a large one with a tuna shaped head, a lone wolf, unschooled as it were (get it? alone, unschooled?). Rachel and Bobbi and I ended up completing the dive, coming up after 65 minutes. No one was limiting us, it seemed, very comfortable. We saw a large honeycomb moray with a blue wrasse cleaning its teeth toward the end of that dive, pleasant and relaxing.

We went over to Ras Lima to get out of the wind and swell and had lunch. We found a calm bay ideal for Roger's u/w navigation. Nice spot, about the right depth, with corals on the floor to give us something to look at and navigate on. I started by deploying my submersible marker buoy and tying it off to give us a reference and then leading us out from there 30 meters in a direction that Roger should be able to retrace. Roger calibrated his fin kicks on my estimate of 30 meters and then led us back to the SMB on dead reckoning. Then I had him take us 30 meters to the north and left a weight belt at that spot before we returned on a south heading to the marker. The weight belt would become a lost buddy for Graeme and Rachel who were kitting up to come in and rescue it. But I needed it for Roger's excercises just now. From the SMB I had Roger do a square pattern starting on a westerly heading followed by a turn to the north, so that on the third leg to the east we came out right on the weight belt. Perfect.

I had Roger wait with the weights while I ascended and called out to the boat that I had lost my buddy at that spot. Bobbi on board the boat was making note of the coordinates and would direct Graeme and Rachel to the spot where they would descend and conduct a square search pattern, 5 kicks one way, 5 at right angle, 10 at the next right angle, 10 at the next, 15 and 15, 20 and 20 and so on until the object was found. Meanwhile, Roger and I moved off the spot to the south and found my SMB, completing the square and his tasks for the u/w navigation dive.

I left the SMB in place in case we needed a reference to retrieve the weights, in case they weren't found by the rescue divers. I took Roger along the wall and we ascended to find Graeme and Rachel in possession of the weights and returning them to the boat. So all divers had accomplished their goals for this dive and it was time to have some fun.

The first day, Steve and Anna were snorkeling so they were not a part of the diving, but they saw 8 devil rays from the surface and another diver mentioned a 'massive' sting ray 5 feet across (almost 2 meters). We didn't see much that I recall. It was pretty diving but nothing to write home about (or to recall for a blog entry). Graham had an ear problem and ascended early on with his buddy Rachel. Bobbi and I ran Roger low on air and just after he ascended Rachel appeared with us having tracked our bubbles from the surface. We finally came up the three of us after 70 minutes on my computer, the entire dive spent above 18 meters.

The boat ride was pretty rough going back, and on arrival it was Steve and Anna's turn to start on their DSD course with an evening dip in the pool and then going over the flip chart poolside. After an hour of that we got their equipment together and went in the pool for those exciting first moments on Scuba. They were no trouble to train, and two hours later we had cleaned the gear and Bobbi and I were sitting down to an excellent meal of rice and meaty stew, with quiche, salad, and a mystery desert, all tasty and suitably filling after a long hot day of diving. We slept fine that night.

I wasn't sure what time we would start next day. There was a couch surfer among us who unfortunately arrived after Steve and Anna had finished but wanted to get in on the DSD course. I said if he was keen he should knock on our door at 7 next morning. Bobbi and I were safe though because he'd be coming from UAE Dibba where everyone else was staying, and he'd have to come by cab, so that didn't happen at 7 and Bobbi and I were still in bed at 8.

But we got up about then because we were expecting Steve and Anna to come try on wetsuits and take them in the pool with weights, and I was going to co-opt one of them to be victims for Graeme and Rachel, whom I could show rescue techniques for saving unconscious divers at the surface. But taxis in UAE dibba were scarce apparently (two many staying over there to fit into Steve and Anna's car) so they didn't arrive until almost ten.

So Bobbi became the victim and Rachel and Graeme rescued her a couple of times from the pool (poor Bobbi, sometimes married to a dive instructor, she really does become a victim :-). Meanwhile Steve and Anna had appeared and I had them try on wetsuits and then swim with them in the pool, and more importantly be sure they could sink there. I then had them add 4 kg each to compensate for salt water and air used on the dive, and if anything they were overweighted for their try dive (preferable to being underweighted).

We had a sunny day but rough seas again so we ended up on the north side of Lima Rock same as the day before. But this time I had first time divers on a discover scuba course and they were very brave to get their kit together on a pitching boat and enter the water with a backward roll first time ever, then wait in the surge where I had spotted some u/w boulders I thought we could use as reference on descent. I had already checked for current on arrival at Lima Rock so at least we didn't have drift to contend with.

Vis at that spot was as clear as a swimming pool. I had them come in to the rocks and descend on a beautiful patch of orange coral. They did well to come down gradually and I think they were so beguiled by the batfish there and the blue tangs (surgeon fish) and the parrots and rainbow wrasses that they soon forgot their trepidations, and next thing we knew we were all doing swim throughs and enjoying ourselves comfortably in the cool water.

Again we didn't see much apart from a huge variety of beautiful fish. Roger was paired with Bobbi and he conducted his advanced multilevel dive on the same profile as the day before. Graeme and Rachel had no skills lined up since I had needed Bobbi to team with Roger, but when Graeme and Rachel appeared suddenly I pretended to go catatonic so they could come over and recognize and handle a distressed diver situation.

My DSD divers ran low on air early and we were back on the surface after 40 min, having been mostly at around 12 meters but having touched around 17/18 meters. We then headed over to Ras Lima again, where we accepted to go because reports were that it was choppy at Ras Morovi, and also we were taken to a bay with a small beach, which I decided we could use in training. So after lunch I had Bobbi kit up again and go 'diving' alone, and of course she ended up on the surface face down in the water. Fortunately Graeme and Rachel and I had anticipated this and were already kitted up, so we entered the water and went to work on Bobbi, removing her gear in turns, and eventually getting her to the beach where we practiced carrying her onto it by practising a couple of dead lifts and carries.

The boat had drifted distant by then and I thought we could rescue one of us to the boat. Bobbi had been a victim too much today so Rachel volunteered, and said later that she learned a lot from being a victim. Graeme ventilated her every 5 seconds and removed her BCD while Bobbi and I waved and called the boat to come in a hurry. It came over to cut short Graeme's work and then we thrust Rachel's arms overhead and Sami pulled her onto the boat. We made sure he administered two more breaths before 30 seconds had passed, and we'll complete the scenario with CPR next time.

Now it was time for a last dive, an u/w naturalist one for Roger, and Graeme and Rachel could practice bringing a diver up from the bottom. I took a much more confident Anna and Steve on their second DSD dive of the day. The vis was not as good here and I didn't see much, just a moray, and one of those interesting helmeted crustaceans. Everyone else saw string rays. Bobbi saw one swim right over Anna and I, and Anna saw some in the sand where she was starting to get a bit deep, I thought, so I was staying higher up to get her to rise and so I didn't see them. Darn.