Bobbi and I took Nini diving for her first dive of my course and our first dive off Dibba Rock in some time. Dibba Rock used to be our favorite dive site but then it was hit by cyclone Gonu, where a lot of the coral was churned up and deposited on the beach, and then by the red tide earlier this year, which choked a lot of the life out of the ocean there. So we didn’t know what to expect and were very pleasantly surprised!
Dive 909 - The sharks are back. We saw lots of sharks our first dive this day, running rampant on the reef. We just hung out under a school of barracuda and enjoyed their comings and goings. There were lots of turtles too, some with remora fish on their shells (what the remora were getting out of it, no telling). There were cuttlefish in many places on the reef, and big jacks passing through. Everyone coming up to the surface was going on about what a great dive it was. Someone with a huge camera was showing his pictures. I asked him how many sharks he saw. Sharks? He didn’t see any, he said (a down side to underwater photography). Nini was quite lucky to have such a great first dive on Dibba. Her air lasted 42 minutes, which was fine since we’d seen plenty, 7 meters depth.
Dive 910 - That was the noon dive. On the 3 pm dive we approached the reef from the western mooring, stopping beforehand to get Nini’s dive #2 skills out of the way. Once on the reef it was a little harder to see the animals because of the angle of the sun on the suspended matter, it seemed cloudy compared to the relative clarity of the noon dive. Still we saw a few of the same animals as before. Air was better this time. Nini and I registered 53 minutes, though Bobbi had 58 because she had waited on the bottom when Nini and I had gone to the surface at the start of the dive.
Back in shore, Nini and I worked a little on her module 4 confined water skills, but she was getting tired and flustered and we decided to continue in the morning with a fresh start.
At the Seaside we discovered a nice Pilipino restaurant right near the residence. We had to go there to order but they brought the food up and we got to bed early after a few refreshing beverages.
29 Aug 2009
We told Nini she could wake us up if she was serious about wanting to do her skills before a nine o’clock dive the next morning, and at 6:15 she was knocking on our door. By 7 we had had our coffee and by 7:30 we were kitting for confined water just offshore. Nini is persistent and always progressing in overcoming phobias in diving but there is one she continues to have trouble with, taking a mask off, swimming without it, and replacing it. It’s one that Bobbi stopped on as well. I often say that I have a lot of respect for people for whom diving is not easy who overcome their hardships, and I’m sure that Nini is one of those (and a few hundred dives later, Bobbi is diving with the best of them now).
But this day, though we even moved to the swimming pool, we could not get through that one skill. Options were to persist and skip the nine a.m. dive, or treat the 9 a.m. dive as a fun dive and worry about the hard part later. I recommended the latter. I think it’s important that diving be fun. I think hard skills will become easier once the student has more experience and is task loading less, and it’s best to associate the sport with fun and leave the hard parts for when the student is ready.
Nini liked that idea and without having to worry about stressing over skills, she became a perfect diver, comfortable in the water, with Bobbi and I the whole way.
Dive 911 - Our first dive of the day was off the western mooring, so we came quickly on the reef, but this morning didn’t see all the animals we had seen the day before. We saw the barracuda but no sharks until we were down at the part of the reef where the turtles hang out. We were slightly naughty, diving for more than an hour.
Dive 912 - The second dive we went to the eastern mooring and decided to head for the back side, but first Nini and did an CESA, which went well. Back down we finned to the north east through the boulder area and then in the shallows where we go over the reef and then descend in layers to the sand at 15 meters. Nini came down each level with no problem at all, and in the sand some distance off the reef we found a brown mottled sting raw resting, but as we descended on it, it gathered up its skirts and ruffled off from us, dancing as it went. We headed back to the wall , looking for jawfish in the sand, found none, and ascended up the wall, finding different kinds of fish than we see on the coral.
I thought we had rounded the rock and I was taking us into the aquarium area at the northwest corner of the rock. As we ascended and headed as we thought to round the rock, Nini started to rise and we ended up at the surface, which was a good thing because we saw that we were in fact still on the eastern side of the rock. We would still head shallow now, but with the rock on our right, not on our left. It was a different dive plan.
Essentially we were going back the way we had come at the start of the dive. I was having a bit of trouble locating the good reef from that direction. We were always shallow so It was easy to surface and check from time to time. Eventually I came to a point where I wasn’t sure of the direction but I heard the clacking, so I chose west, and this took us onto the raspberry coral with its turtles and sharks. Actually we didn’t see that many sharks so I kept us down for over an hour again until I saw one at the very end of the dive.
We lasted 63 minutes this time, same depth, stretching slightly Garith’s request that we keep it to 50 min 50 bar. I like it that Freestyle are not adamant about that, though Garith does specify in his briefings now that an hour and a half is too long, so we try to come up before then.
Some lovely diving this weekend, nice to see the animals back at Dibba Rock.
Saturday, September 5, 2009
Saturday, August 8, 2009
More WHALE SHARKS at Lima Rock in Musandam, Logged dives #907 and 908, August 8, 2009
Glenn's footage of divers with the whale shark; that's me (Vance) in the blue/yellow wetsuit below the shark and at the end of the film clip
The whale sharks don't care when we turn up. One was waiting for us when the boat pulled up to Lima Rock shortly after noon. Elli, the Mauritian dive leader, had a good idea where he might be and dropped us in near the southeast corner of the rock. The idea was to round the seaward corner where the whale sharks like to hang out and encounter him that way. It worked like a charm. The whale shark was right there. Glenn got some excellent video footage and uploaded it to YouTube.
The 6-meter whale shark was one of the most playful yet. He or she swam in amongst us and sort of joined our group, perhaps curious what we were looking at. We all swam around it and touched it at will, this lovely creature was in arm's distance for most of its stay with us. When he wandered off, an eagle ray appeared swimming solo at 30 meters. Then, also at that depth, the whale shark reappeared. This all happened in the first 13 minutes of the dive, a powerful, action packed dive segment. At 15 minutes Glenn was having air problems and had to surface, and Bobbi, concerned, accompanied him. One of the others in the group of three that I remained with had trouble with a weight belt and then got low on air herself, and at 25 minutes Elli signaled up. In any event, it had already been a great dive, as the video shows.
Our second dive was more a going-through-the-motions dive. I was asked where I'd like to do the second dive, and I said Ras Morovi or Octopus Rock. But Elli said the rented boat we were assigned to that day would not go so far as those places, although they were both within eyesight of Lima Rock. It seemed that the choice narrowed down to Ras Lima or the back side of Lima Rock. We decided on the back side, but I've rarely seen much here in my experience (apart from one great dive there with devil rays and a whale shark just last week ;-). This time though was like most of the other times I've been here. It was pleasant hovering weightless in water of comfortable temperature, and always interesting to see the fish life, and there was a dead ray on the bottom to attract our attention at one point. In future I will try to ensure that I am booked on the boats that will go to the other sites slightly beyond Lima Rock. Last week diving both days with Nomad Ocean Adventures, this was not a problem.
See more of Glenn's videos here: http://www.glennstevens.biz/video.htm
Saturday, August 1, 2009
Back to Musandam to see WHALE SHARKS and SeaHorses - Dive logs for July 31 and August 1, 2009
Diving with Nomad Ocean Adventures in Dibba, Oman.
Bobbi was still away in the states, so I dived this weekend with Mike Parry and Nicki Blower. Mike kindly drove us all up to Dibba in his Jeep. Nomad likes to get late morning starts (at least they’re up front about it; some shops will insist you get there at 9:00 but the boat doesn’t actually leave the harbor till after 10:00). So we were able to leave Abu Dhabi at the not horribly early hour of 7:00 and make it to Nomad’s headquarters before 11:00 and we were on the boat and away before noon and at Lima Rock well before 1:00 in the afternoon.
Vance’s logged dive #903 July 31, 2009
Saw a WHALE SHARK
We were beginning our dive at 1:09. I know because in the water with divers about to descend I noticed that I had come in without my computer and I had to decide whether to stop everyone and get the boat driver to get it out of my bag or base my profile on my experience with tables and wheel gained in the decades I dived before I decided to buy a computer, so since I had watch and depth guage on me, and tables and wheel in my BCD pocket, I let the divemaster trainee Santiago (Romir’s student) lead us down.
The divers leveled off at 20 meters and I remained above Mike and Nicki and consulted the tables in my pocket to see that the NDL at 25 meters was 29 minutes. I figured I could stay almost that long at that depth and then multilevel up to 16 meters and dive for a few minutes and finish the dive at 12 meters or less.
The dive was excellent. The south side of Lima rock is pretty at that depth, nice temperature in the thermoclines (cool, I was glad I wore my 3 mm suit) with decent vis and many fishes around, a lot of crawfish under the rocks. As we moseyed along we came into a school of jacks at 22-24 meters. Now jacks are a meaty fish and a school of them is substantial biomass moving to and fro, and there is a suggestion when you see them that you are entering a part of the reef that might be interesting in case there might be anything there that eats jacks. It got interesting fast as a huge whaleshark suddenly streamed in over the jacks and casually swam off into the gloom of the open ocean. He was small for a whaleshark, just 5 meters or so, but he was soon back, giving all divers opportunities to swim close to him. These whale sharks have been hanging out at Lima Rock all summer. As I rose to keep my profile, Nicki and Mike and I stayed together, and we surfaced at about 55 min after letting ourselves go with an increasing current at the SE end of Lima Rock that was sweeping us off into the ocean.
Vance’s logged dive #904 July 31, 2009
Saw devil rays and another WHALE SHARK
Back on the surface I calculated my dive on the wheel. I wore my computer on my second dive just to have an accurate instrument for depth and time, but I worked out my actual profile on the wheel, 22 meters for 20 minutes, 12 minutes at 16, and another half hour or more at 12. We went down at the east end of the north side to about 22 meters and almost immediately encountered a school of a dozen or more devil rays. We followed them, observing them swim in formation, until they got shy and moved off. After that we rose up toward the boulders and swam in and out of the crannies (so I was never really at the edge of the profile I’d worked out, as I was on the first dive). We had misjudged the current and were swimming a little into it, and my tank had been short of 200 bar to begin with, and I started running low on air half an hour into the dive.
At about 40 minutes I signaled Mike and Nicki to continue together and I rose above them to do a safety stop starting at 41 minutes, with me getting down around 30 bar. I was keeping my eye on Mike and Nicki below, except when they became suddenly hard to see because a whale shark got in the way swimming above them and just below me at 6 meters. I set out after him, and finished out my safety stop keeping up with a whale shark. Nice safety stop to be chasing after a whale shark at 5 meters. I followed him till I thought I’d better come up due to my air situation and found myself right at the boat. Another great dive off Lima Rock!
Next morning, Mike and Nicki and I were all sleeping at the Nomad guest house. I was first up, followed by Mike, and at about ten o’clock (good moooorninngggg! Sunshine) by Nicki. We all sat outside in the heat of the outdoor dining area and had coffee and croissants while discussing our plan for the day. Options were to return to Lima with Nomad, chance of seeing whale sharks again, but late return that evening to Abu Dhabi. We had brought tanks in Mike’s car so we could also shore dive for free off the Pinnacles on the UAE side of the border, or a third option was to drive to Freestyle and get in on their noon dive to Dibba Rock and maybe see a shark or two. The decision was made in just two words, “whale shark”. It seemed that everyone was keen to take advantage of the presence of these animals just a 45 min boat ride away. They had been in residence at Lima Rock all summer. Ironically Bobbi and I had vacationed in Mozambique at Tofo, reknowned for its mantas and whale sharks. There were no mantas at Lima Rock, but this summer we didn’t need to go all the way to Mozambique to see whale sharks. They’d been spotted almost every weekend at Lima Rock, and though they are often seen there in the summer, this year they seemed to be sticking around unusually long.
But we as we had done two dives the day before, both on Lima Rock, and seen whale sharks both dives, we opted for a little variety our first dive of the morning so after motoring up the rocky Musandam coast as far as Ras Lima and Lima Rock, we continued a little ways past Ras Morovi to Octopus Rock, which BSAC used to call the Stack. Our game this dive was not mega-sized but micro. We were going to look for seahorses in the green whip corals at 20-30 meters on the south side of the rock.
Vance’s logged dive #905 August 1, 2009
Saw a SEAHORSE
Photo credit: Romir Aglugub
The diving was beautiful. Vis was clear as we dropped down on the rocks with tufty blue corals and blue trigger fish skirting along the bottom. We dropped into a sandy valley between Octopus rock and the next submerged outcropping over and very slowly since we were going deep and needed to conserve air, we descended at an angle, keeping an eye out in the coral foliage for seahorses. When Nicki found one we were just on our way up from 30 meters. She was behind us but I looked around for her and saw her motioning so we all joined her. The photographers took lots of pictures. This was a good sized seahorse, Nicki called it a sea stallion, maybe 4 cm tall, camouflaged to look like other organic matter that collects in the branches of whip coral, quite difficult to spot, good on Nicki. Ken, a diver from Finland also in our group, found a scorpion fish in the same area, also devilishly concealed.
The dive was a really good one, clear vis, cool temperatures, and very easy going as we all sought to keep metabolic rates low to conserve air. There was abundant fish life with a variety of blue, white, and green soft corals as back drop. There were many morays, including a good sized honeycomb one.
One of the most interesting fishes on the reef were batfish. We came upon a few of their cleaning stations. The batfish would hover on their tails, mouths pointing up, while the little blue wrasses wriggled in and out of their mouths and gill slits. The batfish looked to be enjoying this immensely and were loathe to break off as we got too near.
Nicki Blower's video of a batfish undergoing extreme makeover
As we rounded the rock in an upward spiral one batfish followed us the whole way so he became a memorable feature of the dive. He even followed us to the ladder of the boat as we exited the water after 55 minutes of diving. On our next dive at Lima rock Nicki said she dropped in right on a batfish and she joked it was the same one, though that seemed unlikely since the two locations were several kilometers apart.
Having motored over to Lima Rock we hung out in the wind shelter of the north side during the surface interval and I went snorkeling to look for whale sharks. The people in another boat were motioning that one had been spotted on the south side of the rock earlier that day. I had a 15 minute snorkel and didn’t see one on the north side, and at the end of our surface interval the boat picked me up and took us to the south side, which to me has the most interesting diving on that rock, at least my dives there have usually been deeper and generally better than on the north side.
Vance’s logged dive #906 August 1, 2009
Saw a nothing much
We decided to enter the water at the southwest end and proceed east as far as the other end if possible. If there was still a whale shark there we would probably pass it. But the dive didn’t go as planned. There was a stiff current against us running to the west. We descended down to 22 meters hoping to get below it, but even there we were just holding ourselves in place finning into it. Divers were signaling that they preferred to just go with the current so we all turned and let the current take us. There was not so much life at this end of the rock so it wasn’t the great dive we had all anticipated. Nicki and Mike saw a torpedo ray at depth in the sand and told me about it later; apparently I had been looking up in case a whale shark passed overhead and so I missed it.
I was keeping a little high because I had exerted myself at the first of the dive and gone deep and just 15 minutes into it was down to almost half a tank. By then we had fought a slight head current rounding the point before the current slacked and let us climb up the sand slope to the rocks to 15 meters on the north side of the island. We dived that side heading east but saw no whale shark there. We stayed in the water over 50 min, Mike and I, us guys, quite low on air but swimming at 3-7 meters under the surface trying to maximize time in the water in case one of the big whalesharks should happen along, as they could do at any moment. At 53 minutes I was forced to declare my extended safety stop at an end and join Mike at the surface, and Nicki (who probably still had half a tank) followed just moments later.
The last dive wasn’t up to our overinflated expectations but we had had three really good dives over the weekend at Lima and Octopus Rocks. Whale sharks are always a gas to see, and this was only the third seahorse I had ever seen in my 40 years of diving, so we drove home happy that night (well, Mike drove actually, while I logged our dives in the car, and Nicki showed us pictures from her camera of seahorses and whale sharks and videos of titillated batfish to entertain us with on the way home).
Bobbi was still away in the states, so I dived this weekend with Mike Parry and Nicki Blower. Mike kindly drove us all up to Dibba in his Jeep. Nomad likes to get late morning starts (at least they’re up front about it; some shops will insist you get there at 9:00 but the boat doesn’t actually leave the harbor till after 10:00). So we were able to leave Abu Dhabi at the not horribly early hour of 7:00 and make it to Nomad’s headquarters before 11:00 and we were on the boat and away before noon and at Lima Rock well before 1:00 in the afternoon.
Vance’s logged dive #903 July 31, 2009
Saw a WHALE SHARK
We were beginning our dive at 1:09. I know because in the water with divers about to descend I noticed that I had come in without my computer and I had to decide whether to stop everyone and get the boat driver to get it out of my bag or base my profile on my experience with tables and wheel gained in the decades I dived before I decided to buy a computer, so since I had watch and depth guage on me, and tables and wheel in my BCD pocket, I let the divemaster trainee Santiago (Romir’s student) lead us down.
The divers leveled off at 20 meters and I remained above Mike and Nicki and consulted the tables in my pocket to see that the NDL at 25 meters was 29 minutes. I figured I could stay almost that long at that depth and then multilevel up to 16 meters and dive for a few minutes and finish the dive at 12 meters or less.
The dive was excellent. The south side of Lima rock is pretty at that depth, nice temperature in the thermoclines (cool, I was glad I wore my 3 mm suit) with decent vis and many fishes around, a lot of crawfish under the rocks. As we moseyed along we came into a school of jacks at 22-24 meters. Now jacks are a meaty fish and a school of them is substantial biomass moving to and fro, and there is a suggestion when you see them that you are entering a part of the reef that might be interesting in case there might be anything there that eats jacks. It got interesting fast as a huge whaleshark suddenly streamed in over the jacks and casually swam off into the gloom of the open ocean. He was small for a whaleshark, just 5 meters or so, but he was soon back, giving all divers opportunities to swim close to him. These whale sharks have been hanging out at Lima Rock all summer. As I rose to keep my profile, Nicki and Mike and I stayed together, and we surfaced at about 55 min after letting ourselves go with an increasing current at the SE end of Lima Rock that was sweeping us off into the ocean.
Vance’s logged dive #904 July 31, 2009
Saw devil rays and another WHALE SHARK
Back on the surface I calculated my dive on the wheel. I wore my computer on my second dive just to have an accurate instrument for depth and time, but I worked out my actual profile on the wheel, 22 meters for 20 minutes, 12 minutes at 16, and another half hour or more at 12. We went down at the east end of the north side to about 22 meters and almost immediately encountered a school of a dozen or more devil rays. We followed them, observing them swim in formation, until they got shy and moved off. After that we rose up toward the boulders and swam in and out of the crannies (so I was never really at the edge of the profile I’d worked out, as I was on the first dive). We had misjudged the current and were swimming a little into it, and my tank had been short of 200 bar to begin with, and I started running low on air half an hour into the dive.
At about 40 minutes I signaled Mike and Nicki to continue together and I rose above them to do a safety stop starting at 41 minutes, with me getting down around 30 bar. I was keeping my eye on Mike and Nicki below, except when they became suddenly hard to see because a whale shark got in the way swimming above them and just below me at 6 meters. I set out after him, and finished out my safety stop keeping up with a whale shark. Nice safety stop to be chasing after a whale shark at 5 meters. I followed him till I thought I’d better come up due to my air situation and found myself right at the boat. Another great dive off Lima Rock!
Next morning, Mike and Nicki and I were all sleeping at the Nomad guest house. I was first up, followed by Mike, and at about ten o’clock (good moooorninngggg! Sunshine) by Nicki. We all sat outside in the heat of the outdoor dining area and had coffee and croissants while discussing our plan for the day. Options were to return to Lima with Nomad, chance of seeing whale sharks again, but late return that evening to Abu Dhabi. We had brought tanks in Mike’s car so we could also shore dive for free off the Pinnacles on the UAE side of the border, or a third option was to drive to Freestyle and get in on their noon dive to Dibba Rock and maybe see a shark or two. The decision was made in just two words, “whale shark”. It seemed that everyone was keen to take advantage of the presence of these animals just a 45 min boat ride away. They had been in residence at Lima Rock all summer. Ironically Bobbi and I had vacationed in Mozambique at Tofo, reknowned for its mantas and whale sharks. There were no mantas at Lima Rock, but this summer we didn’t need to go all the way to Mozambique to see whale sharks. They’d been spotted almost every weekend at Lima Rock, and though they are often seen there in the summer, this year they seemed to be sticking around unusually long.
But we as we had done two dives the day before, both on Lima Rock, and seen whale sharks both dives, we opted for a little variety our first dive of the morning so after motoring up the rocky Musandam coast as far as Ras Lima and Lima Rock, we continued a little ways past Ras Morovi to Octopus Rock, which BSAC used to call the Stack. Our game this dive was not mega-sized but micro. We were going to look for seahorses in the green whip corals at 20-30 meters on the south side of the rock.
Vance’s logged dive #905 August 1, 2009
Saw a SEAHORSE
Photo credit: Romir AglugubThe diving was beautiful. Vis was clear as we dropped down on the rocks with tufty blue corals and blue trigger fish skirting along the bottom. We dropped into a sandy valley between Octopus rock and the next submerged outcropping over and very slowly since we were going deep and needed to conserve air, we descended at an angle, keeping an eye out in the coral foliage for seahorses. When Nicki found one we were just on our way up from 30 meters. She was behind us but I looked around for her and saw her motioning so we all joined her. The photographers took lots of pictures. This was a good sized seahorse, Nicki called it a sea stallion, maybe 4 cm tall, camouflaged to look like other organic matter that collects in the branches of whip coral, quite difficult to spot, good on Nicki. Ken, a diver from Finland also in our group, found a scorpion fish in the same area, also devilishly concealed.
The dive was a really good one, clear vis, cool temperatures, and very easy going as we all sought to keep metabolic rates low to conserve air. There was abundant fish life with a variety of blue, white, and green soft corals as back drop. There were many morays, including a good sized honeycomb one.
One of the most interesting fishes on the reef were batfish. We came upon a few of their cleaning stations. The batfish would hover on their tails, mouths pointing up, while the little blue wrasses wriggled in and out of their mouths and gill slits. The batfish looked to be enjoying this immensely and were loathe to break off as we got too near.
Nicki Blower's video of a batfish undergoing extreme makeover
As we rounded the rock in an upward spiral one batfish followed us the whole way so he became a memorable feature of the dive. He even followed us to the ladder of the boat as we exited the water after 55 minutes of diving. On our next dive at Lima rock Nicki said she dropped in right on a batfish and she joked it was the same one, though that seemed unlikely since the two locations were several kilometers apart.
Having motored over to Lima Rock we hung out in the wind shelter of the north side during the surface interval and I went snorkeling to look for whale sharks. The people in another boat were motioning that one had been spotted on the south side of the rock earlier that day. I had a 15 minute snorkel and didn’t see one on the north side, and at the end of our surface interval the boat picked me up and took us to the south side, which to me has the most interesting diving on that rock, at least my dives there have usually been deeper and generally better than on the north side.
Vance’s logged dive #906 August 1, 2009
Saw a nothing much
We decided to enter the water at the southwest end and proceed east as far as the other end if possible. If there was still a whale shark there we would probably pass it. But the dive didn’t go as planned. There was a stiff current against us running to the west. We descended down to 22 meters hoping to get below it, but even there we were just holding ourselves in place finning into it. Divers were signaling that they preferred to just go with the current so we all turned and let the current take us. There was not so much life at this end of the rock so it wasn’t the great dive we had all anticipated. Nicki and Mike saw a torpedo ray at depth in the sand and told me about it later; apparently I had been looking up in case a whale shark passed overhead and so I missed it.
I was keeping a little high because I had exerted myself at the first of the dive and gone deep and just 15 minutes into it was down to almost half a tank. By then we had fought a slight head current rounding the point before the current slacked and let us climb up the sand slope to the rocks to 15 meters on the north side of the island. We dived that side heading east but saw no whale shark there. We stayed in the water over 50 min, Mike and I, us guys, quite low on air but swimming at 3-7 meters under the surface trying to maximize time in the water in case one of the big whalesharks should happen along, as they could do at any moment. At 53 minutes I was forced to declare my extended safety stop at an end and join Mike at the surface, and Nicki (who probably still had half a tank) followed just moments later.
The last dive wasn’t up to our overinflated expectations but we had had three really good dives over the weekend at Lima and Octopus Rocks. Whale sharks are always a gas to see, and this was only the third seahorse I had ever seen in my 40 years of diving, so we drove home happy that night (well, Mike drove actually, while I logged our dives in the car, and Nicki showed us pictures from her camera of seahorses and whale sharks and videos of titillated batfish to entertain us with on the way home).
Tuesday, July 28, 2009
Diving off Pemba, Mozambique, July 6th and 7th, 2009
Here's what I wrote about our diving in our travelogue. If you want more information about Wimbi Beach in Pemba, like where we stayed and how to get there and away, you can find the paragraphs below embedded in what is written here:
http://mozambique2009.pbworks.com/Pemba
http://mozambique2009.pbworks.com/Pemba
Vance’s logged dive #900 July 6, 2009 - Saw a SUNFISH
Pemba Dive opened at 7 a.m. and was write across the road from the Complexo Touristico Caracol, where we stayed. When Calvin, the young instructor from South Africa, came down and told us there was no diving that day, only training, but next day we could dive. So we agreed to go back there at 7 next day.
The other shop, CI Divers, was just down the beach. They opened at 8, so we had breakfast on the hotel veranda while waiting. Eventually we saw the door being unlocked so I went to ask about the diving. Here I met Pieter, the owner, who told me very well, we could go diving at 9. So we finished our breakfast and returned at the appointed time.
The local staff readied the engine and kitted our tanks for us. There were some equipment problems, like an alternate air source without a mouthpiece, quickly sorted. The gear was carried onto the boat, a wooden skiff, fine for diving in calm seas at a not-far-off location. Pieter directed us via GPS to the ‘tunnel’ a 35 meter hole in the reef about a quarter hour from Wimbi. We had with us a recently trained open water diver Pieter would be going with so they would not be going that deep. Pieter didn't seem to mind if Bobbi and I did our thing as long as we got back to the surface within an hour or so.
First impressions of Pemba were, decent vis, perhaps 20 meters, descent onto coral rubble (I was surprised to see that, hoping for coral gardens), and it was several minutes before we saw any fish at all. To make a long story short, it was a decent dive, pleasant temperature of perhaps 26 degrees, I got to 35.5 meters, the entire dive lasted 47 minutes plus the safety stop, Pieter pointed out an interesting leaf fish we would never have seen and …
At 20 meters depth almost at the top of the wall Bobbi and I encountered a sunfish, a mola mola, a huge fish about 3 meters across with no tail, but fins pointing up and down dorsal and abdominal. This thing was hulking in the water just off the reef and made little effort to evade us. In fact when it did move away it was only to circle back and return. I was able to touch it right underneath its blinking eye bulb. It felt like sandpaper (whale sharks, in contrast, are billowy smooth). In 40 years diving it was my first time to see one (also first time to see a leaf fish). The sunfish was on my list of things I really wanted to see before my time is done, and I finally saw one on July 6, 2009.
Vance’s logged dives #901 and #902 July 7, 2009
We dived the next day as well, this time with Calvin at Pemba Dive. Calvin was a bit more controlling than Pieter and although he was perfectly safe, he had a student with him and kept our dives shallow and rigorously monitored to 40 minutes, though he was flexible if anyone still had half a tank at that point and 15 min no deco time left. Our first dive was at Monty’s Fingers, a shallow reef dive. I used a 15 liter steel tank with only 3 kilos weight and I was still a touch heavy but comfortably buoyant most of the time and my air lasted for 61 minutes including the safety stop. We began the dive in at 20 meteres in an open water aquarium with lion fish and later saw two kinds of leaf fish and some nudibranchs. It was a pleasant and pretty dive for me but nothing to write home about.
The next dive was to what Calvin called the Garden of Eden, which was the top of the wall where we’d seen the sunfish the day before. This time we descended through a school of brown jellyfish which Bobbi found interesting. She was more comfortable on the second dive and enjoyed it best, but I was sorry we didn’t go looking for the sunfish, but stayed in the bommies back of the wall. The scenery was again pleasant with lots of small fish life, more nudibranchs, but again it was mainly more of an excuse to be at Wimbi beach in Pemba on a holiday rather than a thrilling great dive.
June 29, 2009 - Diving off Bazaruto Island, Vilankulo, Mozambique
Here's what I wrote about our diving in our travelogue. If you want more information about Vilankulo, like where we stayed and how to get there and away, you can find the paragraphs below embedded in what is written here:
http://mozambique2009.pbworks.com/Vilankulo
Vance’s logged dives #898 and #899 June 29, 2009
Diving off the Bazaruto Islands in winter blustery conditions was not great but turned out to be a wild African adventure, the kind that makes travel on the continent unique. We wandered down to the dive shop at 8 where 6 tanks were kitted and put on one of the South African style inflatables with the tanks lashed in the center, and we set off with two strong engines to the Bazaruto Islands to the north with the wind at our backs, so we didn’t really notice the high seas and strong wind till we reached our destination and needed to shelter inside a bit of exposed reef. We dropped one passenger there who had just wanted to visit the island park, and set off again into the chill wind and against the seas which by this time were now wild with white horses and throwing cold spray onto the boat. We cut through the waves between Bazaruto and the next island over and then headed for the reef still some distance off but marked by a distinct surf zone. We found waves several meters high when we reached the reef but got through them to the relative calm at the other side. Relative means just that and we were still dodging waves as we kitted up, but we soon had our gear on and dropped over the side of the rubber boat. Once down it was calm apart from a bit of surge.
http://mozambique2009.pbworks.com/Vilankulo
Vance’s logged dives #898 and #899 June 29, 2009
Diving off the Bazaruto Islands in winter blustery conditions was not great but turned out to be a wild African adventure, the kind that makes travel on the continent unique. We wandered down to the dive shop at 8 where 6 tanks were kitted and put on one of the South African style inflatables with the tanks lashed in the center, and we set off with two strong engines to the Bazaruto Islands to the north with the wind at our backs, so we didn’t really notice the high seas and strong wind till we reached our destination and needed to shelter inside a bit of exposed reef. We dropped one passenger there who had just wanted to visit the island park, and set off again into the chill wind and against the seas which by this time were now wild with white horses and throwing cold spray onto the boat. We cut through the waves between Bazaruto and the next island over and then headed for the reef still some distance off but marked by a distinct surf zone. We found waves several meters high when we reached the reef but got through them to the relative calm at the other side. Relative means just that and we were still dodging waves as we kitted up, but we soon had our gear on and dropped over the side of the rubber boat. Once down it was calm apart from a bit of surge.
Meanwhile up top the boat hands were having a rough time of it following Denis’s buoy and they complained of fearing to repeat the experience for us to do a second dive. Denis was talking to them about the prospects in the small cove where we had again sheltered to eat our sandwiches and get out of the cold wind as best we could. There was a huge dune there at this place called Ponta Dando which Bobbi and I climbed, sand peeling off to an improbable drop at the mounting edge. The view from the top was sauvage, rough seas all around between castaway island vistas, il n y a que du vent et de l’eau as the French had said on the last ride out.
Denis managed to calm the fears of his boatmen and conditions had at least not worsened by the time we set out for our second dive, though two divers declined the return trip and opted to wait on the island. The second was similar to the first. On these dives we dropped over coral down to sand at 20 meters. There were turtles in the rock outcrops and morays here and there, in particular some free swimming honeycomb ones, graceful. There was also a bull ray or what they call here a marble ray, also graceful as it swam away. We also found a blue spotted ray buried in the sand. Bobbi remembers the trigger fish of all kinds, blue ones, mean looking tritons and white speckled picasos. Surgeon fish looked tranquil in schools. Denis pointed out crabs in the anemones. These were not spectacular dives, just decent ones, requiring some competence in breathing to stay at depth for 45 minutes. These conditions did not warrant our diving another day but back on dry land we felt we had earned our beer and meal for the coming evening.
Saturday, June 27, 2009
Diving in Tofo Mozambique, 10 dives, June 22-27
Vance's logged dives #888-897
Diving in Tofo was quite good. Our first days there we saw huge mantas, whale sharks, a bowmouth guitar shark, leopard sharks, white tips, turtles, barracudas, devil and other kinds of rays, lots of moray eels, and some fishes unique to the waters off Mozambique.
Then the weather blew in and our last dives there were compromised by surge and poor vis, and the big animals seemed to be taking a break from the reefs in those conditions.
Bobbi and I are keeping a wiki about our trip to Mozambique. Not wishing to maintain two sites, when our diving is included in our travel, I've logged our dives in our travelogue here:
http://mozambique2009.pbworks.com/Tofo
Diving in Tofo was quite good. Our first days there we saw huge mantas, whale sharks, a bowmouth guitar shark, leopard sharks, white tips, turtles, barracudas, devil and other kinds of rays, lots of moray eels, and some fishes unique to the waters off Mozambique.
Then the weather blew in and our last dives there were compromised by surge and poor vis, and the big animals seemed to be taking a break from the reefs in those conditions.
Bobbi and I are keeping a wiki about our trip to Mozambique. Not wishing to maintain two sites, when our diving is included in our travel, I've logged our dives in our travelogue here:
http://mozambique2009.pbworks.com/Tofo
Diving at Freestyle Divers, Dibba, June 12-13, 2009
We dived at the usual place, Dibba Rock, Bobbi and I, with Freestyle on both days, staying at the Seaside in town. Glenn and Gulya and Bobbi and I shared a flat and Graham and Rachel came up on Friday night and shared another with Bunker, who had driven up with us Friday a.m. from Abu Dhabi in his own car. The plan was to let Gulya repeat her first dive on Friday (they would be arriving that afternoon). Bobbi and I would have a pleasant noon dive with Bunker, Jay’s friend.
Vance’s logged dives #884 and #885 June 12, 2009
Bunker hadn’t dived for a while so we did a ‘refresher’ for him. It’s been a while since we actually did that dive, but I recall that we did a back side dive with him except that we got separated in a surge and came back up to the surface after a minute but saw Bunker some distance away heading back down. He found other divers down below and joined them and Bobbi and I went our way. Then Gulya came and we did a front side dive with her. I think we saw sharks and turtles, and cuttlefish of course, don’t remember the rest. It was the usual 8 meter dive for 45 minutes or so.
Vance’s logged dives #886 and #887 June 13, 2009
Next day Graham and Rachael came out and we worked on rescue with them. We did the first couple of scenarios, panic diver at the surface, alternate air source ascent review in conjunction with Gulya’s ascent on her second PADI o/w dive, assists from a boat, and the like. So there were two dives with Graham and Rachel and one with Gulya, and Bobbi and I looking after them and Bunker, who was just enjoying the diving. He’d done a bit of diving already, was doing fine, fun weekend for all of us.
Vance’s logged dives #884 and #885 June 12, 2009
Bunker hadn’t dived for a while so we did a ‘refresher’ for him. It’s been a while since we actually did that dive, but I recall that we did a back side dive with him except that we got separated in a surge and came back up to the surface after a minute but saw Bunker some distance away heading back down. He found other divers down below and joined them and Bobbi and I went our way. Then Gulya came and we did a front side dive with her. I think we saw sharks and turtles, and cuttlefish of course, don’t remember the rest. It was the usual 8 meter dive for 45 minutes or so.
Vance’s logged dives #886 and #887 June 13, 2009
Next day Graham and Rachael came out and we worked on rescue with them. We did the first couple of scenarios, panic diver at the surface, alternate air source ascent review in conjunction with Gulya’s ascent on her second PADI o/w dive, assists from a boat, and the like. So there were two dives with Graham and Rachel and one with Gulya, and Bobbi and I looking after them and Bunker, who was just enjoying the diving. He’d done a bit of diving already, was doing fine, fun weekend for all of us.
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