Busy weekend certifying 3 open water divers Naira, Alfredo, and Rodrigo, and Cheryl Advanced o/w at Nomad Fujairah

My logged dives #1444-1448

Friday-Sat, May 20-21, 2016

Certified divers #229-232

Been doin’ a whole lotta divin’ lately ... The weekend of May 20-21, I certified 4 divers, three in open water and one advanced, at Nomad Fujairah. On this weekend we found renowned local underwater photographer Jean Michel "Dro" Madery at Nomad Fujairah. He posted this video on Facebook and gave me permission to repost at my blog.

The three o/w courses were all started at Nomad Ocean Adventure in Dibba Musandam (Oman), but not completed there for one reason or another. The two Spanish divers Rodrigo and Alfredo had started the course last June on a weekend where diving was canceled one day due to bad weather.  They had trained with Roula and Jahine, two Lebanese ladies who had returned to Musandam to complete the pool training and ocean dives, but the lads were never able to complete the course despite having booked (and having to cancel) on several occasions. One of them was even caught in an odd conundrum whereby his elearning expired mid-May, before we could book him for diving, so he would have to renew his academics before he could continue his training. And his training anniversary, when he would have to repeat his training as well, was coming up in June. We consulted a course director who approved my suggestion that we allow him to complete a paper-based regime to tick in the boxes on his training record. We were up to 2:30 a.m. the night before diving, getting it done, but we were at the dive center at 8 a.m. ready to hit the pool for training, so they could finalize their open water training in dives at 12:30 and 4:30 later that day, both on Dibba Rock.

These guys were joined by Naira who had had difficulties in her first day of training on her o/w course the week before but had overcome them spectacularly and was now keen to get her open water training behind her, so she joined Alfredo and Rodrigo in the pool and on our Dibba Rock dives that afternoon. Naira had trained with Cheryl who had successfully completed her course at NoA the weekend before but wanted to join Naira when she completed hers, and she opted to do so as an advanced dive student. So I spent the morning in the pool with Naira, Alfredo, and Rodrigo, and contrived to arrange our o/w dive program so as to combine courses to include advanced o/w dives for Cheryl.

Friday afternoon, we did our first dive on Dibba Rock as an advanced boat dive for Cheryl, and as open water training dive #3 for the three open water students, each of whom had already completed dives 1 and 2. Cheryl had brought along her friend Rakesh, who was a PADI rescue diver, so I had Cheryl do the topside boat-dive requirements on the way out (she was cued to ask, when it was mentioned in the briefing, where exactly the oxygen was kept, in case it would be needed). I briefed her to be sure and do a safety stop, also required for the dive, and set her and Rakesh to carry out their dive under my indirect supervision, and focused my full attention on my open water students, and the skills they would need to perform on their dive.

I started the dive by taking Alfredo on a CESA (controlled emergency swimming ascent). Instructors may not leave o/w students unattended underwater or on the surface, so my idea was to take one student, have him exhale all the way to the surface, and then be joined by the other two students, who would enter the water at that point from the boat, and we would begin the dive all together. 

This worked well, but it would only produce two CESAs in two dives that day, so I was planning to finish Naira's the next day (Alfredo and Rodrigo were leaving after certifying on Friday). But Naira had a good idea. What if, she said, I took her on the second CESA. She didn't have ear problems so she could ascend on her CESA and go back down when I got Rodrigo in the water and took the two of them down and up again. That worked well, and with the two of them back on the surface, Alfredo joined us so we could begin our second dive.

I planned the 2nd dive that day to be Cheryl’s navigation dive. The site had originally been planned for artificial reef which is ideal for navigation, but it was shifted instead to Dibba Rock, which we dived from the east mooring, near where the stingray flats are. I proposed to my divers a plan whereby all would follow me for 30 meters over the sand while Cheryl calibrated that in time and fin kicks, and then led us back to the point where we had started, the valley just below where the mooring line was fixed on the rocks nearby.I wanted to do our compass work further out over the sand where the stingrays sometimes are so I moved the group from the valley out further to a rock outcrop I thought would be recognizable and which would put our navigation legs over featureless sand. Our groups then separated. Rakesh and Cheryl went to the north 30 meters and left a plastic bottle at the end of that leg, then returned on the reciprocal heading to the starting point. I took the open water students and had them navigate to the east. 30 meters is a little long for open water students to navigate, but they maintained their headings, and I dropped a bottle full of sand 30 meters east and, the o/w students navigated the reciprocal heading to meet up with Cheryl and Rakesh at the outcropping. 

Cheryl then took us east to where the o/w students had dropped their bottle and recovered it fine. She then finned north to complete the 2nd leg of the square, and headed west from there to find where she had left her bottle on her out-and-back leg. We never found it. Had we not had o/w students with us I would have had us conduct a search pattern to look for it, but some had low air and we needed to get on with it, so I had her close the square by heading south 30 meters. We noticed we were heading into a current, and this was altering our ability to navigate accurately. As the current was against us, when we arrived without finding our starting point, I continued tentatively. Eventually we found where we had left the CESA line tied to the mooring rope.

We sent Alfredo and Rodrigo off as certified divers and they returned to Abu Dhabi. Meanwhile Cheryl, Rakesh, Nicki, and I kitted up for Cheryl's advanced open water night dive, which you can join in the video here:

Note to self: avoid rookie errors. Hold light in FRONT of camera to prevent shadow from the camera, duh!!  Do NOT shine dive light directly on subject.

The next day began with Cheryl's advanced deep dive at the Inchcape wreck. You can see in the video how this went. Jean Michel "Dro Madery" was on this dive and he pointed out to Cheryl and I where the large honeycomb morays were. In the same movement he curled his finger in a seahorse sign and indicated a direction. He was holding a large camera, and I didn't see the curled finger, but I recognize the place where he went next as being the home of the seahorse in the video he took, which I've copied off FB. So Cheryl and I missed the seahorse, but we saw two large honeycomb moray eels in the course of a 20 min dive on Inchcape.



Cheryl completed her Advanced o/w course with a Peak Perfomance Buoyancy Dive on our final dive of the day, on Dibba Rock. We started at the Aquarium mooring, west side of the rock. I had briefed her on the dive beforehand, and she carried out the skills outlined in the briefing. Diving as a newly certified o/w student, Naira was getting quite comfortable in the water as well.

Open Water Dive Course for Cheryl Bradley and Naira Khalid from Nomad Ocean Adventure, Musandam

My logged dives #1440-1443

Friday-Sat, April 29-30, 2016

I started writing this in the car at 17:45 having just left Nomad Ocean Adventure after a taxing weekend training two open water divers and finding the tailback at the border that used to be a speed bump with no control to stretch for over a kilometer. We were going to be there a while, so I knocked this out while waiting.

Molly Carter, who completed both her open water and advanced courses with me, insisted her two colleagues Naira and Cheryl take their open water dive course from me and so we set it up to meet Thu Apr 28 at Nomad Ocean Adventure. Bobbi and I arrived first and relaxed while waiting and when the ladies arrived and checked into their room we went to the majlis for paperwork. It was dark when we went to the pool to get them fitted into dive gear, and darker still when we finally started the module one training. We worked on it till ten at night. Naira had a problem needing time and acclimatization to overcome and we decided to leave it till morning.

We found there was a problem with the border not delivering permits till 9:30 am Friday and Chris decided to set the dive time back two hours next day to 11 am rather than 9, which would be good for Naira and Cheryl since we'd have an extra couple of hours to complete modules 2 and 3 in the pool next morning. So we decided to sleep an hour late and meet at 7 for training (usually we start at 6). Once in the  pool, we worked on completing module 1 for Naira, but module 2 with its mask removal and replacement needed more time than we had, so we got only Cheryl through the two modules she needed to in order to do her o/w 1 and 2 dives that day. Naira tried really hard, but eventually we had to get ready for boating. I told her I would try to take her for more training in calm water during the surface interval between dives.

So it was just Cheryl and I on the first dive at Lima Rock north. Greg Raglow was with us and he and Bobbi went on ahead while Cheryl and I were making our way down to 12 meters. Lima is always a nice dive. On this day we saw squids that turned iridescent in front of our cameras, and coy morays in the rocks. We avoided the currents that would take us to the barracudas at the points.  Greg and Bobbi were doing the same, turned around when they felt current, and we met up with them mid-way for easy peaceful diving.

See the video above ^

Naira had gone snorkeling for experience while we were under water, and when we exited the water, people were eating lunch on board, so we didn’t move to a place where I could take Naira for confined water work during the surface interval. When the boat eventually moved it took us to the next dive site at Ras Sanut, or Wonderwall. We went to a shallow cove where the staff suggested Naria and Cheryl get down together and the boat would move more toward the point, drop other divers, and come back for Naira, so I could take Cheryl for her second dive. I couldn’t take Naira for an actual dive as she had not yet mastered mask clears.

It seemed a bit complicated but turned out to be a good move for all of us. We started in water we could stand in and went into just a couple of meters, but there were a lot of fish there and we just moved up and down the shallows as if in a swimming pool. We spent half an hour just letting Naira try out an authentic but controlled environment before I went up to see what was going on with Hassan, the boatman, and found him waiting for us there.  We escorted Naira to the boat and Cheryl and I went down for her o/w dive number two. We saw a big turtle on that excursion.

Naira was transformed. She said she had had to clear her mask while she was following us around, and had managed it. She was eager to try it out in the pool where we got back to port. We went straight to the pool after diving.

The water in the pool was cool and refreshing. We started with the 200 meter swim. After that we did the duck diving exercise before putting on shorties and carrying on with our confined water work.

Cheryl had to complete the last two modules in order to do her last two ocean dives on Saturday and we set for Naira the goal of completing the mask clear in modules 1 and 2 and then doing what Cheryl had done that morning in order to do the first two dives of her course on Saturday.

Things went well after that. Naira had successfully overcome instinct and was able to clear the water from her mask without having to surface, so we moved her on to module two, where she now had to take her mask off and breathe for a minute without it before putting it back on and clearing the mask. She had cracked it now. She completed this skill with greatly improved confidence and competence.

We decided to push on into the night to complete all our confined water work in preparation for our dives the next day. For Naira, this would be what she had done with Cheryl earlier that day: establish neutral buoyancy and hover, give air to a diver using alternate air source and swim with that person, respond to air depletion by taking a buddy’s alternate air source, swimming, and surfacing with it, and finally horizontally simulating a controlled emergency swimming ascent.

To complete her final confined water module, Cheryl needed to do a different skill set. She needed to descend and remove and replace weights, remove and replace her scuba unit underwater, complete the last flexible skill of removing a low pressure inflator, and beforehand plan a simulated dive which would include her reviewing at least one previous skill.

This made it interesting. In order to complete the last module Cheryl had to plan the sequence of events that would cover all the agendas, and this is what we came up with. We would enter the water with a giant stride. The ladies would check each other for appropriate weighting. We would descend and set Naira to working on her hover and I would demonstrate and assist Cheryl with weight removal and replacement. Naira was able to hover much faster than anticipated so she observed and assisted while I demonstrated and Cheryl executed a BCD removal and replacement. We had decided next that Cheryl would review the skill of alternate air source breathing by taking Naira’s air, and Naira conducted her around the pool for several meters. Now Cheryl would do the low pressure hose removal on her own bcd, and resume swimming. I used the opportunity to trim Naira as well and with both ladies swimming neutrally buoyant I stopped Naira and shut off her air supply in the back. She knew to breathe until her air ran out and then go for Cheryl’s alternate air source. Both ladies were aware that neither of them would have use of their low pressure inflators, Cheryl’s because she had disconnected it, and Naira’s because she thought her air was switched off (I had actually turned it back on, literally behind her back). Therefore when they reached the surface on the ascent both would have to establish positive buoyancy using oral inflation. The ballet was choreographed well, and it was a pleasure to watch the ladies carry it out on the basis of Cheryl’s planning. They were both ready for the ocean now.

We finished the module with Naira’s CESA simulation, exited the pool, cleaned and stowed our gear, and went to dinner. We could sleep late in the morning, till almost 8 a.m. We were told we would be leaving the center at 9 a.m. for the boat to depart at 9:30. But at 9:30 there were people still in the swimming pool. Our group went to the harbor anyway where we were first on the boat. We had half an hour to organize our things and review our plan for the day before the others arrived. When they did, we were on our way by 10:30.

The dives went well. Both ladies showed they had learned a lot in 2 days of training. We dived from the Kayak Beach at Ras Morovi, starting in water shallow enough to stand in. But we moved to deeper water where both ladies did their required exercises for their course, and we swam against current to the crayfish cave where unfortunately none were home. That reef is beautiful though, full of teeming blue triggers. We followed the current over the saddle where the ladies pointed out morays for me to film. Turning north we headed over the cabbage coral, found no turtles, but saw a cowtail ray scurry ahead of us, disappearing more than once into the milky haze that reduced vis on this dive. We ended the dive with a CESA for Cheryl, which she conducted brilliantly from 7 meters.



The boat picked up Naira and left Cheryl and I to complete most of her surface work, so that the next dive, again on Ras Sanut, Cheryl had only to plan the dive and how we would work it around Naira’s o/w dive 2 requirements. We started with a compass navigation exercise at the surface for Naira so that she would have practice for a similar exercise under water. Down below we found a distinctive arched coral with a feather star sticking up from it and went 12 kick cycles south from that. There was a significant current pushing east so when the ladies turned around I tried to get them to hurry back north, since any delay was going to push us off our return leg. They delayed some and passed to the east of the rock on return and I thought they weren’t counting fin kicks but then they stopped and looked around. I pointed out the rock, predictably just up current from us.

We continued our dive with the current, constrained by PADI standards to going just 12 meters deep on Naira's ow dive 2. The current picked up as we neared the point, an interesting experience for beginning dive students. Here we encountered jacks and a few barracuda passing overhead. I had coached the ladies on dumping air as we went up the reef to our safety stop at 5 meters, a depth where a 5 mm wetsuit can become unexpectedly buoyant. They did a fine job coping with the current which at the end threatened to sweep us off the reef. But they stayed together and stayed down, and Naira was able to do her last exercise, surface on alternate air source, perfectly.

PADI Advance Open Water course for Laura Youngson and Molly Carter at Nomad Dibba-Fujairah, and Musandam

My logged dives #1435-1439

Friday-Sat, April 22-23, 2016

Divers certified #227-228

Bobbi and I drove over to Dibba after work Thursday and met up with Doug Cook and his wife Laura Youngson, and our mutual friend Molly Carter, for a PADI advanced dive course. We started with paperwork, dinner, and aperitifs at Alia Suites and moved to Nomad Fujairah in the morning for four dives that day. The first was a checkout dive on Dibba Rock in the morning, followed by a PADI Advanced Deep dive on the Inchcape 1, 30 meters off Al Aqaa beach south from the dive center, followed by a PADI Advanced U/W Navigation dive on the artificial reef left as a legacy dive site by Andy Moore, owner after his dad of Freestyle Divers whose shuttered shop still graces the shore on the premises of Royal Beach Resort, where Nomad have set up shop. And finally we did an interesting night dive on Dibba Rock, braving the cold wind that came up after dusk.

This video compilation shows the first dive on Dibba Rock, not a particularly interesting  one as Dibba Rock dives go, but we saw a scorpion fish, a cuttlefish,a pride of lion fish, and  schools of fish such as snappers and fusiliers on the rock itself. 

The second  part of the video shows our dive on Andy's artificial reef. The last exercise in the UW Navigation exercise is to swim a square. I did it like this. 

We started at the boat you see in the video and all swam east 30 meters where I left a small plastic water bottle there filled with sand. The students were measuring fin kicks 30 meters on that leg there and back to the boat. Next the students took us on a west heading 30 meters where we dropped a second marker and then led us back to the boat (out 30 meters and return to the same spot). We then split into buddy teams. Molly and I navigated west to the 2nd marker while Doug and Laura went east to the first one. We then took the heading that had us meet in the middle of the course. The next instruction was for each team to do the third leg of their respective square and retrieve the markers we had left there. The final leg would be a return to the boat. The video shows Laura and Molly showing the markers they had collected, proof that each team had completed the square.

That was our third dive of the day. Back to the first one, the checkout dive on Dibba Rock, we had limited our dive time to 45 min at 14 meters max depth, leaving us with a nitrogen debt on tables that worked out to give us only 14 min on our second dive of the day, the deep dive at 30 meters, after an almost 2 hour surface interval. Since we wanted to have 2 hours, we took our time getting ready for that dive. 

On the dive itself, Molly had ear problems and took her time getting down, consuming almost half that 14 minutes on the descent, and the other half was spent doing cognitive, depth and color puzzles at the bottom. We all had computers and were several minutes away from deco, so we decided to do a tour of the wreck after all. We ended up spending 20 min there, all divers safely starting their ascent just a minute or two before deco alarms sounded. This was a good lesson in the significant difference between diving tables and computers.

Here's the video we made on the 30 meter Inchcape Wreck, our Deep DIve required for the PADI Advanced Open Water course. We saw a couple of large honeycomb morays on the wreck (notice one svelt diver swimming right between it and my camera, apparently without seeing the moray). Doug found a nice scorpion fish and the other honeycomb was in the hold with a timid school of catfish.

After the night dive we moved over the border to Nomad Ocean Adventure on the Oman side, where dinner and comfortable beds were waiting. Next day we motored up to the Lima area to finish our dive course with boat / underwater naturalist / peak performance buoyancy dives, depending on how the students logged them.

Our first dive was on Lima Rock South. We went down as a group but bubbles pouring from Molly's tank and an air gage that quickly slipped to 150 bar caused Molly and I to abort this dive to replace her tank that had a valve leak with another on board. We recovered and got in a pleasant dive observing batfish at their cleaning stations and hulking honeycomb moray eels poking out of their lairs.

On Finger Rock, almost to Fishhead Rock on the way home from Lima, we found a massive stingray, and I found a small swim-through housing a crayfish colony. 

One dive-leader instructor on the boat complained to others about my coming too close to the ray, but you can see from my videos that I wasn't the closest diver, and also that the ray was not perturbed by the distance I carefully maintained from him.

You can also see in the video that my advanced student divers were displaying their peak performance buoyancy skills as they hovered around and above the ray.

Congratulations to Molly Carter and Laura Youngson on completion of their PADI advanced open water dive course, April 23, 2016.

Diving Musandam Oman with the David and Gail Muirhead party on the ABBA disco dhow

My logged dives #1430-1434

Friday-Sat, April 15-16, 2016

Here are videos from Diving Musandam Oman with the David and Gail Muirhead party on the ABBA disco dhow

Photo credit: Walter Cramerstetter

Be sure and watch these videos using HD at maximum resolution on YouTube

April 15 Lima Rock South

A pair of crayfish on our night dive on the Stack in Hablayn

April 16 Octopus Rock in remarkably clear water

April 16 Lima Rock North

Diving in Layang Layang, Malaysia

My logged dives #1418-1429

Sun-Friday, March 27-31, 2016

Bobbi has always wanted to go and see the hammerheads at Layang Layang. We have tried to make the trip before - the first time we attempted to go in season in April we were thwarted by the missing Malaysian airliner that caused our trip to be cancelled. The second time we tried we couldn't get a booking for April, but this time we were just short of the hammerhead season, our vacation falling at the end of March this year. 

We were hoping to be lucky, but to be up front about it, I didn't see any hammerheads. Bobbi spotted two she says, and others in our team got pictures of hammerheads far below us, except that one member of our group got excited and swam down to one but ended up with ten minutes of deco that one of the divemasters had to help her burn off by offering her his alternate air source. Not sure what she would have done had he not been there.

Normal diving was pretty good on Layang Layang, which is surrounded by 2000 meters of drop-offs, and whatever lives there comes up to feed every now and then. 

The video above shows one of our dives around Layang Layang where we encounter white-tip reef sharks, barracudas, schools of tuna, reef fishes such as butterflies, a clown trigger, and hard-to-see, ellusive garden eels

Sunday, March 27, 2016 First two dives on Shark Cave and Gorgonian Point

Our first day there, our first dive of that day, we were told to be at the dive center at 10:30. There we found tanks lined up and chose them and kitted up. My first choice had only 150 bar, so I found another with 180 bar. 180 was considered to be a full tank at Layang Layang. I didn't think that was a problem at the time because having just arrived after flying all night one night and then being collected at 4 a.m. the morning after the following night, I wasn't looking for ambitious diving and was expecting a check-out. This is pretty much what happened. We were taken to Shark's Cave, a wall with ledges where sharks liked to rest. For a check-out dive it was really nice, lots of whitetips, including 3 in a cave which I entered and filmed them milling about. Several were resting in sand. They sauntered off as we approached. We grew familiar with the other divers in our group. 

For the afternoon dive that day we were offered a similar spot or one where there was more current but more 'stuff'. We all opted for the stuff, and ended up at Gorgonian Forest to work our way toward Coral something. The 'stuff' it turned out were schools of batfish and mating black and white tuna, and some very large alpha male tunas leading retinues of smaller tunas down the pecking order up and down the reef just out in the blue, impressive, as you can see in the video here, giving our first impressions from our first day there.

Monday, March 28, 2016 - Dives 3, 4, 5

Monday March 28 began with a dive on The Point, the spot where everyone went to search for hammerheads. In fact we noticed that two boats were putting out as we were showing up to get ready for our dives. We didn't see any hammerheads on our dive, but one of these boats, Gavin’s group, hit the jackpot and saw a wall of hammerheads from the 25 meter fish ball on down to depth. When word of this spread, all divers there wanted to (a) see those hammerheads, and (b) compete with one another to be first on the site in the places most likely to see them. This was subject to nuance. Maybe they would be at the point or maybe at one of the sites either direction over; it was hard to tell. However that sighting on the first day impacted all our diving the rest of the trip. From now on the first dive of each day would be in the blue at 35 meters, looking for the elusive hammerheads. When we didn't see them first dive, then the second dive would start deep and in the blue. And so it went for the next few days. The first two dives included a lot of blue water diving down to near-deco and then coming up to see what was higher up on the reef.

The situation was complicated by a persistent annoyance at the dive center. In order to get several boat loads of divers into the water on a tight schedule, they would offload divers in their wetsuits and staff would take the boats around to pick up tanks, where they would replace the spent ones with replenished ones. The problem was that quality control over what was in those tanks was not consistent. So after a dive, you get off the boat and leave your gear behind. You return to the boat for the next dive and find your gear attached to a cylinder. You check air and find your cylinder to have on average 180 bar, and the boat is ready to leave. The engine is running, you can't even check to see if there is an air leak. And by 'on average' I meant that one or two tanks may be at 200 bar, most are less, and one or two in the group might have 150 bar. Since the group all stays together on the dive, this means the whole group is diving on 150 bar, and the situation could be corrected by finding a system whereby each diver chooses a tank, connects it, checks for sufficient air for the dive planned (almost all in excess of 30 meters), and can sort problems with o-rings or whatever before taking the tank onto the boat. This lapse caused problems on our dives that could have been avoided.

Diving two sites around Layang Layang, we see sharks, schools of tuna, barracuda, fusiliers, and jacks, a turtle or two, and reef fish such as puffers, clowns, and humphead wrasse

Tuesday, March 29, 2016 - Dives 6, 7, 8

On our second full day, halfway through our planned 12 dives, Tue March 29, we again headed for the Point, what I was beginning to see as being pointless (it would have been GREAT if we'd seen hammerheads, but there you are :-). 

The second dive was also pointless, but at a north west site, Wrasse Strip. Actually, it wasn't pointless for John, who showed me later a hammerhead he managed to film from way out in the blue. But on that dive, my tank had had only 150 bar to begin the dive with so I had had to ride high to conserve and couldn't really participate in the action. 

Our last dive that day was at the Crack, where we saw a few sharks on ledges.

Wednesday, March 30, 2016 - Dives 9, 10, 11

On Wed March 30, our first dive was on Gorgonian Forest, a dive site just over from the point, and one of my favorites. However, this turned into another example of how not to organize dives. Most tanks on boat were 200 bar but one diver was light, so she requested a full tank. We all concurred. John’s meanwhile was leaking so time was spent sorting his gear as well as hers. This could have been prevented, as always, if divers could simply kit their own tanks and check everything themselves, but on this day we were trying to get away early and the delays were causing impatience among the divers, as the other boats had left.

This had ramifications. Two boats appeared on the same site, and ours went in first. We had a routine for entering the water now. John and Laurie went in first followed by Bobbi and I and then others. To avoid getting swept off the site in the ever-present current, we were expected to descend on the reef and wait there, where we could get below the current and orient on features there. So we entered the water, splash, splash, Bobbi, splash, and then me, John shouted to the boat that his tank was still leaking so he returned to boat with 3 of us in the water.  Laurie, Bobbi and I, plus Eric as well, descended to the reef to stay on the site and waited, slowly consuming air. Eventually a crowd of divers appeared and moved down the reef all together, and it seemed to me to be all from the other boat. Bobbi and I, first down, were furthest up current. The two other divers further down current from us, moved over to check out the new group. Bobbi and I later worked out that their buddies would have been in that group and waved to them to join them, but Bobbi and I didn't see any signal and remained behind waiting for our group. When no other group appeared, I surfaced to find two empty boats. That's when I realized that the group that had just descended was two groups all going at once.

We were primed for a hunt for hammerheads, so I descended quickly and made for where the bubbles were still vaguely visible. Richie, one of our divemasters on this trip, had remained below to wait for us. Bobbi and I tried to head into the blue but the current slammed us back on the wall, where the fish life was actually incredible at 40 meters, a parade of hulking grey reef sharks, whitetips, tuna fish. Looking up I saw a turtle behind Richie. Richie was pointing down toward a pair of eagle rays hidden behind a thick fishball of jacks. It's in the video here.

Meanwhile our group were having another pointless dive in the blue, though Laurie saw hammerheads way deep. Bobbi and I had a remarkable reef dive with staff member Richie, the divemaster manager taking a day off (from managing, to come diving; what else would you do on a day off on Layang Layang?). It made us realize how much we were missing back on the reef by chasing hammerheads in the blue. However, the prospect of chasing hammerheads is an irresistible draw; we all succumbed to it.

Our second dive that day we went back to the point and played again in the blue. Several hammerheads were spotted. Bobbi saw one. One girl went down so deep she said she was just 5 meters above a hammerhead but she went into deco requiring a 10 min stop with buddy breathing rescue by Richie. On this dive, current was ripping the groups apart - three buddy teams in our group got separated, and Bobbi and I found ourselves diving in a wrong group for a while. It was hard to know who to follow, and when the current brought us to a calm part there were several divemasters hovering under SMBs, again difficult to identify which was our dive leader Ching Ching. Eventually we got back aboard the boat to go look for the three separated buddies who had all stayed together with Richie. We spotted them way downcurrent thanks to their trio of SMBs.

For the last dive of the day the group opted for Wrasse Strip because it had possibility of hammerheads in blue plus a nice reef. This was where I had dived with only 150 bar before and had not been able to go deep enough. I had plenty of air on this one, and someone said later that they spotted a hammerhead. Meanwhile, back on the reef, not much there, though I recall a tuna zipping across the top, and Richie's trick where he makes a ring bubble emerge from a thrust of his palm through a spray of bubbles. It was just a nice dive.

Thursday, March 31, 2016 - Dive 12

One last dive on Layang Layang with tuna, barracuda, scorpion fish, a turtle, and Richie's bubbles at the safety stop

On March 31, we had our last dive of the trip, since we'd need to vent in prep for our flight next day. Our group agreed to meet early for earliest possible departure, and Bobbi was so excited she set her alarm for 5:45, not 6:45 as planned. We went to the Point again and did the usual dive in the blue when the best dive there was deep and on the reef. But some people saw hammerheads. Bobbi said she saw one but when I looked I saw big grey reef sharks and tuna (in the video you can hear Bobbi banging on her tank to call my attention to the hammerhead, but I thought she was pointing at the reef sharks). It was still a great dive with plenty to see at depth, and Bobbi and I went 4 min into deco so we made our way slowly up the reef to chill at 10 meters, and saw a turtle there. Again, just pleasant diving, perfectly comfortable in t-shirt and half mm lycra with a rash vest, 4 kg of weight probably a kilo too much but 4 kg is perfectly balanced on my pocket weight belt.

Routine on Layang Layang

You get to Layang Layang by way of Kota Kinabalu, where you have to spend the night in order to catch the MAS Wings shuttle at 6:30 for the 300 km flight to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swallow_Reef in the Spratly Islands. There is a landing strip there 1.3 km long, running the length of the island, which offers divers their only form of land-based exercise, running up and down it, though the Malaysian military didn't like us using the 300 meters at the end belonging to their base.

The plane that brought us there collected others just leaving, in a ritual where the staff all line up and send off the old guests while welcoming the new to the resort on the island. So when the plane landed, we were ushered through singing staff onto the sun deck and into the café where we sat at tables, filled out forms, and had the routine and rules explained to us.

The routine would be idyllic the next few days. Everyone on our plane had purchased 12 dives, two the first day, 3 a day for three days after that, and a morning dive our last day, which would give us almost 24 hours of no-fly time before departure the following day.

Layang Layang dive sites from http://www.layanglayang.com/dive-sites.php?lang=en

The routine would be as follows (see also https://en.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Layang_Layang)

• At 7 am there would be a wake-up call to each of our rooms (unless we opted out). A light breakfast would be served consisting of beverages and toast, not worth getting up for. Our group opted to meet as early as possible for dives, to try to maximize the chance of seeing hammerheads.
• 7:30 – first dive of the day
• 9:00 – real breakfast, coffee, rest
• 10:45 – meet for 2^nd dive of the day
• Return at noon for lunch followed by afternoon nap or downtime
• 2:45 meet for 3^rd dive
• Return by 4:30 and wash wetsuits. Regs and BCDs were retained on the boat and returned with more or less full tanks in the morning. There did not seem to be an easy way around that procedure.
• 5 pm tea time snack, happy hour 4 till 8 (30% off alcoholic beverages, and as we found out, happy hour runs to bedtime, thanks to the friendly barman)
• 7 pm, buffet dinner, always ample. Divers on the dive boats tended to get to know one another and group around tables, so there was conviviality until bedtime.
• 10 pm, Internet might kick in for half an hour. Although staff would patiently try to help guests get connected, in fact there was no internet service there, except for the brief window at 10, and it was rumored, again at 3 am for those really desperate. Because of a problem with the phone line. I could not even connect via my 1GB roaming package I had purchased in UAE, designed to connect through Malaysian Cellcom, because the Cellcom signal rarely reached the island.

On arrival we were all informed of the rules. Since most people who come to Layang Layang are divers, or married to one, the rules all applied to diving

• No deco diving
• 40 meters max – if you go below 40 you are banned 1 dive
• If you go below 40 meters twice you are banned 24 hours
• Divemasters have the right to check your computer for violations
• If your computer locks you are banned till it clears
• If you return your tank empty there’s a $100 charge for that

Just to give you an idea of the layout, there was a Malaysian naval base at the eastern third of the island, the largest strip of exposed land in the lagoon. The base was off limits. The resort took up the rest of the island. On that part of the island, there was a central pool, a sun deck with tables, and a dining hall that was not used by guests because most opted for tables in the shade just off the deck or along the side of the dining hall, overlooking the pool, and stretching to the reception / bar area. Guest accommodation lay either side of the central communal area, and the landing strip ran the length of the island between the resort and the seawall on the side exterior to the lagoon. There was no beach, just boat docks on the interior of the lagoon adjacent to the dive center a few dozen steps from our accommodation. The dive sites were all outside the lagoon, and boats would run through two channels to reach them.

Glenn's videos

Ok, so you really want to see hammerheads? Here's what my son Glenn saw when he was there in July recently. The one in the thumbnail is obviously high up on the reef, maybe at 25 meters. All the hammerheads our group spotted were well below 40, maybe 60 meters down.

Good diving in poor visibility on Dibba Rock with under water photography Dro Madry

My logged dive #1417

Saturday, March 12, 2016

I had left my wetsuits hanging out to dry at Nomad Ocean Adventure Fujairah last week so I dropped by and collected them on my way home to Al Ain from the TESOL Arabia Conference in Dubai on March 12. While there I went for a dive with an old neighbor from All Prints in Abu Dhabi, Dro Madry, who is well known in UAE for his photos of underwater life in the waters here. We were the only real divers (apart from students and their instructors) so I followed Dro around and videoed him at work / play. It had been raining torrentially in UAE before the weekend so vis was limited, but we found sting rays and turtles and between the two of us herded a school of bat fish from under the ladder where they were "hiding.'

Decent diving, worth going out of my way for, and I left my regulator in the bath where we soak our kit after diving, so now I have something else to go back and collect for another tour of Dibba Rock next time.

Refresher diving for Greg Raglow at Lima Rock and Ras Morovi, and next day at Dibba Rock

My logged dives #1414-1416

After a stressful workweek I was ready for a break. After work and on returning to my home in Al Ain, I packed and drove by myself across the country, ending up at Nomad Ocean Adventure in time for a jog up to Golden Tulip and back before dinner. In time, Greg and Joyce Raglow arrived from Abu Dhabi. We had dinner together, Joyce brought out a guitar and suggested I play, but the critical mass was not present that evening in the few people finishing their dinner in the majlis, and we soon went to bed. I had a great night's sleep.

Next morning, I met Greg in the pool for a refresher. I had trained him in 2014 at Nomad Ocean Adventure but he hadn't been diving since then: 

http://vancesdiveblogs.blogspot.ae/2014/09/certified-greg-raglow-and-omar-ibrahim.html

We went for a two dives on Lima Rock and Ras Morovi that day. Visibility was not so good, and we didn't see anything especially interesting, though the animals that caught our attention can be seen in the video above. These include a turtle, some nudibranchs, lion fish, morays, well, the usual suspects.

Next day Joyce needed to be back in Abu Dhabi early so I suggested we slip over the border in the morning and dive from Nomad Fujairah on Dibba Rock on that side. Again vis was poor but this is always a nice dive. The fish at the Aquarium continue to enthrall, and we ended with a small ray in the sand flats where in better vis we can sometimes see more of them, logged in the video above.

One interesting aspect of this trip was how lively Nomad was. Divers from all nationalities appeared, especially a group of Spaniards. Joyce again brought out the guitar, and Greg turned out to be something of a troubadour. Sylvia exclaimed how great it was to see how it was in old times. Steve did a near knock off of Classical Gas. Someone even handed me the guitar ...

Regarding the diving, next day a whale shark was spotted up north. Lara, pictured in the video above, sent Greg this photo.

Nice!