Certified Molly Carter PADI Open Water at Blue Planet Diving, diving Dibba Rock November 14-15

My logged dives #1312-1315

Certified Molly Carter in PADI o/w, also diving with Marian Slangen, working on PADI open water course; Dan Miles, PADI Master Scuba Diver; and dear Bobbi, PADI rescue

On Oct 22 I submitted my passport for visa renewal and have been without it ever since. On Nov 6 I was supposed to take Marian Slangen to Nomad Ocean Adventure but the passport was not returned by the time they needed to apply for a permit for me so I had to cancel but I tried to take her to some place on the East Coast UAE where I wouldn’t need my passport. I called around trying to arrange an alternative and found places at Scuba 2000, but in the short time it took me to get Marian’s confirmation on her willingness to go, Hassan emailed me his apologies, but the places had been already taken.

Bobbi remembered that Dro Madry had been putting photos on FB from around Dibba Rock, and he was using Blue Planet Divers (Freestyle having moved to Um Al Qawain, and Freestyle were involved in beach cleanups that weekend, and they didn’t think the weather was going to be good anyway, and they were right.)  We managed to get places at Blue Planet Diving at Holiday Beach opposite Dibba Rock, but they informed me Friday morning that the UAE Coast Guard was prohibiting small boats from leaving port, so we decided to go for Saturday, but in the end that was cancelled also, same reason, so we didn’t go anywhere that weekend.

We had reservations the following weekend at NOA too, for Molly Carter and others who wished to join us, but come Monday, same problem, still no passport, had to cancel diving for the six who were booked in with me.  I gave my students the option of going ahead with Nomad, postponing with me for a later date when I could get there, or I could try an east coast UAE alternative as I had the weekend before, only now I had the contacts. Molly wrote back that she would prefer I taught her, she didn’t care where, and her Master Scuba Diver friend Dan said he’d follow us as well, so I booked five of us into Blue Planet for Dibba Rock diving, and apologized to NOA, who were understanding about the situation.

Thu night Nov 13, Marian, Bobbi and I ended up taking an apt at the Alia Suites in Dibba for 250 a night, 125 per room with 2-baths, kitchen, and sitting room, and Molly and Dan too, one across the hall. We went shopping at Lulu’s and brought a decent meal home and washed it down with beverages we didn’t have to sneak across the border. Molly took her eLearning quick review and filled out the paperwork,  and we had a pleasant evening together in one of the sitting rooms and retired at a reasonable hour.

Blue Planet came alive at 8 a.m. and we planned to be there then to get our gear ready for the pool at 9:00. Waking up wasn’t a problem because of the pigeons and doves outside our window cooing gently at 6:30 sharp. We had coffee from a press brought from home and breakfasted on items from Lulu’s and were in the pool at 9 for Molly’s module 1 and repeat practice for Marian.

The plan was to get Molly through pool module 3 that morning, which Marian had completed in Al Ain, so that both could do two dives with BPD that day. We had some equipment issues and the usual unexpected occurrences that compounded into delay, one of them being that the pool was icy cold. We endured it for module 1 but were under-dressed in lycra, and were happy to get out of the pool and back to the sunshine at the dive center.  I tested the water off the beach and found it to be clear, calm, and warmer, so we decided to do a shore dive there, but Marian had not been totally comfortable in the pool, so I thought we should work on mask clears for Module 2 as our next move, and as time was getting on, I changed the plan to do a shore dive at our convenience that morning rather than try and make a 1:30 dive boat, and dive the 3:30 at Dibba Rock as our second dive of the day.  When things went longer than expected still, I decided to get Molly through module 3 as quickly as possible leaving just barely time to do a shore dive along the breakwater extending past our confined water area.  There wasn’t much there, just a few fish, but I managed to get a minimal dive in with the two students going out and back along the jetty, focusing on buoyancy and acclimatization in the water and on gradually increasing the depth.

We were back on shore in time for the scheduled 3:30 dive in which Bobbi and I took Molly on a PADI OWSI dive #2 for the course. She had had ear problems in the past but worked her way down the mooring line ok. It was an entertaining slow descent with schools of fusiliers near the surface and huge jacks milling about near the bottom, and as I waited for Molly on the line, a pair of large barracuda passed near the rope. At the bottom we were in the aquarium with its schools of snappers and parrot fish and sergeant majors. In the sand there I got her through the skills ok while Dan and Bobbi wandered off on their own. We caught up with them soon enough and found a puffer with one eye, and Bobbi and Dan found pipefish, morays, and a flounder in the sand. But Dan went up early, cold he said, so Bobbi and Molly and I drifted with a steady current over the shallow rocks looking for big stuff, finding plenty of small, and generally enjoying the dive. We got barely lower than 5 meters, and at the end of the safety stop, Molly and I ascended on alternate air source, as required in that module.

Overnight, and after another communal meal and civilized sipping, Marian reflected on what she would need to do to improve and emerged next morning a stronger diver than the day before. She is analytical and matter of fact, and if she surfaces prematurely, sometimes it’s to ask a question that will help her to better understand what she should be doing to correct a problem. I try to keep students underwater to the extent possible, but it’s Marian’s learning style to do it her way, and with patience, it seems to be gradually working.

So Saturday we arrived at the dive center a little after eight and when the boat left for Inchcape for the first dive of the day (to 30 meters, not for us) my group were in shallow confined water by the breakwater for Molly’s module 4. Marian decided to observe and practice the basic skills, which was the best way for her, but after helping Molly through her hover, we took the tanks back to shore and Marian succeeded in duck diving with air control through snorkel breathing at the surface. So she accomplished a good start on Module 4 training, and Molly completed hers.

Molly disassembled and reassembled her equipment and we returned to the pleasant water off the beach for her final module where she removed and replaced weights and scuba unit at the surface and again at the bottom, to complete her pool training. Marian came along for the experience and managed a mask clear competently. We exited the water in time for the scheduled noon dive at Dibba Rock.

We had to wait a while till the boat returned from Inchcape, and during this time we ate and I explained the compass to the two ladies, and they did their 200 meter swim tests out to the end of the breakwater and back. We were thinking to enter the water to do some flexible skills when the boat arrived, so we boarded instead, and went to the east of Dibba Rock where the mooring is a bit deep for concerned beginners, 8 meters, but at least there was a mooring line to descend on, and no current. Vis appeared good from the surface but at depth it was cloudy. Marian was uncomfortable with these conditions but descended part of the way with us, and when she decided to return to the surface it was in a safe and controlled manner.  Molly was working on her ears to 8 meters and on arrival at depth orally inflated her bcd. We were about to do a mask clear when Bobbi started banging her tank, shark! I instinctively focused on the shark for the seconds it took to pass us, Molly saw it and got excited (she said later, with pleasure I hope), but the change in breathing took her to the surface in no time, and we had to work through the ears again to return to the same depth. Again we managed it, and as we resumed our dive, again we saw a black tip, and again another. I got a good shot of one of the sharks and panned to Molly and Bobbi in the same segment. In all we saw 4 sharks, a real treat to see them back at Dibba Rock. And to top it off, as we passed along the reef to approach the aquarium, finding pipefish and lion fish along the way, Bobbi found a huge barracuda at just 3 meters and was trying to get our attention when a turtle came meandering toward her, again on video. Great dive

It was almost 2 p.m. when we regained shore and went back to switch our tanks to the ones we’d been using earlier with still 150 bar remaining. Acting on Alla’s suggestion that we try the jetty at the far end of the beach which had a reef extending from it to the north, we plotted our last dive there, with intent to get all our flexible skills and surface work done in the water as we snorkeled out. So the four of us, Bobbi, Molly, Marian, and I kitted up, buddy-checked, and walked down to the far end of the beach where we entered the water over the rocks. I  remember the time, because it was just an hour before high tide at 4 p.m. We did the surface exercises en route and dropped in at around 3:30 to just 3 meters of water near the point, so I led us to the north, looking for suitable depth and a place where we could set up a controlled emergency swimming ascent. On the way I found impressions in the sand of an odd-looking ray so I wasn't surprised when a cloud of sand kicked up and I saw a guitar shark shoot into the haze to scoot out of our way and vision.  We carried on and soon came on the same shark (presumably) lying in the sand – must have been the same as he hadn't had time to bury himself. I was pointing it out to the others and fumbling for my camera when he performed his quick escape trick, leaving us in a puff of silt. But now my camera was ready so when he re-appeared skimming the top of the reef to our right I got him on flash memory, I think.

The guitar shark made this dive a memorable one, and a great end to the weekend. Afterwards I had the ladies do an underwater compass heading round trip, which they did just fine, and Molly removed her mask and replaced it and hovered on the reef. Marian did great and stayed down at over 5 meters for almost 40 minutes. At that time I rigged my reel with a marker buoy to the surface and we all surfaced together, Molly in CESA mode. We came up in balmy conditions with a long swim back to the beach but everyone happy and coping well with the exertion.

Molly thanked me for pushing her and called me a legend. Marian was happy with the weekend and appears to have surmounted the hurdles that were preventing her from truly enjoying herself. Molly got certified and Marian will be back to finish the job. Thanks to Alla and Slava, personable owners of Blue Planet Diving, Dibba, Fujairah, for facilitating things with their flexible and professional services, and looking forward to diving with them again soon.

Freestyle diving, Dibba Rock, Dec 1-2, 2012: Started Bonnie's OW dive course

My logged dives #1172-1173

It was National Day weekend in the UAE, a long 4-day one for me and Bobbi, and her colleague Bonnie. Bonnie is going to the Maldives with diving friends and wanted to start her PADI open water dive course.  The weather in Abu Dhabi for the weekend looked stormy and windy, but WindGuru was showing conditions on the east coast to be placid for Saturday and Sunday, so with all of us including Nicki packed cozily into our Honda MRV/Pilot, we started out at leisure for a long drive Friday afternoon across a rainy Emirates.  The drive became longer through a series of mishaps.  It was raining hard as we passed by Abu Dhabi airport and we somehow ended on the Suweihan road.  We used to reach the Eastern Region this way so we carried on under cloudy skies that alternatively darkened and drenched the desert.  Past Dhaid we found lengthy tailbacks approaching Masafi, with too many National Day shoppers crowding the roadside "Friday Market". This brought us to the cement factory near Dibba almost exactly an hour later than we would have arrived had we gone our usual route.  By now it was pouring down rain and getting dark. We found the border crowded, chaotic, and uncomfortably lit with vision impaired by headlights in the drizzle, and for the first time ever we were turned back.  

Fortunately we knew of accommodation in the residence apartments in Dibba. These had tripled their rates for the weekend but we still found an affordable two bedroom flat in Alia Suites, outside of Dibba for 1000 dirhams a night, or $368 dollars, which made it $40 a night per person, the best deal we would likely get on such short notice on a holiday weekend.  Any port in a storm: it was roomy, clean, and comfortable, amazingly had free wifi, and normally would have been a third that price. We catered it with Indian chat and tandoori from Lulu's, and bevvies from our coolbox. We were a positive, compatible group of friends, out for an adventurous long weekend.  Anything could happen.  We were enjoying ourselves.

Next day was beautiful, clear skies, no trace of the rain the night before apart from puddles in the road and wadis.  Nicki made us all filter coffee and we turned up at Freestyle divers at 9 a.m., on spec, and found that their one boat was doing Dibba Rock shuttle service the two days we would be there.  This was ideal for dive training.  Freestyle Divers is on the premises of Royal Beach resort, there is a pool there we can use for dive training, and with three rides a day out to Dibba Rock, there are many options for blending ocean diving with confined water.

Bonnie had completed the PADI eLearning course online, so we got her started in the pool. The way the course works, after the initial pool session, dive students are ready to try out the ocean, and the first dive of the course is FUN, no skills allowed.  Bonnie did great in the pool and ocean despite strong currents as we tried to find our way along the reef that has all but disappeared.  

Air temperatures early December in Dibba were balmy, but the ocean was a cool 25 degrees centigrade.  Bonnie had rented a 3 mm wetsuit, and Nicki lent her a hoodie to augment that, but the rest of us were diving in 5 mm suits. We were dropped in at the aquarium where all the fishes are, and though we had to fin a little into the current  rounding the island from the channel, it was not difficult at that point.  There are masses of fish in the aquarium, always captivating with clouds of snappers covering the rocks, punctuated by the occasional silver trevally, rainbow wrasse, and puffer fishes riding high above the fray. We found a little torpedo ray that followed us around like a puppy dog, and we showed it a flounder we found in the sand there (the moses sole).

From the aquarium I tried to lead us onto the reef, identifiable from its loud clacking.  I think I took us beyond it, looking for sharks which we can sometimes see there, and at its southern end Bonnie surfaced and we drifted a little to the east, but when we got back down and finned north, we found ourselves on the raspberry coral at the eastern end of the L which is a good place for turtles. We had welcomed a 5th diver into our group, Andrew Roughton, he had a camera, and he snapped this picture of the turtle we found there.

If there had been no current we could have gone back west to the right angle of the L and followed it back north to return to the aquarium, but there was no way.  The current was too strong, so I indicated we move to the north toward the rock.  Nicki and Bobbi duly complied and soon disappeared to the north, while Bonnie and I found it easier to go with the current from where we were, and Andrew, coming behind, followed us. The current guided us gently over some more raspberry coral patches like those in the photo, where we found cuttlefish, and some rock bommies where batfish lived. Bonnie was curious about the sea cucumbers, and people in Hawaii do worse to them than just touch them (they put them on rocks to make them eviscerate and show their kids) so I picked one up and handed it to her underwater. They feel soft and squishy if you're expecting something else. At 50 min on my dive computer and surfaced with Bonnie.  It was a nice dive.  Bonnie logged it on FaceBook:

That afternoon Bonnie and I returned to the pool and finished all of her remaining pool modules. We had changed to Lycra for this, perfect for the warm pool, but cold each time we had to come back to the pool deck and brief the next module and change tanks. 

Next day we returned to Freestyle, this time to dive on their 9 o'clock boat, which didn't get away until after ten, which provided ample time for Bonnie to get her equipment set up and sorted, and in the end we were on the boat awaiting others. Unfortunately Bonnie had made a tactical error in purchasing what she thought was a copy of the mask she had been renting, but which in the ocean turned out to be too big for her.  This delayed her descent until Phil on the boat offered to lend her his.  It was the same model, but again just different enough that it fit her, and she and I were able to get down and dive together.  The others had gone off already to dive the back side of the island.

Andrew took this picture of Bonnie on her first day of diving

There's really nothing worse for a beginning diver than a mask problem. The diver can't see properly and takes in water. The diver is not experienced enough to know what s/he is doing wrong, and it compounds anxieties. I had tried tightening the strap and defogging it with spit, but there was no way around the ill fit. But when Phil provided his mask Bonnie was at least able to come long and enjoy the dive.  We started in the aquarium as we had the day before.  There was only a hint of current, so I led us onto the coral reef we had been looking for the day before.  Today I was able to pretty much follow the reef, where we found a couple of cuttlefish that I moved my hand near, so they would back off iridescent. The current was more noticeable there so I turned us back north to regain the calm of the aquarium, but it was a stiff fin into current on a north compass heading to get us into the lee of the island where the current slackened, and Bonnie was doing well to keep up.  We had gone now to almost ten meters which made me realize we were getting swept a little off the rock, so I followed the contour east and found a small school of large barracuda lurking. We swam close to those, and found batfish nearby, and I was of two minds whether to go south to back to the aquarium or continue around the back of the island.  We passed under the shadow of a boat and Bonnie signaled she wanted to ascend, so we came up 35 min. into the dive.

Bobbi and Nicki were enjoying their dive as well, finding morays and pipe fish on the back side, and being dogged as usual by the playful torpedo ray. Dibba Rock appears in the good vis we had today to be making a comeback from the twin hits of cyclone Gonu and prolonged red tide, plus harbor and villa construction up and down the coast there. Bonnie decided to return later to complete here course, and no one was that excited about Dibba Rock to go again that day, so we made an early return to Abu Dhabi, arriving just in time so see the precision flyers in acrobatic formation off the corniche, after two fun days out in a beautiful country celebrating its 41st national day that weekend.

Finished PADI Advanced o/w course with Luke Ingles in Musandam with Nomad, Jan 27, 2012 - and Dibba Rock from Freestyle Jan 28

My logged dives #1107-1109

After our diving was aborted by bad weather (or expectation of bad weather) the previous week, Luke and I returned to Nomad with Nicki in tow, Bobbi stayed sick in bed. We did a multilevel dive our first dive.  We planned a 30 meter dive for 15 min, to come up to 20 meters for 10, and then finish out the dive above 16, but in actual fact we did this on our first dive at Ras Morovi:

We entered the water at 12:33

• We dove only to 75 ft (22 m) for 30  minutes to accumulate nitrogen up to PG Q
• We then came up to 50 ft (16m) for 15  minutes to  accumulate nitrogen up to PG V
• And we finished above 40 ft 12 meters for 11 minutes to emerge (after a safety stop at 5 m) in PG X

The dive wasn't phenomenal.  We were last in the water, Ivor shepherding some open water students and photographers so we had no one to guide us to the deep spot at 30 meters where the barracuda hang out.  Luke, Nicki and I plunged as far as we could but reached only 22 meters where I didn't see the tell-tale sea grasses I was supposed to be watching for. So we worked our way back up the channel where Nicki started finding stuff. First she found some neat miniature crabs in some anemonae.  Then she discovered a flounder (sole) in the sand and not long after that a scorpion fish.  We both saw the turtle at the same time.  It was Luke's first time to see a turtle, though I've seen that particular one before, a small one with barnacles on its back.  He's young and likes to move fast in the water.

The second dive was across the bay at Lulu Island. This was one where we start inside Lulu Island and round the point and then head east.  It's a cool navigation exercise since after 10 min we arrive at these looming submerged rocks, swirling with trevali and other interesting fish. We didn't see much on this one, a moray on the way over, another scorpion fish.  We came up the back side and crossing the saddle to the inside of the crescent which these islands form we hit stiff current, very stiff.  I was already coughing since it's winter here, the water is 23 degrees (5 mm wetsuit helps :-) and I'm getting over a cold.  But with the current, exertion, coughing, I was low on air at 40 min.  Luke too, the two of us came up together, though I popped back down to see what Nicki was up to at 5 m, not much from what I could see.

For the record, on this dive

• we descended at 14:45 after 1 hour 12 min surface interval as G divers
• Dived at 16 meters for 42 minutes (47 min NDL)

We were  very glad we didn't dip below 16 meters at any point during the dive because then we would have had only 34 min NDL and such a dive might have posed serious health risks.

It was a cold boat ride back to Nomad but Luke and I were prepared for it with lots of layers of wrap.  It was relaxing.  Back at Nomad's homey hostel, Luke and I went for a run up the road to the Golden Tulip and then returned on the beach, a lovely sunset run dodging waves lapping.  On arrival back at the hostel, someone handed me a welcome beverage and I never showered from the run, just sat until dinner time enjoying the company, enjoying the company after dinner, doing a round on guitar, nodding off at the table, finally going to bed just after midnight, and sleeping till 8:40 a.m.

We had booked in at Freestyle for a boat ride out to Dibba Rock at 9:00 but at our breakfast table at Nomad I checked an email from them that said they were doing an expedition south in their only boat, but we were welcome to come and shore dive, so that's what Luke and I did.  We got there at around 10:30 after espresso and croissants at Nomad, found a gorgeous day with calm clear seas, walked Luke through his last remaining advanced navigation dive on dry land, kitted up and hit the water for the long swim out on a 30 degree heading.  We were doing fine until we neared the island and picked up a noticeable current that started sweeping us west.  I told Luke we should descend and continue underwater, our only hope of not being swept off the site entirely.

We descended and found ourselves trying to tack north by facing east and keeping ourselves crabbing toward the reef to the north. It was hard work trying to insinuate ourselves onto the reef that way and not get hammered off it, as the current was trying to do.  However as I worked my way onto the reef I was rewarded by the sight of half a dozen devil rays swooping overhead.  I looked back toward Luke but there were only bubbles.  Up ahead a turtle veered off the reef, again Luke a bit too far behind.  I clawed my way onto the reef hand over hand grabbing whatever boulders I could find.  Another turtle darted overhead.  I found a sandy patch and waited for Luke. When he arrived I pulled out a slate and wrote on it, "6 devil rays, 2 turtles."

But this was not easy diving, and how were we going to do any navigation work in this current?  I thought the only way was to get into the lee of the island.  That would be to the north. I wrote on the slate and handed it to Luke "must go north."

I moved in that direction heading my body almost east, tracking to the north, just kicking myself into the current and letting the current move me north.  A shark came into view.  I turned to look for Luke, again trailing behind.  I stopped and added to the slate, "1 shark".  When Luke caught up I showed it to him.

Amazingly the shark came back.  I saw it at the edge of vision where the shark moved, difficult to see if you weren't accustomed to their movements.  Luke peered that way.  The shark kept in view, circling us.  Eventually he turned our way and I went his.  He was in plain view now, Luke saw it, his first ever in the wild.

When the shark passed we continued north and soon arrived at the Aquarium in the lee of the current, and here we were able to conduct our navigation exercises.  Luke did fine, but all the exertion had taken us below 100 bar. We still had to get back to shore, many hundred meters the way we had come.  I wrote on the slate "home = 210 degrees".

We headed back that way but I deviated to follow the reef. The entire dive we were shallower than 10 meters. Overhead a devil ray passed and Luke saw that one.  There were lots of other fish, like giant puffers, but no more really salient creatures.  We reached the end of the reef and headed out over the sand.  When Luke ran low on air we surfaced.  Up top we were caught in the sideways current and had to fin at an angle toward our destination, partly against the current.  But the closer we got to shore the more the current relented.  Our only problem here was the bloom of jelly fish, small ones, most of whom were benign.  Occasionally one would get caught in a mask strap or get trapped in our lips or neck and caused minor annoyance.  But we made it back ok, interesting diving, truly advanced.

Certified Ed Lewsey in PADI O/W diving at Freestyle in Dibba, October 21-22, 2011

My logged dives #1084-1087

This weekend I had the pleasure of certifying someone who not only already knew how to dive, but was fit enough to keep up with me :-)  Ed had done a discover scuba diving course three years ago on the Great Barrier Reef in Australia and went on to do five dives with an instructor there.  He called me up early in the week and was so keen to start the course that he did the elearning in the week before the weekend and caught a cab to the airport in time for Bobbi and I to pick him up at 7 a.m. there and take him over to Dibba.  Bobbi and I met him there because we were living near the airport in temporary accommodation in the new city rising from the sand there called Khalifa A.

It's always nice to see our old friends at Freestyle Divers.  Andy and his team are accommodating of my small groups.  This weekend it was me diving with Ed on the course, and Bobbi diving with Vaughn, an assistant instructor who is new in town and got in touch with us through Froglegs Scuba Club, and was tagging on for a weekend of diving.  Coincidentally Vaughn was getting a visa put in his passport, as were Bobbi and I for my new job with HCT / CERT / Naval College, so none of us had passports that would give us the option to cross a border to dive anywhere in Oman, Damaniyites or Musandam, that weekend.

Ed didn't seem to mind.  We were at Freestyle and kitting up before 10 a.m. since from the airport it takes less than 3 hours to reach Dibba.  There was a brisk breeze blowing from the mountains, causing mild chop between the shore and Dibba Rock, but the water was relatively clear.  I reminded Ed how to assemble his gear and don it and we traipsed down to the seashore for a quick run through the module 1 skills, which had to be completed before we could go for a dive at noon.

The vis wasn't bad, and water temperatures were ideal, probably about 29 degrees C, refreshingly cooling for me in my .5 mm lycra.  The outside temperatures were balmy, the only discomfort was the wind chill when exiting the water or walking around wet.  Other than that the sun brushed us mildly, but was not intense.  It's that time of year in the UAE when it's great to be outdoors and diving, a short-lived period before winter sets in and diving gets chlly again.

We were dropped at the acquarium mooring, a lovely place to begin a dive, teeming with snappers and golden treveli and puffers and parrots and rainbow wrasse. I led us the usual route along the acquarium and then to the west where the clacking of the animals living in the coral could be heard loudly.  Bobbi and Vaughn saw a shark there but Ed and I were ahead and missed it.  Bobbi said later she saw cuttlefish and flounder later in the dive, but meanwhile we as a group went to the southern point of the L shaped reef but I couldn't find the way to the east out the L. It petered out on me and I reversed but again couldn't really identify the reef, so I turned north and ended up on compass over sand bottom. I was lost and decided if I headed north I would cross the reef, but that didn't happen, we started getting to around 10 meters, which was too deep, and I noticed Ed and I had lost Bobbi and Vaughn.  So the two of us continued and when we got to 11 meters I realized I was on the west side of the reef and I should go east to find it.  East didn't help much, it seemed to be getting deeper, could I have gone past the island on the seaward back side?  By now the sand seemed to be sloping slightly to the south so I headed that way and happily ended up back in the acquarium and familiar territory, where we found a big crayfish hiding under a rock.

Ed and I had been diving for 45 minutes now but Ed's air supply was holding out so I led back past the beautiful fishes and back to the reef as at the start of the dive.  We passed over the reef and sort of hung out there.  I led to the shoulder, what I now call Shark Shoulder, because that's where this weekend we would go to see sharks. We hadn't seen all that much this dive, I had got us lost, it was Ed's first dive in a while and he didn't seem to mind, but we were coming up on 58  min of dive time with not much to show for our house reef.  At 59 minutes, we needed to go up.  And that's when the shark appeared, coming in over the reef pretty much at our fin tips where we hovered, and flashing off to the right just as the 60 ticked over on my computer, and I signalled up.  Ed was chuffed.

Between dives, Ed and I did the next two pool modules.  They went smoothly with him.  We went in off the beach where he took his mask off and breathed for a minute in no time, and we decided to go up to the pool for module 3 for fresh water and a look at the young buff Russian girls in their thong bikinies. The only problem was it was almost 3 pm.and we'd have to hurry so as not to hold up the last dive of the day.  I've had a lot of experience with Freestyle and it almost never happens that a 3 pm dive leaves any earlier than 3:30, and Ed was speeding through the pool work. All went according to plan.  Ed completed the pool training in 15 minutes, and with over 170 bar in our tanks we were back at the Freestyle beach.  The time was precisely 3:19.  I know because that was the time on my watch as I looked over the top of it at the Freestyle boat which was at that moment pulling away from its mooring right off the beach with a boat-load of divers on board.

They could have cut the engines and taken us aboard.  We were fully kitted, buddy checked, and still wet from the pool, ready to hop aboard. Later I heard from those on board that the boat was full (uh, we'd booked the dive), and from another perspective, there was an instructor on board who thought a dive scheduled for 3 pm should depart at 3 pm and according to that reasoning, we'd missed it.  Whatever, the boat left without us.  So we decided to just swim out to the rock.

The wind was the main problem, blasting in from the west, so we had to angle slightly on our northerly heading so as to keep moving toward the left shoulder of the island. Other than that, there was not much current, and Ed managed to get in a 300 meter plus plus (about half a km actually) surface swim with mask and fins, and also a surface compass heading, albeit somewhat more extreme than we usually have beginning divers do.

The dive itself was not all that great.  The wind had churned the waters and a silt had moved in, clouding vis a bit.  We managed to find one of the raspberry coral reefs to drop in on but there were no big animals there.  We worked our way east and then north along the reef where the only large animal mid-water was a lone cuttlefish on a mission (to find another, perhaps) beelining over the reef.  Still the schools of snappers and treveli in the acquarium were captivating, and there we reversed to head south and west back over the L shaped reef.  We made our way west until we found the spot of raspberry renewing itself and hovered there observing the small fishes and hoping for something larger.  When our air dipped below 100 bar, and 50 min into the dive, I signalled a southern heading back over the sand.  This should have got us home but the current was pushiing to west and we angled past Freestyle so that after a long underwater swim we ended up in the bay of the palace overlooking the sea.  We surfaced on alternate air source as called for in PADI o/w dive #2, and the hardest part of the dive was finning against the current to get us back to Freestyle divers.  People there had been watching for us.  They had seen us miss the boat, all kitted and ready to go, and I had mentioned to Bobbi that if that happened we would shore dive.  They hadn't expected us to swim all the way out to the island though.  Ed was pleased not only with the accomplishment but that he had saved 100 dirhams on the shore dive.  The price of that trip has doubled in the ten years we've been dving this spot.

Ed and I weren't finished yet though.  We went in the pool for his last two pool modules and then we cleaned out kit and stocked up on beverages from the off license. We returned to Dibba and foraged for food at Lulu's, and then settled into our accommodation at the Seaside for the night.  Despite a morning prayer call and sermon from the mosque outside our window, Bobbi and I got some blessed sleep, a break in our routine of up by 5 each weekday morning on account of my new job.  In the morning we were back at Freestyle to knock off the rest of Ed's dive course.

Conditions in the morning were lovely.  The wind had died down a little and water visibility was restored.  Ed and I were looking forward to a great day diving.  We had decided to start off with a controlled emergency swimming ascent, which takes a little time, so Bobbi and Vaughn decided to go off on their own.  Andy moored the boat on the buoy nearest and to the east of Dibba Rock, so our CESA was performed in the aquarium.  Ed wanted to try diving the back side of the island but first we wanted to check out the raspberry reef at the north shoulder of the L.  I'm starting to call this "Shark Shoulder" because this is where we've been seeing those creatures most consistently.  We were not disappointed on this dive.  We were practicing hovering in the spot where they usually appear when two appeared, swam off, and then reappeared.  It's nice to see two sharks together.  We waited neutrally buoyant for them to return but when they didn't we headed back toward the aquarium.  Here a third shark came into view, swimming right across our bow as they often do.

We spent the rest of the dive on the back side of the island without seeing much of anything.  Ed was now just one dive short of certification.  On this last dive the boat discharged its divers just west of the reef on one of the moorings midway down the L. The four of us, Bobbi her buddy Vaughn diving with Ed and I moved in over the ruins of the once thriving reef.  I was ahead and saw a large, at least two meter long, Spanish mackeral cruising over the reef.  I think the others missed it.  That's pretty much all I remember about that dive, except that we went to the back side of the island, and all divers performed well. Ed was enjoying himself at the end of the dive, which we called to a halt as our computers ticked into 60 minutes.

Abu Dhabi wrecks again, Ludwig and somewhere near Jasim, Aug 5, 2011

My logged dives #1061-1063

Bobbi, Dusty, and Michelle and I accepted an invitation from Al Mahara divers to come dive with Kathleen and Peter, our old friends (but not as old as we are :-).  We were trying to dig out our old GPS coordinates and locate the wrecks for one thing, and Kathleen wants to find them so she can take divers there for her new dive center.

I was helpful in locating the Ludwig.  That's always been one of my favorite wrecks.  That dive was a nice one. We dropped anchor after inching near the wreck but we couldn't get the boatman to get on it so finally we dropped anchor 200 meters from it, and the anchor dragged showing that distance increasing to 300 but then held steady.

In any event the Ludwig is not hard to find.  It's a big wreck.  It looms large if you know which direction you need to go to find it.  So Bobbi and I and Michelle crept up on it upcurrent at 26 meters or so till we saw the shadow of its hull. When we arrived there I led us to the stern and looked in the sand there for rays, found none, and so I led around to the deck side and then went up along the fo'castle to the high point of the wreck which happens to be the starboard side of the wheel house.  There the door was removed long ago making it easy to enter the wheelhouse which, being on its side, is a descent to the port side, which now lays in the sand.  The wheelhouse is roomy and doesn't feel that confined since there are window holes there that still overlook the ghostly deck.  But the big surprise was at depth where there used to be rubble there obscuring the exit to the sand.  It's been removed.  It's now an easy thing to go in the top of the wheelhouse, descend to the opposite side, and find and exit to the sand.  Who's been cleaning up this wreck?  Nice of them!

After that we proceeded along the bottom of the deck where the ship lays on its side until the bow.  I was keeping an eye on my computer, hoping to find something interesting at the bow (used to be lots of barracuda there) and knowing that we could then follow the deck up so as to manage the fact that we were then just one minute to deco.

To make a few more minute story even shorter, we followed the deck up as it contoured to 20 meters, the time to deco kept getting bigger but then counting down as we watched the fish up top. We were by now with Kathleen and her crew who were also finding their way up.  There was a rope trailing off the deck and I got my crew on it so as to have a reference for safety stop at 5 meters, and the entire dive lasted perhaps 40 minutes.

From there we motored south towards home and towards our GPS points for the Jasim, but we had worse luck here. I was unsure of where my coordinates came from.  Kathleen had some as well but in the end we tried mine, and these turned out to be on the tall buoy some distance from the wreck, so we never did find it.  Our dive with my group was half an hour in the sand at 25+ meters, to come up when the first person went low on air.

I still had 90 bar and Kathleen wanted to try her coordinates and see if we could find the wreck on a third dive, so I accompanied her, but she had no better luck, so we emerged from that one wrecklessly.

Finley the shark, seen below, wearing my face mask, gave his version of the Ludwig dive here: http://www.projectaware.org/blog/divemahara/aug-24-11/finley-goes-wreck-diving-abu-dhabi-and-gets-ready-mighty-mussandam. Finley, apart from these here, where are your pics ???

Shorediving Dibba July 25-26, 2011: Pinnacles (3 Rocks) and Dibba Rock

My logged dives #1059-1060

On Monday morning July 25, 2011, Bobbi and I and our son Dusty, and daughter-in-law Gulya, and her daughter, our granddaughter Gwen, our 3-year old Malinki Princess, all got up early and headed for Dubai airport. Gwen and Gulya were flying to Uzbekistan to see her other grandmother. When I hugged Gwen goodbye she gave this knowing shrug and said “but I'm only going to Doha.” That's where she was living when she boarded the plane, and she thinks her father went back there. But her dad went to Brazil for his holiday and now she's gone to Samarkand and another set of family dramas there. Eventually she'll wind up back in Doha but she'll never see her bobo and bibi again in their apartment across from the park on the Abu Dhabi corniche. No telling where we'll be when we meet again.

But as long as we had driven to Dubai Bobbi and Dusty and I thought we might as well go on to Dibba and go for a dive. And as long as we were there we thought we might as well spend the night and dive Dibba Rock the following morning. I called our favorite dive shop there, the one where the owner Terry died and his good son Andy took over, but Andy went on holiday to Thailand leaving James to look after the business.on that day.  James said he was doing a rescue course on Monday, from shore, and wouldn't be taking a boat out, but we could boat dive there on Tuesday any time, so we booked that. Bobbi went online and found that the Holiday Beach Motel's rooms just two beaches over from Freestyle were only 300 dirhams with breakfast when booked the night before check-in, so we booked that as well.

Bobbi had also tried booking diving anywhere on the East Coast for Monday, but everyone we could find was ridiculously expensive. At JAL, now the Radison (3 beaches over from Freestyle) the cost of just a 10 min boat ride to Dibba Rock was 165 per person (using our tanks and equipment), almost $50. the price of a prolonged meal at an all you can eat and drink in the all you can eat and drink restaurants in Abu Dhabi, almost twice what it costs from Freestyle. There were some other possibilities at the other dive shops further down the coast. We could dive Inchcape I with Divers Down for 165 each or the Pinnacles (3 Rocks) for the same price. We hadn't dived Pinnacles in some time but, that boat ride would have been again 10 min, using our tanks and gear, and it's possible to shore dive it. Also, Bobbi found at the last minute that the dive shop at Holiday Beach Motel would take us to Dibba Rock in their dingies for 100 dirhams each, reasonable, so we were considering that, and according to them we could go at 3 or at 5 pm.

We arrived at HBM at around 12:30 on a scorching hot UAE summer afternoon and we figured we should check out what shore diving might be like at the Pinnacles and then try to dive with HBM out to Dibba Rock at 3 or 5. After checking in at the Motel, lovely rooms if you're not paying normal prices, we all got in the car and drove down the coast to the stretch of highway just opposite the Pinnacles. These days you never know what you'll find on this once-pristine coastline, and there are a lot of hotels a-building over by Sandy Beach Hotel a stone's throw away, but this spot opposite Pinnacles was as yet still undeveloped and we could drive off road and park where we always did, just like old times.

And just like old times, it was a very rocky entry, tricky getting us all into the water for the swim out. The swim out was difficult as well with a stiff current pushing to the north. Dusty and I made it to the rocks in about 45 min but Bobbi was having some difficulties and let herself get swept to the north where we watched her pretty much barely holding her position as she tried to join us against the current. Eventually Dusty swam over and got her and brought her over to us using the fins on shoulders tired diver tow I always teach as being just the tow for difficult conditions. I had meanwhile found the place at the south of the rocks where the current seemed to be broken by the rock to the north, and when Bobbi got there and recovered her breath, we went down on that spot. It was by then 3 pm, a whole hour after we had set out on our swim for the rock.

Once under water we had a pleasant dive there. We didn't see anything hugely unusual, no sharks or rays or turtles or cuttlefish, but we found strange flounders, puffers and lion fish and eels and shoals of reef fish. As long as we kept moving east and west and avoiding the current as it picked up at either end of the rock we could move at will, but eventually I decided to lead us through a gap in the rocks to the north side of the collection of islands, and here again the current was fine, protected now directly by the rock. We had been diving now 45 minutes and we all had well over 100 bar left in our tanks.

This time I led us toward the west and we followed this out until the boulders got smaller and smaller, but always there was something to see. I knew we were out of the protection of the rocks but at depth the northerly current effect was only slight. My course was west north west but by angling on a westerly heading we could fin that way and be pushed gently to the north. It worked perfectly. 15 min later we were in the shallows and by 4 p.m. we were exiting the ocean right where we had parked the car.  Bobbi was relieved she didn't have to swim back on the surface.

We were back on the road by 4:30 and we tried calling the dive center at HBM to see if we could get on the last 5 pm dive to Dibba Rock. We called their mobile and then tried through the hotel but they didn't answer either mobile or land line, so we stopped in at Royal Beach Hotel, where Freestyle Divers is, to pick up supplies at the off license bottle shop there and have a cold one on the lanai with the view of the beach and sun dropping over the mountains. While we were there we washed our gear in the showers and left our empty tanks to be filled. We confirmed with James that we could come at any time next day so we said we'd call when ready and James said he'd fill the tanks and be ready for us and just call ahead and he'd be there from 9 o'clock on.

We then went to our hotel and had a very relaxing swim in the pool and walk on the beach, and had them bring us dinner on our front porch, which was delicious, comprising shrimp and curries and tasty sweet coconut nan, and we were by then tired and sedated so we went to sleep and slept soundly until Dusty received a text msg next morning which woke us all up. But that was a good thing since it was by then a quarter to 9 and we needed to get up and get to breakfast.

I tried calling Freestyle from our breakfast table but there was no answer, odd but maybe as we'd set no time and we were the only customers, it was ok if James was a little late. Then at 9:20 he txted to say he'd be delayed, he had to work out something with the Dept of Water and Electricity, the bill had been paid but they were threatening to shut off utilities anyway. So we txted back we were at breakfast, what time would we be diving? He txt'd back it would be around 11.

It was only mildly inconvenient to have to wait, but the clincher came at around 10:30 when James txted again to say sorry, he wasn't going to be able to make it down there that day at all. I txt'd back, “What about my tanks!?” but also if he'd let us know at 9:00 we could have possibly booked something else that morning, but at 10:30 our choices at that point would be pretty much what they were the day before. Except that the Holiday Beach Motel dive shop with its 100 dirham boat rides to Dibba Rock wasn't operating that day. as I discovered when I walked over there only to find out that they always took Tuesdays off.

Dusty and I were keen to shore dive Dibba Rock anyway, and James had txted back that he would send his worker to open the equipment room for me. Bobbi didn't want to join us after her experience the day before so she stayed behind to keep the room cool for us and Dusty and I went over to Freestyle where I txted James that we'd be shore diving there and we'd be there for at least two hours. He txted back “No worries” but that was the last we heard from him, and the worker never turned up that afternoon, nor after our dive, and when we were checking out of our hotel I was unable to reach James, so we were forced to return to Abu Dhabi, 3.5 hours by car, without our three tanks.  I'm not sure now how or when I'll be able to get back there and collect them, not happy about that :-( well, someone took them eventually to Freestyle's office in Dubai and left them there, and my son Dusty eventually made a trip there and picked them up, so the tanks are back with us now :-)

Meanwhile, fortunately we'd brought 6 tanks down, so Dusty and I had a nice dive on Dibba Rock. The weather was hot in the low 40s but bearable in the water. Sea conditions were calm and there was hardly any current, and we made the swim to the reef in about half an hour. We found the clacking coral and dropped down on a free swimming eel. Like the day before we didn't see much else of note but we made a nice tour of the rock and its undersea wonders. In most dives we do there, we are asked to limit our bottom time to 50 min and we usually come up after an hour, but today we could stay as long as we liked. Dusty ran down to 30 bar 90 min into the dive; I still had 70 – our no deco time remained at 99 min throughout the dive.

We went first on the east-west leg of the L shaped reef, where the raspberry coral is coming back, but still we haven't seen any turtles or big fish on that part of the reef in a long time, though there used to be lots of turtles and sharks there. It's hard to connect the different parts of the reef these days if you're not properly oriented on it, and so I had trouble finding the northward leg. On the northerly heading from the east-west part of the L, trying to find the north-south part, so just east of it and inside the right angle of the L, Dusty and I came on a mooring we hadn't seen before with slabs of rock oddly placed around it, Dusty thinks it was writing in Arabic, but he's thinking of the rainbow sheikh's writing his name Hamad in such a way that it could be read on Google Earth (and it can be, check it out: http://news.discovery.com/space/big-pic-hamad-abu-dhabi-space-graffiti-110721.html).

Eventually we came on the clicking and clacking reef and followed it without seeing sharks till we had to turn east to avoid running off the reef, from where we made our way to the aquarium. The aquarium is always nice, full of fish with a backdrop of rust-colored coral. We each had over 100 bar so 50 min into the dive I led to the back side of the island. Here we found batfish in cool thermoclines in 12 meters of water and sand where we looked for rays but found nothing but pipefish. We meandered over the sand and then back to the rocks on the back side where we had a choice. Circumnavigate the island and come up where the coral is sparce and head south for home from there or backtrack along the way we came with some chance of seeing sharks. I chose the latter, back along the boulders at the back side and up the shoulder to the aquarium, then east toward the clacking coral and south along the reef on a hunt for sharks, but there were none today. Still a 90 min dive was nice and relaxing, worth staying over the extra day (for Dusty and I ;-)

Diving with Freestyle Divers July 9, 2011 - Family outing on Dibba Rock

My logged dives #1057-1058

On July 9, 2011 Bobbi and I and my two boys Glenn and Dusty awoke at a reasonable hour in the morning and by 8 a.m. we were on the road for Dibba where we turned up well before noon in time for a dive on Dibba Rock which eventually got under way at 1:00.  We did two dives there, both from the mooring on the northwest corner of the island.  They both went about the same way.  The mooring is right off the aquarium so on both dives we started there.  On the first we were in the lee of a strong westerly current which we only discovered as we were fairly carried to the reef to the west and then had to struggle to stay on it as we continued along it south.  By the time we had come to the end of the L and were turning to the east, we found we simply could not, the current was too strong against us.  So we went back to north and then back east, in the shadow of the island, to the aquarium, and then penetrated a little to the back side until we hit the thermocline there. By then we had consumed an hour and varying amounts of air, so we surfaced.

We didn't see much on that dive, and the thermocline had been uncomfortable because we were not wearing wetsuits, so I put on my 3 mm for the second dive.  This got delayed a bit due to a fuel shortage on one of the boats that had gone away for a looooong day trip.  But we didn't mind kicking back on the restful lanai at Freestyle, turtles broaching the shorebreak just off the sands of Royal Beach Hotel, and eventually we were back in the water for our second dive. This followed the same route as the first one, except we were by now at high tide, with some relief from the current, and we saw more animals.  We were just leaving the aquarium for the reef when the schooling fish overhead did an abrupt about face.  I looked around for the cause, though only Bobbi saw it and signaled shark with her hand at her forehead.  We continued on the reef to the south without seeing much, but this time we were able to turn to the east and make it as far as where the coral is coming back.  By then we were at half a tank to 150 bar so we turned and drifted back along the coral, where we saw the cuttlefish and eels that Glenn videoed.

Meanwhile I was leading back to the north and it was my good fortune to come right on top of a beefy blacktip reef shark.  He scampered alongside and ahead of me, Bobbi was a little behind and the boys behind her, so I was the only one to see it.  We continued north on the reef and then east back to the aquarium, and then went on into the sand at the back of the island without seeing anything much of note apart from big eyed puffer fish and lion fish, and the usual schooling tropicals.

Back on shore we had an off license beverage with Andy and reminisced about old times, very relaxing as the sun went down over the misty mountains and turned the sky over the blue-green sea from balmy blue to shades of orange and grey.

May 27-29, 2011 UAE East Coast - Dibba and Khor Fakkan

My logged dives #1045-1048

Godelieve and Rossane wanted to dive with Bobbi and I this weekend. Chris had booked his Nomad hostel out completely to a large French group and there was no room at the inn for us this weekend, nor space on his dive boats going to Musandam, and Godelieve had never been to Khor Fakkan, so Bobbi and I decided to revisit our favorite dive sites there and see how the fishes had survived the triple whammies of Cyclone Gonu, the months-long red tide epidemics, and more recently the spate of hotel and harbor constructions taking place all along the east coast of the UAE.

It's still a beautiful area, relaxing, moves to a rhythm all its own, and all your own if you make it so. Our rhythm is to sleep to a normal hour on Friday, our first weekend day off, which for us means waking up when the sun rises and lying around till the early sunlight tells us it's 5:30 or 6:00, then getting up and checking email, watching the news on TV while packing our dive gear and clothes for the weekend, fetching the car from overnight parking across the road, loading it up and being away by 8:30 for an 11:30 arrival in Dibba. Lulu is our first stop there, the new hypermarket that has become the focal point of Dibba cuisine. There we could get tasty tiny round pizzas for a dollar apiece, spicy chicken and prawn, watermellon and grapes for a pittance, cold fresh juices, and still arrive at the dive center at noon for their 12:30 dive.

Which turned out in typical Freestyle rhythm to be an after 1 pm dive, but ma'alesh, we had little else to do that day than kit up and wait and get on the boats, and then into the water for an hour's cool relaxation, then back on shore, repeat, add water, relax.

We were told we should have been there last weekend. Everyone was telling us vis had been 20 meters, plenty of animals around, ideal conditions. For our first dive we put in on the right side mooring south east of the island and set our course west in slack current to meander among the coral bommies in shallow water near the island. Surge was a problem and vis was disappointing, but we still enjoyed schools of fish, a lone batfish under a rock, shoals of snappers and jacks criss crossing one another as we dropped into the aquarium, big lumbering porcupine fish moving in close out of curiosity, parrotfish, fusiliers, etc.

From the aquarium I headed back west toward the loud clacking which intensified as we moved in over the coral rubble where the beautiful reef used to be with its sharks and devil rays, undoubtedly the best diving I ever did in the UAE, and certainly the most consistently best including there and Musandam. But that was back when Terry was alive. Now it's sad that Terry and the reef as it was are both gone.

But the reef is bouncing back in one place, if you follow it south from near the aquarium and if you can find where it turns east (hard to do in bad vis, just possible on our noon dive today) you come upon a patch of purple raspberry coral that's pretty like it used to be. But at noon today there were no sharks or turtles on it. When I found it I circled it looking for critters, but apart from healthy reef fish, nothing caught our attention. Eventually we reversed and retraced over the barren parts, and then our time was up and we surfaced.

The 3 pm dive, which got going at around 4 (good to see that some traditions are honored ;-), was not as easy as the first. We had planned to go around to the back side of the island on this dive but when we arrived at the south east corner mooring, conditions had changed and there was a stiff current that would prevent us getting to the back side that way. The current was so bad that when Godelieve and Rossane entered the water they got carried astern and would not have been able to reach us at the bow line except that I yelled for a line to be thrown to them, and to his credit Terry's son Andy had one tied to a buoy and tossed it astern and recovered our divers. Bobbi meantime had descended to await us out of the surface current, and shortly we joined her by pulling ourselves down the rope against the current.

We retraced our steps from morning but this time had to fin toward our right in order to avoid being swept off course. We passed the same coral, with some effort to keep our path through it (the batfish was still there :-). Vis had got worse so at the aquarium it wasn't as attractive as earlier but here at least we were in the lee of the island and had some relief from the current, so were were able to find our way to the back side that way. We entered though thermoclines of bracingly cold water. I was wearing just lycra and a rash vest, Bobbi had on her shorty, and we were cold. At depth, just 12-13 meters, we went out a little into the sand but not so far where there would be rays because the current went against us when we left the shelter of the wall of boulders. We found morays in the wall but turned back when the current started to push us back even there.

We were picking our way back over these boulders when I saw a flash of grey and black streak and realized a black tip reef shark was passing. I wheeled after it, and Rossana just 12 years old, was right at my shoulder trying to keep up with it. Recharged now, we resumed our heading back to the aquarium, but Godelieve had put weight in her pocket and it had slipped out. I saw her and Rossana suface, nothing we could do, so Bobbi and I carried on and saw a second shark as we were coming back on the aquarium. Pushing up against our allotted hour we passed over the clacking reef rubble and I saw a third shark right about where it should be. Bobbi missed that one, and our time was now up, but we surfaced thinking that a mundane and almost unpleasant dive had been rendered almost exciting simply with the appearance of our favorite inhabitants of our once favorite reef.

Back on shore Andy and his staff were offering beer and making the motions of preparing barbeque, but the Royal Beach Hotel where the shop is prefers to keep prices high (800 for a single bedroom) and endure less than full occupancy rather than offer dive packages that would allow divers to stay on the premises, so it's hard to accept hospitality from the dive shop when we have to not only drive into Dibba, but check into our accommodation there as well. Two bedrooms at Seaside Apts where we stay (not by the sea, they always remind us, when we call there), with kitchen with microwave for heating up the interesting Indian dishes we can buy at Lulu's, is only 330 in May, or 82.50 each for four people. I hope Andy can restore the social scene at Freestyle though. We would like to have stayed with them, but logistically it was too difficult, with Godelieve having to cook special pasta to feed Rosanna, and everyone being tired and not wishing to drive on UAE roads under the influence.

Before we departed we learned that their Musandam trip that day had encountered 2 whalesharks (they're back!) but we had arranged to dive Inchcape 2 and Martini Rock next day with Divers Down. We had selected that over a trip with Brian and Tatsiana at Neptune Divers, who were going to Musandam on Saturday, but we were going to Khor Fakkan.

So no more about that (but checking old dive logs, lots of whaleshark sightings in May and June, this one in 2003: http://prosites-vstevens.homestead.com/files/divelogs/dives2003/486-487.htm; and these just last year for example:

• http://vancesdiveblogs.blogspot.com/2010/05/ho-hum-another-whale-shark-dibba.html)
• http://vancesdiveblogs.blogspot.com/2010/06/6-whale-sharks-on-al-marsa-liveaboard.html

Anyway, we turned up at Divers Down well before we needed to be there. They were just setting up shop at the Miramar, on the same beach as the Meridien Al Aqah, from where Al Boom sends boats daily to the sites were were planning to dive. Must say Divers Down agreed to my exact requests for dive sites, which was why we chose them, and the boat was ours apart from an open water course being run from it, whose divers were not diving the same dives we were. But we still had to share those sites with the hoards from Al Boom's boats.

The dives were nice, though we were going through motions of previous dives Bobbi and I had done dozens of times before, but like everything else in the UAE, the dives were not like before. The Inchape 2 is the wreck in 22 meters near Martini Rock. It's got a lot of animals on it, writhing with morays, and surely much else, though most of the life on it today was human. We had planned a dive as in the old days. Descend on the wreck and for Rosanna who had no computer, understand from the wheel that she could spend 30 min max at 22 meters, then ten minutes at 16, and then exhaust the tank for as long as it takes at 12 (the dive would be 37 minutes NDL at 22 meters if diving on tables). In the event we had circumnavigated the wreck in the sand, done a tour of the decks, and even investigated the holds with overhead escape access, acquainting ourselves with most of the morays in the process, in the first 20 min of the dive, at which point we headed off on phase 2, a 240 degree compass course in the sand about 5 min to the wall of boulders. The plan here was to find jawfish in the sand just short of those boulders. There were none that we could find. There were more morays in the rocks, but when we turned the corner into the bay to the north of the wall, the rust and blue corals were there, but nothing much to write home about. Nice dive, but not like in the past.

We motored over to Martini where bananas, watermellon, and oranges were laid out for us and we enjoyed a surface interval in warm but overcast May conditions. Our dive on Martini rock was again cold though. Too cold. The purple and white soft corals were there, and very beautiful. Morays were plentiful. But not much else. I scoured the rocks for scorpion fish. They used to be everywhere on this dive. We used to see turtles and honeycomb morays. On this dive today, we encountered mostly Al Boom divers and reef fish. It was pretty but pretty cold too. We're waiting now on the reports from Musandam of whale shark sightings :-(

April 29, Fanaku and Kachalu, Musandam - April 30 Dibba Rock

My logged dives #1038-1040

April 30 we decided to dive at Freestyle Divers.  Terry, the gregarious founder, had just lost his battle to cancer.  "Diver down", read one comment on the Facebook memorial page.  All who knew Terry knew him as a community spirit as well as an entrepreneur.  He used to tell me I was “mad” when I’d turn up at his shop at sunrise and swim alone or with a buddy, if I could recruit one, out to what used to be my favorite reef in all the world.  An early morning swim was invariably rewarded by encounters with turtles and views of sharks cruising over the raspberry colored coral. There were schools of barracuda and sometimes devil rays as well. It took half an hour to swim out, an hour on the reef, and half an hour back.  If I started at 7:00 a.m. I could be back ashore in time to return to Dibba Rock by boat, first dive of the day, at 9 or 9:30.

These were the days when we could dive Dibba on Friday and sit on the lanai with Terry and his merry band of employees and camp followers who would clean their gear and troop down to the off-license, another much patronized concession, like Freestyle, on the premises of the Royal Beach Hotel. Bobbi and I had a rule.  Only one can of product from that shop while our gear was drying, THEN put the gear away safely in the car, THEN enjoy the cool breezes and warm company and more such cans on the lanai.  Sometimes Terry would start the barbecue.  Sometimes he’d produce a huge fish and cook it and offer it around. He often made known there was more in the fridge for anyone not wanting to walk right then over to the off-license shop.  

Then came the cyclone Gonu, picking up huge chunks of the reef, crushing it to rubble, and dropping much of that on the beach outside Terry’s shop.  The reef didn’t give up, tried to bounce back, but then came the red tide, months of it, robbing the coral of light, leaving the rocks where the raspberry polyps had been the color of the brown algae that decimated it, and leaving skeletons where morays once poked out of the rocks.  The jaw fish moved away.  Rays became scarce, sharks not as prevalent as before.

When we dived it today it was not remarkable.  I found a big bull ray in the aquarium at the start of the dive, an unusual place for a ray to be.  I had Nicki’s camera and took its picture.

Nicki send me the pic of Raymond, please :-)

Thank you :-)

But the rest of the dive was not so interesting.  Like Love in the Time of Colera, the trees have all been cut along the riverbank, the water itself is drying up, and the epidemic has reached the riverfront town.  The two lovers are clinging to one another in their wrinkled old age.  Everything is changing and we are clinging to vestiges of what once was.  Terry is gone now, global warming is heating up the planet and with it the oceans past the 30 degrees over which coral starts to die, and that encourages the blossoming of algae that delivers the coup de grace. Untrammeled development is silting up the diving scene all around the Emirates, except for Musandam, which remains pristine, secure in its rugged isolation.

It was with hopes of seeing some of that that we left for Dibba as soon as we could get off work on Thursday, Nicki and Bobbi and I.  We pulled up at Nomad Ocean Adventure in time to pop a cool one before dinner, a savory beef casserole.  We fell in bed and slept till the a/c went off at 7:45 next morning, power off to all of Nomad, not sure about the rest of the town.  In an hour it was restored and Bobbi and I went back to bed.  The dive we had thought would be at 8 a.m. had been rescheduled for 10:30.

Chris is also experiencing changes but is still maintaining a reasonable routine.  His center wasn’t crowded, plenty of beds were unslept in, and maybe the manageable numbers, people mellowed by the ambience of his place, helped him get us all under way and take a lucky dozen past our usual dive sites at Lima Rock and Ras Morovi, past Octopus Rock, even past Khor Hablain and Mother of Mouse, Ras Sarkan on the left, and White Rock where we’d come last time we’d taken a liveaboard dhow this far up Musandam, and even past Musandam Island to the two islands off the tip in the straights of Hormuz, Fanaku and the tiny Kachalu.

Chris doesn’t know these sites that well.  Usually he’s been back at the office when others have taken his customers this far north.  But now he has fewer hands on deck and has an opportunity to come dive the area himself, which he definitely enjoys. Like me he’s not sure what the currents are doing, so as we approached Fanaku, and I had already put on my wetsuit, he asked me to jump in and test the water.  I did as requested and right below me saw a pair of devil rays cruising.  We had just seen dolphin as we passed Musandam Island.  This seemed to be a great place!

Unfortunately the diving itself was not that nice today.   We dived Fanaku at first and Kachalu second.   The visibility was poor in both places.  In both spots we went down to 35 meters looking for some clarity.  Someone said they found it at 40 but we didn’t push ourselves.  Rather on both dives we angled up keeping out of deco and at least finding the vis improved with more daylight.

On Fanaku the area was covered by a rust colored organism that gave the rocks an orange hue, mixed with another that presented red splotches in between.  There were big fish on both dives but nothing exciting like sharks or rays.  On Fanaku we found several rather large nudibranchs, interesting.

Kachalu is a small island in the straits known for its washing machine currents.  We had done Fanaku on the slack and again on Kachelu I was asked to test the current.  I was not swept past the island so we decided to give it a shot.  As at Fanaku we tested the waters down to 36 meters but decided to have a long dive rather than exhaust air and deco on this one part of the dive.  As we ascended and rounded the rock we found ourselves beat back by an oncoming current so I reversed our direction, and we swam to the other end of the island till we felt the current hitting us again from that direction, and so we wandered back the way we’d come, and in the end pulled ourselves into the wash and hung on, then let go, and allowed ourselves to be swept off the island on ascent.

Bobbi and Nicki want me to mention the starfish and the angel fish and the beautiful colors (hundreds of tufts of yellow soft coral on Kachalu).  Nicki says she could see Iran.  I’m not sure if she meant underwater or above.  Also, I had to go back to her pictures to figure out that this was the starfish she wanted me to mention.

That night, dinner at Nomad was shrimp in glass noodle salad, and shrimp and rice, delicious. We relaxed afterwards and consumed our contraband, and next morning crossed the border back into UAE without any smuggled goods. We drove on down the coast as far as Freestyle and remembered Terry.

Bobbi and I just fun diving at Dibba Rock, April 16, 2011

My logged dive #1037

I had a presentation in Ras Al Khaimah on Saturday morning.  The weather had been kind of windy and unsettled lately, and the car had been covered with dusty rain splatters the past several days despite my having it washed each day. We were thinking to go diving on Friday and then overnight in RAK for the conference, but thinking the weather might improve if we delayed, Bobbi and I ended getting up at 5 a.m. Saturday and driving up to RAK that morning to do the presentation, and dropping down to Dibba when the conference ended at noon to make the 3 pm dive with Freestyle on Dibba Rock.

It was just Bobbi and I on the dive, literally.  We had stopped by Lulu hypermarket to pick up a couple of their tasty mini-pizzas (less than $1 each piled generously with cheese and tandoori chicken chunks) and fresh fruit juice, and we were consuming those on the lanai at Freestyle and watching two crowded dive boats motor across the water full of divers just completed their noon dive, but some were in training, so when 3 pm came and they still weren’t ready for their second dive, Colin put Bobbi and I on a dive boat all by ourselves for the short excursion out to DIbba Rock.  So for most of our dive, we had the site pretty much to ourselves.

The most interesting thing about this dive is usually sharks crossing right across your bow as low down on the reef as you are.  We didn’t see any of those on this dive, but we came on several turtles, and at the southern tip of the V shaped reef, we encountered schools of devil rays, 4, 5, and 10 at a time, cruising just ahead of us in the water.  There were barracuda there as well, and large jacks, and we even found a couple of moray eels, which we rarely see in the coral on the shallow south or ‘near’ side of the island.  Also the purple raspberry coral that used to be there in abundance is coming back toward the east end of the L.  I think it makes more sense to call it an L shaped reef to show the compass headings.  When you look at it from shore, north is a little to the left, so from there it appears as a V.

Anyway it was a really nice dive.  We surfaced after 55 minutes (we were asked to keep it to 50) with 100 bar in our tanks.  I was tempted to ask if we could just go back to shore on a south heading on the bottom, we had the air for it, but I figured the boatman would, or should, not agree to that, so I didn’t suggest it.

Day out at Freestyle Divers, Dibba - Diving with Eric and Delilah, certified Paula

My logged dives #1025-1026

Friday, December 10, 2010

Paula was making great progress in the pool, getting through her exercises with developing skill and confidence, and she wanted to get certified before traveling to Australia in two weeks time.  No one in my family wanted to drive all that way just for the day but I hopped in the car and met Paula and Eric and Delilah, whom I'd certified the weekend before, for two dives off Dibba Rock.

Dibba Rock can be one of the most hopping dive spots in the UAE.  Last week we saw lots of sharks and devil rays there.  This week it was relatively tame from our perspective, though we were told that the same animals were being spotted by other divers.  Visibility was poor, cloudy with even some algae, which is possibly why we were not able to spot the animals that could easily have been nearby, a meter beyond what we could see in the hazy water conditions.

We still enjoyed the diving.  I felt like I was diving with an experienced crew, none of my novices posed the slightest problem that would compromise the dives, which for Paula and I lasted one hour and 50 minutes, respectively.  Our first dive was in the reef on the south side between the island and the shore, just 8 meters or so, and for the second we visited the back side and got down to 50 feet, about 14 meters.

Though we didn't see the really big game on our dives today, we found interesting things to observe in nature.  On our first dive we found a turtle that tolerated our coming quite close.  He was at the southernmost part of the V of the reef.  We went back up the left side to the northwest top of the V and finned east to the rock where the porite coral and schools of reef fish were.  There's always lots to see there, hovering puffers, and jacks swimming by our shoulders away from the reef.  When we returned down the V the turtle was still there.  Paula and I stayed in his vicinity hoping other animals would pay us a visit.  Eric and Delilah had succumbed to end-of-dive need-more-weight by then, and had surfaced and drifted some ways to the east.  They learned fast and would trim for the next one.

For the second dive we started in the same spot, just west of what's left of the raspberry coral.  Paula saw a turtle swim by as we were descending.  We went back down the V again but saw little apart from the attractive schools of snappers and other reef fish as we returned to the top and over to the aquarium.  I led us north for the trip down to the sand at the back of the rock.  I looked over at Paula and saw right next to her a barracuda almost a meter long.  She was looking at me but followed my finger as I pointed.  By then it had moved away to join its mates, not so impressively close.

We went to 14 meters out over the sand but saw little of interest there.  On the way back to the rock, still over the sand, Paula spotted a huge Spanish mackerel swim between us and the boulders, the biggest fish we would see that day.

I led us up into the daylit gap indicating we had rounded the rock and we ended our dive in the shallows there.  A coronet fish swam past, unfamiliar to Paula.  I was hoping to lead us into the shallows south of Dibba Rock where sharks had been spotted earlier that day, but we were fighting the current and we surfaced at 50 min into the dive, making no headway against it.

It was nice diving again with Eric and Delilah, back for more after our intensive weekend previous, and it's always great to certify another open water diver.

PADI Open Water dives 1 and 2 for Paula Gerber and #2 for Hasan Khaled, Abu Dhabi Breakwater Nov 26. 2010

My logged dives #1021-1022

Friday Nov 26, 2010

It's starting to get cool for Abu Dhabi diving but the weather was still pleasant for an outing with Al Mahara Divers, Laura and Mits presiding over the diving on Alistair and Kathleen's boat.  I thought I had to work on Saturday (though the Open House was called off in an email to staff on the Thu, two days before the planned event :-{ so I had planned to take my two dive students on their PADI o/w dives Friday from Abu Dhabi.

As happens this time of year, sea conditions were not ideal, and so diving was planned for the Abu Dhabi Breakwater.  Even outside the Breakwater, a slight chop was making two of the ladies ill, so for the second dive we moved to inside the Breakwater.

The Breakwater can be a nice spot with rays in the sand, batfish around the Bateen Box, and bigger stuff like barracudas passing nearby, when visibility allows any of this to be seen.  Today the water appeared through our masks like diluted milk. It was not an ideal environment for beginning divers with their inevitable anxieties.

So we simply conducted the dives.  We entered the water at greater distance on either side of  the breakwater from where I usually anchor (the boat captain had a healthy concern for submerged rocks, though those who know the site are aware that there are none).  This meant beginning with a compass heading to the wall, all divers staying in almost physical contact with one another, then arriving suddenly at the wall, and not seeing many fish there, though the sea urchins were obvious enough to my beginners.

Hasan was actually making his second dive for his course since he'd dived the previous week at Dibba Rock, where I'd shown him some sharks.  So he was more comfortable than Paula diving for her first time.  Still both divers accomplished their objective of completing the course through the second o/w dive, and I always personally enjoy myself on these outings.

Our dive times were 40 minutes the first dive, to about 6 meters, but only 15 min for the second (similar depth), due to the conditions making my team uncomfortable, and necessitating a surface swim to the boat against a significant current, which we managed nevertheless.  Good chance to do tired diver tows :-)