PADI Open Water Course in Musandam: Dives 1 & 2 for Alfredo, Jihaine, Rodrigo, and Roula

My logged dives #1369-1370

We got a call from AB at Nomad Ocean Adventure as we were leaving the house on Thursday to head down early and meet some dive students. He wanted to inform us of the developing weather situation. The north of Musandam was experiencing rough seas and boats were not putting out from Dibba harbor that day. Local weather sources were reporting as much but the usually trusty Windguru raised no alarms, as in this view from earlier that morning:

http://www.windguru.cz/int/index.php?sc=437041&sty=m_spot

We were looking forward to the weekend, meeting 4 students there that night, and if worse came to worse we could do pool modules all day Friday. Nomad said the storm was due to diminish by mid-day and perhaps we could take a boat out then. I sent email to my divers and Bobbi and I hit the road for Dibba. We took the way from Shuweib to Madan to Dhaid, and except for wind blowing sand across the highway, blocking one lane for a long stretch and reducing visibility, we missed the traffic on the 311 Sharjah and reached Dibba through the scenic mountain pass from Masafi in 2:45 minutes from Al Ain, a comfortable drive.

Our students had rental car insurance hassles and didn't arrive till 10 pm. By then most divers had cancelled including all the fun divers in our party, except Daniel Sobrado who was coming with his Spanish friends Alfredo and Rodrigo, to whom he'd referred me as a dive instructor, along with Roula from Lebanon and Jihaine from Tunisia. These all worked together at the same bank and would be my students for the weekend. It didn't look like diving would happen next morning (Brad was going down at 5 a.m. to check with the coast guard, and when he got there he called the group from Dubai and told them to forget it). 

So our group met at 7:30 for breakfast and briefing. We would try to get three modules in by noon and see if we could go out in a boat then. That turned out to be impossible since the weather was still rough in the north by then, so we made a long day of it in the pool. We were finally in the water around 9:00. There was no rush, and with 4 divers at different ability levels, delays can be expected. With the extra time, we made sure everyone had plenty of space to accomplish the skills successfully. We finished module 2 in time for lunch, and what happens after lunch? Siesta :-) We were in no hurry. We knocked off module three that afternoon. The group was willing to continue but it was getting dark, and frankly, we were all tired. We decided to relax over dinner.

We met again at 7:30 next morning to see if we could do module 4 but only managed the underwater part, no time for the surface work before we had to get ready and go diving at 9:30. In the event we got off to an only slightly late start and cruised in fairly smooth seas all the way to Ras Morovi. There we found plankton and green, murky water, so AB recommended we move down to Lulu Island for our first open water dive of the course. This is sometimes a challenge for many students. The water was colder than expected, and ear and buoyancy problems kept us in the shallows for the first ten minutes, while poor visibility split our group temporarily (but AB is an instructor, they were with him, and he returned them safe and sound). We eventually got our dive in, all of us underdressed, me in lycra and rash vest, and the two guys in shorties, so it was cold, visibility poor, but there were moray eels, and fusiliers and jacks as we rounded the island south to north, and the group stayed together and ascended well.

I didn't take any videos on that dive and I changed into 5 mm for the next one, which we did after a surface interval that included a 30-min siesta on the boat in the sheltered waters off Lima headland north. Everyone found a place to stretch out it seemed until AB barged forward and brought us out of our dreams. He offered us our choice of spots, so I selected Lima Rock north, so AB would have a chance to see the big fish with the initials WS, and Daniel could dive with him and maybe see it too. I checked the current on snorkel before agreeing to the spot, but the depth here was not ideal for our group of beginners, as sand there begins at 11 meters, and we would have to go there to do our skills. All divers had made it that deep on the first dive, but ear problems forced one to stay shallower than that on the second one, so in the end I took the three to the sand who could make it there and will plan a shallower dive for the other next time.

We didn't see the big fish with the initials WS but we found better visibility and more life on Lima Rock. I found a crawfish in a cave as we were descending, and Bobbi found a couple of cuttlefish that didn't mind us coming close and filming. There were lion fish and moray eels, and while doing skills with one of the students, I saw a disc move into view just at the edge of my vis and settle on the sand, looked like a ray of some kind. I finned to check it out and found a torpedo ray (these are electric and will jolt you if touched). He moved about and rippled around for me and this rounded out our videos.

It's only the second time I've not been able to complete a course at Nomad due to weather in many years of working with them, but I'm looking forward to having this group back in a couple of weeks, and signing them off as open water divers.

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

My logged dives #1300-1303

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

Seasons Greetings 2010 with Diving in Musandam

My logged dives #1027-1030

This looks to be my Merry Happy Card this year.  This is what I was doing on Christmas day, and today, the day after, my birthday, I'm heading into work.

Bobbi would have joined us but she is in Houston with her mom.  Dusty went to see his grandmother, and they'll both be back in Abu Dhabi in early January.  Glenn and his wife and daughter Gulya and Gwen were with us a week ago, and we all celebrated our family gathering together then.  So this Christmas I was home alone and spent the day diving with friends.

Friday, December 24, 2010
 The night before the chef at Nomad Ocean Adventure had prepared the most succulent turkey I have ever tasted.  Normally we bake ours and it comes out dry.  This one was cooked like a chicken, and the result was mouth watering.  But the real treat was that we had the dive center all to ourselves.  We were the only ones to feast there, sleep there, and we commandeered the boat for the following day and dived where we felt like it.

We had planned a group of 5 for Friday, but Hasan didn't make the trip across, and Ian's daughter Eva rolled up sick with a fever and a cough and didn't start her advanced course as planned, so it was just us in our group, Ian, Nicki, and I (pictured).  On Friday we were joined by Delia and Ahmed who were being escorted by the dive pro Hussain.  We started with the obvious dive for that region, Lima Rock.  It was unusual for me to diving strictly for pleasure and with people who were serious enough about their diving to be able to go where I did.  So after picking a spot mid-island to avoid the current we headed down the wall and out over the sand to some further coral strewn rocks I rarely visit 30 meters down.  We spent about 15 minutes there before heading back to the wall and then heading up it looking for animals in the rocks.  We found a honeycomb moray, several gray and green morays, and a torpedo ray.  It was a very relaxed dive. Ian left us at 43 minutes but Nicki and I stayed down more than an hour before ending on a zen note.

There was green algae in the water around Ras Morovi so for the next dive Hussain decided to try and escape it by moving further north to Octopus Rock.  This dive is known for its current and today was one of the most extreme ones I have experienced there.  We went down on the southwest corner.  On a mild day we can usually proceed southeast to look for seahorses in the green whip corals and wheel around to the various submerged outcrops at 20-28 meters, but today that would have exposed us to a freight train current, so we hugged the rock and finned into it.  It was challenging for my buddies but when we came over a ledge about 20 meters distant we found some shelter and rested to catch our breath.  The current made the vis really good and also attracted animals.  We found a school of barracuda just off that point, and a big king fish was cruising back and forth (not sure, long, silver, solitary, single fins top and bottom, Ian thought at first it was a shark).  Being very careful not to get swept away I led us into the current and finned to the east of the island where we had some outcroppings.  I started moving east west there, always returning to the rock to keep oriented, and also to see that Hussain had taken his group into the lee on the south side and was conducting his whole dive there.  There are huge batfish on this rock, always a pleasure to see, getting cleaned by wrasse at the numerous stations there.  But we were low on air at just 38 minutes and ascended up the lee side of the rock to 5 meters, eventually to pop to the surface.  Hussain was soon to follow.

Saturday, December 25, 2010
Next day, Eva came on the boat but was still not well enough to dive.  Hussain had developed a tooth problem and decided to oversee from the boat.  So it was just us, an opportunity to push further north than our usual spots, so we set out for Mother of Mouse.  However, in a phone call to the coast guard we were denied permission to go further than Octopus Rock, so I said fine, why not go there.  I was expecting milder currents from the day before, and it had been a great dive. But skies above were overcast and as we approached Lima sea conditions were becoming rough.  As we motored toward Octopus they became ominous and brooding, we decided to head for the shelter of Ras Morovi instead.

But there was a place just north of where I usually dive that Hussain said was nice so we decided to try that. That's where Nicki produced the surprises she had been concealing in the bag she had brought on her sleigh, so we had our fancy dress dive :-)

It was a picturesque spot with the reef ending in sand at 17 meters.  We continued down to almost 30 just to see if there were any rays but found none. So we headed back up the reef and meandered, finding at one point a rare kind of eel that Nicki likes to photograph.  There were many eels and the usual fishes but nothing I recall saliently on that dive.  It was just another pleasant underwater experience in an environment that is unfortunately vanishing worldwide and that too few people get to see and appreciate.  We prolonged our experience to over an hour again.

We motored into the middle of a deep bay south of Ras Morovi where the water was calm and had our sandwiches.  We had decided to do our second dive on Pearl Island just to the south across the bay but we ended up doing it there instead.  Nicki's dive computer decided to go for a dive without its owner and she watched it disappear with shall we say, misgivings (understatement).  However she was determined to retrieve and punish the recalcitrant computer so we decided to suit up and search for it.  We had to act quickly.  We were not at anchor.  Hussain noticed the direction of drift and I took a bearing on it, 120 degrees.  We had no idea how deep the water was there.  The three of us plunged over the side, Ian perhaps unwisely since he would be heading down without reference to an indeterminate depth.  In any event, his ears prevented him from completing the journey so it was just Nicki and I to keep together and pass through meter after meter with no idea where it would end until we finally saw the silt bottom at 30 meters.

I had brought a weight from the boat intending to tie off my marker buoy on it but I knew if I tied it off there at 30 meters it would be hard to come back for later, so I dropped the weight in the sand and did squares around it.  We stirred a sand cloud in the silt and Nicki and I lost contact but rejoined and I decided we should head on that 120 degree course.  I counted out about 20 kick cycles in that direction, but still no computer and the time at 30 meters was ticking down.  I thought Nicki and I should spread out and try the reciprocal heading so I indicated she should move in the opposite direction from me and she headed that way but at the edge of vis kept going.  I moved after her and in so doing lost the line I could follow back to the weight.  She had disappeared and I didn't want to go too far or risk complete disorientation, so after a minute I decided to return on my reciprocal 300, look in the sand on the way back, and surface there.  I was just starting on this maneuver when Nicki reappeared.  She had decided to go at the right angle 30 degrees from where we were 20 kicks and had just returned on 210 to where she had left me.  And amazingly she was holding her computer.

The only disappointment was that in getting off the original line we lost the weight I had placed in the sand below the boat.  Returning to the surface with both weight AND computer, we would have been hailed as heroes.  At least Nicki retrieved her computer and I guess it could be said that despite loss of our original reference point, we were either incredibly competent or incredibly lucky divers, or both.

We started off the bottom at 10 minutes, came up entirely on instruments on my computer, because Nicki's was still narced from the 31 minutes it had spent at 20 meters, and did a safety stop at 5 meters 12 min into the dive, surfacing with 15 min on my computer.  Since we had conducted a serious dive I decided to stay out of the water at least another hour, so it was 2 pm before just Nicki and I descended on Pearl Island.  Ian had nackered his ears on the previous attempt and decided to sit the last one out. Vis at this spot was awful actually.  We hoped the algae would not be deep but it dogged us the entire dive and spoiled my ability to spot the usual references.  This was to round the point and keep to the sand at 16 meters, then follow the fishing pots out taking a bearing just left of them to the first of the submerged islands.  Problem was I couldn't remember if that bearing was north or east.  In previous visits it was obviously one or the other because the fish pots were lined up just to the right of where we needed to go.  This time we were in green haze as I followed one pot, came on another, kept heading that way (east) but found no more pots and no island in the amount of time I though it should have taken.  The dark shadows ahead seemed to be just open water.  I found a line that connected pots and followed that back in an attempt to retrace to our starting point.  In my second attempt we fared no better really.  The only boon was that we came on a large cow tail ray in the sand and watched him move to escape us.  I was chasing shadows now.  At one point we came across a large barracuda, only one, but usually they hung out around the islands.  When I saw a school of fish I headed that way, thinking they might be hanging off the coral.  This turned out to be a good guess and 20 min into the dive we bumped almost blindly into a submerged reef.  By now I was pretty much out of breath so I tried to lead at a depth where we could see the bottom but still stay high on the reef.  This was between 2 and 3 atmospheres and my air was going embarrassingly fast.  We were fighting current too but we managed to criss cross the rocks and find lots more eels end enjoy the last of the dive.  Somehow we stretched it into 45 minutes though I had to drop down to 7 meters at the end of it because Nicki had found two of her rare morays in the same hole (turns out they weren't all that rare) and was busy photographing them, oblivious to my vanishing air supply (and to her deco time, since she had no functional computer). No matter, we were near the surface, and reached it safely, and there was still enough air left in my tank to dry my dust cap.

UAE National Day diving at Freestyle and Nomad, Dibba Rock and Musandam, 4 divers completed their PADI course dives

My logged dives #1023-1024

Thursday, December 2, 2010

Thursday, Dec 2, was UAE National Day, so I arranged to take advantage of the long weekend by promising to finalize and conduct diving courses during 3 of the 4 days we had for the long weekend.  Hasan came with us to Dibba Rock and finished the diving portions of his course Friday Dec 3, while Ian Nisse finished his on the Thu and managed to complete the advanced course diving on Friday and Saturday.  Eric and Delilah drove down to Nomad Ocean Adventure on Thu but due to a wrong turn we will say no more about didn't start their course until Friday, but still they managed to complete it on surfacing from the last dive Saturday.  Congratulations for great work on the part of all concerned, and a quite memorable weekend!

We started at noon at Freestyle Divers. Dibba Rock showed us the best diving of the weekend, remarkably so. For the noon dive, Bobbi and I were met there by Ian and Godelieve and her kids Ianthe and Rosanna, who are getting tall and mature in their diving. Freestyle seems so warm and friendly, especially in great weather. The water is getting a bit cool though, 26 degrees, needs a full wetsuit. We got in the boat impeccably piloted by Iva the Diva. He dropped us on one of the eastern moorings so we had a long easterly swim to what used to be raspberry coral where the vis was decent for a change, the better to see the sharks. Once we were on the coral, they appeaed over the reef with great regularity. I saw at least a dozen. Others saw fewer but I think everyone saw something, except possibly Godelieve, because she was with Rosanna, who has developed a keen ability to discover things in rocks and sand that I miss while hunting larger game. We all at least saw the turtles, and Ian completed the skills for his 3^rd open water course dive.

Hasan joined us for the second dive at 3, which was even better. This time we were dropped at a mooring east of the coral patch, where it was just a quick hop to where the sharks were. Our plan was to go north over the reef, pass by the aquarium corals to the east, then go north and east again around the island. However, divers in our group had some delays in getting down and moving on their way, and Mohammed had a group of beginners which due to these delays cut across our bow heading north, so I decided to move us down the reef to the south so we wouldn't be behind Mohamed's group with all the wildlife scared away. It was a good move because being in the lead like that I was able to spot a black tip right away and keep him in my sites long enough for everyone, I think, to see it.

We went to the end of the reef where I am sometimes no longer able to find the way west, and due to that I turned us around back to the north. There were turtles there, and in the distance I saw what I was sure was the eye spots and triangle shape of a devil ray, but it passed before anyone else saw it. We continued over the reef and picked up the school of barracudas we had seen on the previous dive, getting close enough for me to count 12. At the end of the reef I was lining up my compass on the sand patch for the trip to the aquarium corals to the east when suddenly a school of devil rays appeared between the two coral patches. We moved in close before they shied away. Bobbi said she counted 30, they were quite a sight.

We passed alongside the aquarium where there are always beautiful fishes, huge puffers amid a wall of snappers, parrots and fan tailed rainbow wrasse, but there was little else as interesting as what we had seen already. Hasan was low on air so I put up a marker buoy and attached it to Bobbi's bcd. I surfaced with Hasan and got Iva to pick him up and then went back down on the marker buoy. Bobbi was leading shallow in the rocks at the back of island, so when I reached her I took over the marker and headed down into the sand. We might have looked for rays and jaw fish there but only Ianthe was with us at depth (12 meters). The others were strung up the line between the bottom and the marker. So 45 min into the dive, we ended. Hasan had missed nothing after he left, but the first 30 min of the dive was excellent!

It was dark when we moved over the border into Oman. Due to national day in UAE the streets were festive with lights and cars decked out in flags and pictures of the country's leaders, kids standing with heads out of sun roofs, created a massive traffic jam. That afternoon there had been a regatta of gayly decorated boats, dozens of them, which motored across our shallow dive site, and it appeared they were about to do the same on the return leg as we were heading out in boats at 3. But the coast guard boat overseeing the event did a good job of nudging them away from the rock, so they were much more picturesque than dangerous. The cars on the road cruising Dibba and the roads into and out were less picturesque and a bit more dangerous.

But the worst thing to happen was that Eric and Delilah, heading up the 311, missed the turn for Dibba and continued instead toward RAK and over the border on the road to Kassab. They were almost there when they finally reached us and we turned them around and headed them back to where we were. I had agreed to give them a diving course this weekend and the plan was to go in the pool that evening at Nomad. However, they didn't arrive until almost dinner time, and they ended by taking the quiz that evening and picking out their dive gear, but not entering the pool for their first module due to the delicious fragrances eminating from Sophien's Brazilian BBQ. So we agreed to meet in the pool next morning at 6 a.m.

My logged dives #1025-1026

Friday, December 3, 2010

I was up then and about to knock on Eric and Delilah's door when it opened as they were just emerging wearing wetsuits, pretty keen for 6 a.m. in the morning. The trouble was the sun was hardly up by then, only an orange glow from over the ocean, and it was cold outside and especially in the pool! Freezing. Still we managed to get modules 1, 2, AND three done by about ten. For one of them Hassan joined us for his module 4, and when Eric and Delilah finished, I managed to get Hasan through his module 5 by 11:00. So in 5 hours that morning, I taught all the PADI modules, 1 through 5.

To complicate things only slightly, Ian was starting his advanced course as well, so I was organizing 3 open water dive students at different stages in the course and Ian's open water diving.  Nomad was busy on Friday so we were on Chris's new boat and had other divers with us, but I was relieved of having to organize that as Mark, another instructor, was doing the honors.

We actually got away in good order, well before noon, and by shortly after 1:00 we had our first time divers in the water and diving for the first time in their lives.  This created some awkward moments, as happens, and the first part of my dive was at 5 meters while I tried to keep people with ear and buoyancy problems moving in a safe space along the reef.  Meanwhile the other divers in our group moved below us.  When we got to the wall where the coral gardens end and the easterly currents begin I turned everyone around.  Meanwhile my divers were getting their act together and we were moving among the fishes at 12-14 meters.  I remember a lovely tableau of half a dozen lion fish hovering in midwater, but not much else about the dive itself, except that vis was good, it was quite pleasant, and everyone stayed down about 50 minutes.

We did our next dive at Wonder Wall, called locally Ras Sanut.  Ian was managing his own advanced course, having done a boat dive the first dive and planning to do multilevel the next.  He was buddying with Bobbi and he worked out a profile that would allow him to go to 18 meters for half an hour and spend the remainder of the dive at 12 meters or higher. Godelieve and her brood moved off on their own and I took my o/w students and got Hasan through his last exercises for the last dive and Eric and Delilah through their presentations.  We then moved off through the brooding underwater island landscape of Ras Sanut and came up in the current that is often present off the point.  I had warned Godelieve about it and told her if caught in it to just enjoy it and that is what she did.  We were on the same ride as we saw them at the end of the dive.  Everyone emerged from it happily being swept gently to the east.

My logged dives #1027-1029

Saturday, December 4, 2010

That evening Hasan left as did Godelieve and family, leaving Bobbi and I with Ian and Eric and Delilah.  Next day dawned with all staying in bed until the sun was coming up over the horizon, when I met Eric and Delilah in the pool at the ever so slightly warmer hour of 8 a.m.  They got through their last two pool modules in good order.  Ian proposed doing 3 dives that day so that he could complete his advanced course, but the request was denied because there were others joining us in our boat. But then the others got delayed in Dhaid and couldn't make it on time, so at 11 we were given the go-ahead to dive as a unit, just us on the boat, which had on board 4 extra tanks for the missing divers, so Ian got his wish.

Ian and I kitted up and buddy checked prior to arrival at Lima Rock, and we jumped down to 25 meters for his deep dive, did the exercises required, and then explored down to 30 meters looking for the leopard shark that had been there the day before, but couldn't find it, so we returned to do a safety stop right at 20 min into the dive before returning to the surface. There Eric and Delilah were ready to go under the guidance of dive mistress Bobbi and we popped in for their dive #3, and Ian's peak buoyancy.  On this dive everyone was comfortable and we had time to look around at 16 meters.  We found several torpedo (electric) rays and many grey moray eels. We surfaced after 45 minutes.

From there we went to Ras Morovi for our last dive, Ian's navigation.  On the surface I put Eric and Delilah through all the flexible skills, with Ian and Bobbi joining in the water just as we finished.  I had devised a cunning plan whereby we would drop down and put up a marker buoy for reference.  Then Eric led us to the south for 12 kick cycles while Ian continued for 27 with Bobbi, and we all turned 180 degrees and met back at the marker buoy.

So far so good, and this time Ian started his square to the west, with Delilah following just 12 kick cycles and taking us back to the marker buoy.  While Ian and Bobbi completed the square I took Eric and Delilah 27 kick cycles to the south to try and find the cup that Ian was supposed to have left at that point. We looked for it there but couldn't find it, but meanwhile Ian and Bobbi appeared right on cue, having completed their square to that point.  We all proceeded back to the marker buoy, which I retrieved and stowed as we completed our dive out on the reef at Ras Morovi, doubling back to the north to make our way through the cabbage coral on the far side of  the reef.  We didn't see much in the way of animals but it was a well executed dive, a great end to an advanced course and two open water ones.

Certified o/w divers Vince, Fares, and Véronique in Musandam Sept 11 and Dibba Rock Sept 12, 2010

My logged dives #1002-1005

For Bobbi and I, this was our first chance to go diving after summer vacation, done during the Eid al Fitr following Ramadhan 2010.  I'd been working with 3 dive students since returning from summer holidays: Vince the army vet with some prior diving experience, and Fares and Véronique, Syrian / French couple, also nice people and comfortable in water. We managed to finish their pool and academic work before the Eid holiday, but the only night that Discover Nomad could accommodate us was Saturday Sept 11 so we scheduled our open water diving for that day and the one after.  Following the most convenient boat departure schedules, we chose to sleep till 5 on Saturday morning and drive up to Dibba to arrive before 10 a.m for one of Discover Nomad's late departures for Musandam, finish off the pool work in the Discover Nomad pool before dinner that night, sleep comfortably in the luxury hostel accommodation, and then dive with Freestyle next day at 9 with the final dive of the course at noon, so we could be collecting gear left off for servicing in Dubai at about the time the Discover Nomad boat would be returning that evening to the harbor in Dibba, Oman.

Saturday saw a number of inauspicious occurances.  We were a little late leaving the house and compounded that by hitting dense fog where the new Yas Island road meets the Dubai highway. Blinded, we took a wrong turn before regaining our way, losing time.  Then at the border with Musandam Oman I was almost denied exit from UAE because my visa had expired; I had to beg to be let out (no Oman border post to challenge my entry).  When we reached Discover Nomad, before 10 as expected, we discovered we were waiting on people yet to arrive from Dubai.  The timing turned out ok because my students could take their time choosing their gear, and I used the last part of the wait to brief them over coffee and tea.  Still it was 11 before we were able to leave for the harbor and 11:30 before the boatman appeared on board our loaded boat.  Finally on our way, but still within site of Dibba harbor, the engines started acting up, and the boatmen killed the engines to check it out..

I tried speaking to the boatmen about the problem and Fares eventually intervened, but there were dialectical differences making it difficult for us to understand in Arabic. When the boatmen turned back for the harbor, we weren't sure whether we were returning to get another boat or aborting the trip.  Our impression was that they were aborting the trip so we asked to be taken at slow speed further up the coast, and as long as it wasn't all the way to Lima Rock, they agreed to the compromise.  We were within site of the caves when we resumed our journey, but on just one 115 hp engine it took us a tedious half hour to get just even with the caves, normally 15 min out of Dibba, and another half hour at least to reach what I call Fishhead Rock, the most salient Ras about halfway to Lima.  From Fishhead Rock, on a clear day, which this was, you can see Lima low on the horizon, half an hour distant in a fully functioning boat, but over an hour away on the one we were stuck on now.

I had asked to be taken to Fishhead Rock because I had dived there long ago with BSAC divers and I remember it had swim-throughs which the BSAC divers sometimes went out of their way to dive.  But it had been some time so I was guessing on where exactly we should begin our dive.  At the rock, I went in to check current and found a drift to the north.  Also as we were kitting up the boat was moved to the north, but sometimes that's a wind effect. So when we started diving I was mildly annoyed to find the bottom current to be to the south, but we had told the boatman we were going North, so we stuck to that.

With first time divers I like to give them clear reference for their first descent, but this was going to be a wall dive and could present a disorienting drop, so I asked the boatman to take us to a rock that was poking out of the water thinking that might provide reference on that crucial first ascent.  It was steeper than I'd hoped but I'd already had my newbies check their weights by entering the water wearing weights and wetsuits, just climbing down the ladder before kitting up, so we were sure they had enough weight to at least pull down the wetsuits.  I was carrying extra kilos and I dispensed these as needed on the dive, so we got everyone correctly weighted and avoided over-buoyancy issues.

This was all very important so as to minimize risk of surprises on this first entry. So much can happen to beginning divers. Ear problems preventing timely descent is common for example, and a diver with ear problems being pulled down by too much weight and lack of reference is the worst that can happen, so it's vitally important to control for these eventualities, but difficult when the choice of dive sight is dictated by where you end up due to engine failure.  In any event, all went well. Fares even refused weight the first time I offered it, preferring to work out his buoyancy problem with lung volume, a very good sign.

The swim-throughs were numerous; one seemed almost like a cave, but with light and vertical access easily reachable. I shined my light in the dark corners and found a medium size cow tail ray hiding and resting in the darkness there.  He squirmed at the intrusion so we left him to finish his nap and moved on through the labyrinth.  I was pleased at the buoyancy control of my trainees, who were able to navigate where I led them.

As happens on a first dive, my students' air ran out in 40 minutes, at which point Bobbi was pointing at a turtle swimming in midwater.  The turtle circled the ascending divers, finned for the surface for a gulp of air, and then plunged to escape our further notice. The dive had lasted from 2 pm to 2:40, and I don't think anyone went below 14 meters.

Our boat limped into the nearest khor where a dhow had already disgorged its boatload of Eid frolickers, but there was plenty of room for all there.  The Dubai crowd swam while I put my students through surface skills, out on a compass heading, snorkel reg exchange (exhausting, so ;-) cramp removal and tired diver tows back to the boat.  I organized the Dubai people and our boatmen for a 4 pm departure.  Our second dive would be at the caves, a half hour south on the single engine.

We were diving there by 5 p.m.  We had worked out our allowable time on tables to be 45 min at 18 meters or 59 at 16, and we didn't come close to either depth.  As this was o/w dive #2 we had skills to perform.  My plan was to look for the cave (more like a tunnel) and if we found it and went through it (there would be light visible the other side at all times) we would do our skills on the far side.  As with January and Keith the last time I had come here, we had no better luck finding the cave entrance, but we found the crawfish in the rocks just outside.  We did our skills there and then moved to the back side of the cave where I hoped to find the exit.  But that plan didn't work either and we had kind of a plain vanilla dive with surge and me on a mission to find that ellusive cave, which I've dived many times with others and was never aware it was hidden till last two times trying to find it on my own.  Véronique was not feeling well from the boating, and opted to leave the water early with Bobbi.  After supervising their exit, Fares and Vince and I redescended to do compass work at depth and ascend with alternate air source (Véronique had to do hers later).  I think my diving lasted about 45 min, to maybe 14 meters.

With the boat moving so slowly it took almost an hour to return to harbor and it was dusk when we arrived.  This put us back at the dive center late, so it was 8 when we started work on our last two confined water modules.  We missed dinner but the Discover Nomad staff had kindly kept aside a good portion of fish so we were able to relax with good food and beverage afterwards.

Next morning we moved over to our good friends at Freestyle on the UAE side of Dibba (the officer at the border said no problem when I pointed out that I realized I was trying to reentre the country on an expired visa).  It was a fine day for diving Dibba, not too hot, and lovely in the water it turned out, viz not all that bad.  I started Vince on his CESA first thing and then collected the others for oral inflation at the bottom of the mooring followed by mask flooding / clearing.

Then the fun dive began with the looming, clacking reef.  I was at an unfamiliar mooring (again) and found myself at the edge of the real reef but not sure due to the way it has mostly turned to rubble.  To our left was sand and coral outcrops that looked like they led to the aquarium, so I took that way.  The aquarium is what I call the rust colored porite coral where the water is usually clear and the fish abound.  Near some jagged ourcrops I decided this would be a good place to do compass work so I sent Véronique to the north and had her return south, and Fares followed suit.  Then we moved along the aquarium and admired the schools of jacks and fusiliers.  We found ourselves heading toward the back side, moving with the current, and heading to depth, so when Véronique signalled 100 bar, I decided to commit to it.  So I led north over sand bottom looking for rays, found none, returned south, looked for jawfish, found none.  Bobbi said she found a moray on the dive, Véronique saw a scorpion fish, and Angelika from Munich said later there were lots of lion fish there, but I'm finding the back side of Dibba more a wasteland compared to what life used to thrive there.  I hope it's coming back.  We ended our dive at about 40 min, having reached 16 meters in the sand.

Now we were down to the completion of a long weekend course with only two CESAs to do, mask removal and replacement, and hovering.  Hovering would be easy on the front side reef, since hovering is the way to observe what's going on there, and my divers requested the mask flood last, so after the CESAs we just started diving from the mooring nearest the aquarium.  The site was as beautiful as before, though we were finning into the current now, which would dog us throughout the dive.  The aquarium turned awsome for Bobbi and I when a meter plus blacktip came at us from the left and crossed right in front of us, then disappeared in the rocks to our right.  We pointed madly and spiked our foreheads but I don't think my students saw it.

I led us west onto the reef, finding it by the audible clacking that greets us when we approach it.  It's aways interesing to come onto the reef, especially having just seen a shark, because anything can appear on this reef.  However, the reef has fallen on bad times after cyclone Gonu, and particularly after the cloak of red tide that afflicted it for half a year recenly.  It used to be pinkish raspberry coral but now it's a grey-brown mass of rubble with fish covering it nonetheless, but almost always cloaked in haze, and less often do we see interesting creatures here. Today was such a day, though right at the end of the dive, with Fares low on air (from having to go up and down with his and Véronique's CESAs at the beginning of the dive) and preparing his mask removal exercise, we drifted over a turtle.  We settled in a rubble patch to do that exercise, and then rejoined the turtle and found a dozen more of his friends resting nearby.

Fares and Véronique left the water at that point.  I accompanied them to the surface and saw the boat was near and that they were drifting that direction.  I was drifting too, so I descended quickly while I could still relocate Vince and Bobbi.  We revisited the coral patch where the turtles were hanging out, and then let ourselves be carried along the coral, where Bobbi and I again saw a shark cruising the sand, a 2 meter one this time, through he had moseyed off by the time Vince came over to see what we were pointing at.

That last dive was almost an hour for me, but we didn't reach ten meters. Though Dibba Rock reef is disappointing now compared with past glory, this was a nice dive, and it's always a pleasure to be diving with fun people and revisiting our favorite dive centers and seeing the kind faces of the young staff members there again.

Rays at Lima with Discover Nomad June 25 and Freestyle diving June 26, 2010

My dives #994-996 Friday; Saturday #997-999
Diving with Nicki, standing in as dive mistress

Certified Marika Backman and Natalie Naysmith, open water, June 25, 2010

Jonny Ing did two advanced dives (underwater naturalist and peak buoyancy) June 25, 2010 and completed his advance course with a Deep Dive June 26, 2010

I got up before 5 in the morning in order to pick up Nicki and Marika and drive them across the UAE to the Discover Nomad dive center on the east coast, getting them there just before 9:30 in the morning.  A sixth diver in our group had canceled at the last minute, so when we arrived we discovered we had been given two other divers named Bijal and Mooyad (according to the list on the whiteboard) but they never turned up, so at 10:30 we were given permission to head to port.  Nomad were kind enough to assign us our own boat as usual, which is a great advantage in planning the best possible diving for your group.  We got on the boat, the amicable driver Hassan joined us, but we didn’t leave, waiting we were told, on two more.  Because we were just over the border in Oman our UAE phones didn’t work so I had to drive back to the dive center to ascertain that no more were coming and get them to communicate that to the handlers dockside so we could finally leave after 11:30.

My o/w students were a little anxious about the prospect of diving in the real ocean but when at 1:01 they were dropping into a sea of clear vis, with very little current, waters so tepid I was wearing only a .5 mm lycra, concerns vanished with the schools of batfish and fusiliers and jacks.  I quickly ran my students through their exercises (just orally inflate bdc, mask flood and clear) and we were off on a lovely dive.  Buoyancy was fine, air held out, we finned a little into the current at first, found the calm spot, moved into the side where the current started gently easing us toward the east corner, and turned around.

We caught up with the French pair with rebreathers doing their two-hour dive on the reef at that moment.  Because they dive for so long they take their time in the water.  They take photos and one of them likes to get himself positioned wedged into the coral, and since they dive that spot almost every week, I hate to think of the damage they would do if they rest on the coral often.

I was ahead of my divers.  Jonny had gone high, low on air.  Nicki was engaging Marika and Natalie in some form of display.  They were enjoying themselves, but whatever it was it was preventing me from getting their attention, because in the next valley down there were three eagle rays cavorting as they pleased.

The rays sort of split off as I approached them.  I asked Nicki later how many she had seen and she said two, so one had already split off and I was swimming after the other two when the ladies noticed what I was up to.  They were slightly different coloring, the dark spotted one was the same we had seen last week I think, as he didn’t mind my trailing not far above him until he headed out over the sand and then they were all gone.

We saw no whale sharks this day but we ended the dive in utter comfort, spending at least 5 minutes rising up through schools of fish, thoroughly enjoying the wildlife so much that I had the ladies remove and replace weights and bcds there so I would have an excuse to snorkel more at that spot.

We went over to the north side of the rock and had our lunch of dubious canned meat wraps.  Nicki scarfed down three of them and mentioned regrets later.  Nicki wanted to dive that side, I agreed, and the others didn’t mind.  We descended onto a large crayfish well exposed in an alcove, and I handed the ladies a pipefish to fondle.  We came upon a number of morays, a large honeycomb in a hole, a green one under a rock, and a yellowmouth grey one feinting fiercely from his habitat.  We had worked out on the tables that this dive could be 14 meters for 72 minutes or 16 for 51, and the rocks bottomed out in that range.

I was heading out alone over the sand sometimes, but keeping high off it looking for rays, always returning to the wall without seeing much more than sandy bottom.  However my last time out like that I found a school of devil rays.  The water here was brown and murky where the thermocline started, and the rays were concealed in it.  I called the others over and when my team joined me 7 devil rays passed in formation just below us, a lovely end to that dive.

Because they had thought more people were coming, at the docks they had given us plenty of tanks, and my group got me to ask the boatman if he would mind dropping us by Wonder Wall for a third dive.  Usually the boatmen complain about this, but I think it was my polite Arabic, Hassan agreed.  We liked him!

The dive on Wonder Wall was not all that great because it was late in the day and as it was our third dive, I'd calculated we could do ten to twelve meters for 40 minutes max.  Due to this limitation we couldn't explore the sand where we sometimes see rays, but we found small morays in the rocks, including a black and white banded one that Nicki got pictures of.  Three dives in one summer day, lovely conditions, we enjoyed the ride back in the warm breeze.

Next morning we were up early and across the border where I had arranged to take Jonny and Nicki on an Inchcape wreck dive using Freestyle Divers at Dibba Rock.  It was only the three of us on the boat, but there were two others at the Inchcape already when we arrived, so we took our time kitting up and managed to go down the rope to the wreck as the last of those divers were coming up.  It was Jonny’s advanced o/w dive at 30 meters so I had him do exercises on deck and then we dropped into the cargo hold and found one of the huge honeycomb morays there.  These ones had grown; the other one was in the sand trying to hide under the hull.  The wreck was thick with fish as usual, though we saw nothing else of unusual interest. We headed up the line at about 17 meters, Jonny having completed the diving portion of his advanced course.

Back at Freestyle we collected the ladies for their first dive as certified divers. Nicki had a headache and didn’t join us, and when she dropped out I was thinking that would relieve me of deciding whether to do the front or the back side.  Nicki likes to go out to the back, but if there’s a current sweeping across the back side it can be uncomfortable for beginners and I wanted to show them a good dive on the shallow reef.  The water was clear where we dropped in; however, there was silt on the reef, which was not looking all that healthy.  We got dropped in at the green buoy which means a long westerly swim to reach the reef, where we managed to find some barracuda.  I brought us to the north and then east off the reef to the aquarium.  Here there were pretty fish in the rust colored coral, and decent vis, but nothing to write home about, so I returned us to the east and back over what used to be raspberry coral but what was now becoming a little skeletal.  We found no sharks, no turtles, not even cuttlefish there.  It had started out looking like a good dive but ended in disappointingly hazy conditions on the main reef.

So it was not that interesting a dive for us, and imagine our surprise to find that all the other divers on our boat had gone to the front side and were raving about the whale shark they had seen there. Doh!

Natalie and Jonny were keen to head home after that dive, and Nicki wanted to join them.  Andrew told me they’d never seen the whale shark there on two subsequent dives, but Marika wanted to see if we could find it, so I agreed to stay for the three p.m. dive.  It was just Marika and I and two other young lady divers who had come down on an afternoon lark out of Dubai, plus their dive guide.  The guide was talking up the chance of seeing the whale shark, but to make a long story short, we didn’t see it or much else besides.  I hung out at 7 meters thinking if it did appear that’s where it would be, but I looked for rays and jawfish in the sand and morays in the rocks, and really found nothing.  And then when I got home at 10:00 I was up till 3 a.m. writing http://tinyurl.com/oti2010jun.  At least the diving was pleasant; it’s always worth it, and you never know what you’ll see, or won’t see ;-)

May 28-29, 2010 - certified 3 advanced open water divers: Borja, January and Keith and 3 open water divers Tammy, Roger, and Mila

My logged dives number 979-981 Friday and 982-984 Saturday

Daniel Sobrado took pictures and posted them to his Picassa account here: http://tinyurl.com/daniel-divepics. Thanks Daniel for permission to post some of these here.

My running friend and o/w and advanced dive student Graeme put some of his friends from Dubai on to me and they agreed to do their academics through PADI eLearning and meet me at Discover Nomad on Thu May 27. So I met Tammy, Mila, and Roger for the first time at the dive center in Dibba and took them through confined water pool dives 1 and 2 at the pool there before dinner and bedtime.

On Friday May 28, we got up early for confined water dive 3 which qualified the three for two open water dives that day. By 10:00 the rest of those diving with us had arrived for our dive trip up to Musandam. At 1:20 we descended at Lima Rock in what I was conducting as an advanced boat dive for Borja, January, and Keith, and O/W dive 1 for Roger, Mila, and Tammy. We were a large group. Besides Bobbi and I, Bruno, January's colleague from Brazil, and also Renato and his wife Kelly (snorkeling) were on board. Leslie and Caroline had also joined us for fun diving, and they saw the whale shark on their dive (but the rest of us didn't :-(

We had the boatman take us to Ras Morovi where at 15:00 we were heading down for one of my complex combined open water and advanced navigation dives, advanced for Borja, January and Keith, and dive #2 for Roger, Mila, and Tammy. After our exercises in the cove we moved out the tongue as we had the week before. Vis had improved since then but it was still milky there. We got the boatman to drop us by the Cave on the way home, which we started diving at around 17:30. I had proposed this as a third elective dive for January and Keith (either underwater naturalist or peak buoyancy). Funny we couldn't actually find the entrance to the cave, very puzzling as I'd been there many times before, but we found huge crayfish wandering around in the rocks just outside the alcove. Due to the waning light, we kept it to a shallow dive for just 30 minutes.

It was at this site that we found a bird in the water, nearly immobilized and struggling to stay afloat with wings caked with oil. While Keith and January and I were diving the others rescued it and we took it back to the dive center with us where it was bathed by dive center staff as often as they could get around to it. Despite frequent cleansings the oil could be only partially removed, and on Saturday the bird died, just a glimpse to us of what's being wreaked on wildlife on the shores ringing the Gulf of Mexico right now.

Sat May 29, Tammy, Mila, and Roger completed confined water dives 4 and 5 in the pool next morning and at 10:00 we again departed for another dive trip up to Musandam. At noon we were diving Lima Rock south side on a deep dive with multilevel profile for Borja, January and Keith. The other qualified divers dived on their own. We saw the usual fish there but again no whalesharks. After collecting everyone back on board, we puttered around to the sheltered north side of the rock where Roger, Mila, and Tammy finished their flexible (mostly surface) skills in shallow mooring area. At 14:00 we went down for Dive #3 for Roger, Mila, and Tammy and an advanced underwater naturalist dive for Borja. Everyone else remained at the surface, including Keith and January who worked on their decent surface interval while plotting out their last advanced dive, a multilevel one we planned for 15:30 off Wonder Wall.

Since Borja had done two dives already, I had him join Tammy, Mila, and Roger and I for a shallow advanced peak buoyancy dive (hovering for everyone). Bobbi joined January and Keith for their multilevel dive. Wonder Wall was a place we hadn't been to lately but it was a lovely spot. The fish life was very attractive but the highlight of the trip was a ray that glided casually ahead of us as we shadowed it in the sand, then turned to check us out, then headed up the reef and back down to the sand, putting on a nice show for us. Bobbi and Keith and January saw the same ray. At the end of the dive as we neared the point the current picked up and divers were being collected even out to sea, but all re-boarded safely and we made it back to harbor and home late, exhausted, but happy.

May 21-22, 2010 - certified 4 advanced open water divers: Ianthe, Rosanna, Johan, and Daniel and 1 open water diver Camille

My logged dives number 973-975 Friday and 976-978 Saturday

See more pictures from Dibba reef and Musandam (whale shark), thanks to Advanced Diver Daniel Sobrado! And thanks to Daniel for permission to post these:

On Friday, we all met at Freestyle Divers at Dibba Rock and did three dives from the same location, the mooring on the west side of the island, with the current sweeping to the east. We did the noon, 3 pm and night dives. Divers with us besides Bobbi and I were Godelieve, her kids Ianthe and Rosanna, and their friend Johan; plus Daniel and Camille.

The first dive was Camille's first and for the others a refresher and advanced boat dive conducted with some difficulty due to the current. Since the mooring at Freestyle was new to me I had trouble finding the reef but eventually found it for the last third of our dive, and with it calm water, and I managed to get Camille pretty much right next to a prowling black tip. The second dive was centered around an advanced navigation dive, where square patterns were difficult in the current. Johan and Daniel managed one, disappearing and reappearing near a large coral bommie while I took Camille through the PADI o/w dive #2 skill set. Ianthe had to surface accompanied by her mom, due to stomache problems after stress descending in the current at the mooring, but Rosanna managed her square once we got her into calmer water in the reef at the western edge of the rock, where we swam with turtles. The final dive of the day was the night dive for all the advanced candidates. I followed bright eyes to find the glass shrimp behind them and we found interesting crustacians in the sea bed, and hopped over the border afterwards for a warm reception and good food and beverage at Discover Nomad.

Saturday we got a late start, quarter past 11 departure. Things had gone well up to the point where we were told our boat was waiting for us. I'd got up at 7:30 and met Camille and Daniel at breakfast, and Camille and I got in the pool and got our confined water dives out of the way, and 8 divers and six snorkelers were told they could go down to the harbor any time after ten. But our food with our name on it was missing, and that gave us one more thing to disorganize on top of getting our gear ready etc. It turned out Michael had taken the food down to the harbor where he was waiting with our 20 tanks. That was the good news, the bad was that the boats had buggered off. The boatmen had said 20 minutes. My divers were at least given shaded seating on a nearby dhow and I took the opportunity to brief them on multilevel and deep diving. We worked out profiles for Rosanne, my 12 year old jr advanced o/w water candidate who was going just to 21 meters. For the others, I recommended no more that 24 meters, and we worked out a 26 meter profile that in the end gave everyone 21 meters at depth, ascent to 16 meters for another 20 minutes, and both profiles allowed 45 minutes to an hour and ten at 12 meters, in case anyone had that much air left, not likely on a deep dive.

So despite the late start we were at least at the rock an hour later where we joined several other dive boats following bubbles. We were told a whale shark had been spotted, and my divers excitedly kitted up. We were planning the advanced deep dive and everyone had been briefed. I tested current, found it slightly to the west toward the mountains, but it was essentially slack. Still the boats were all drifting west, perhaps wind blown, as the divers entered the water, instructed to remain near a large rock. They held position well, Cami was disappointed she wouldn't be able to join us as she was only two dives into her o/w training and couldn't go to our depth, even though it was only 3 meters below her limit. We have to keep to the standards, which require me to directly supervise o/w students as well as deep divers in training.

Eventually we got the divers in the water and heading down. Rosanne was having slight ear problems so I moved her over to the rock wall where she could come down with visual reference (this is probably how I missed the big honeycomb moray Daniel was snapping pictures of :-), and soon I had 7 divers with me on the sand bottom in 21 meters of water. We ran through our exercises smoothly, we had enough tables to go around for calculation of minimum surface interval (at depth), we found some discrepancies in gauges reporting how deep we were, and then we were on our way to enjoy the dive.

We had excellent vis, the fish life was abundant, fish pouring over the rocks and coral, moray eels, and big batfish enjoying their full wrasse makeovers at the numerous cleaning stations, and I was taking it all in while keeping a half dozen advanced divers on task, when my buddy Ianthe reached over and grabbed my slate. “Aren't we supposed to go to 16 meters?” she wrote. I checked my computer, 19 minutes. Yep, good thing she was watching the time. I started to lead us up to the next level. Plan your dive, dive your plan.

Unless of course you happen to see a sting ray in the sand at 20 meters, a big one, and you think there's flexibility in this profile, we didn't go to the calculated depth of 26 meters, none of us, my computer is showing double digit no deco time, and after we dropped down to check the big guy out, I took us up to 16 meters, where for the next several minutes we saw shoals of barracuda sweeping in from the deep water off the wall.

What could top that? The next thing to appear out of the blue was a growing baby 5 meter whale-shark. These things are massive compared to anything else on the reef and they are curious about the next massive thing, us.

When whalesharks appear to a group of trainee divers, diver decorum sort of goes out the window. I was of course out there with it swimming around me but I was also looking out for my buddy and keeping track of how far off the wall I was. I watched my divers chase after it (except for Johan, playing it cool like me, hanging back, staying aware of all his surroundings). Actually I lost sight of my divers momentarily until I could get around an outcrop they'd all gone behind, and then I was pleased so see the whale shark coming back towards me surrounded by a cloud of divers and bubbles, so it was nice of him to bring them back to me.

But the cloud of bubbles and whaleshark headed back into the blue, and my divers with it. I tried to get Bobbi's attention to bring them back into the reef, currents can be bad here, but there was nothing she could do. And then we were at the flat featureless wall leading out to the point. I felt the current pick up. This would have been my turn-around point, but my divers were now caught in it. I watched them disappear around the next outcrop like cards being spewed from a squeezed deck.

I finned fast ahead of them. They now realized they should check for instructions and I motioned them to get near the wall and stay low in the water as we were swept along involuntarily. They all did very well staying together and managing the situation. It wasn't dangerous, but we were clearly coming to the end of the dive, whereas had we gone the other way at the turning point we might have had longer. On the new course, I would have directed them around the gap to the other side but we hit a bit of back wash and were able to stay in one place for a moment, so we paused to collect ourselves.

The whale shark reappeared at that moment. I noticed him just off the rock pointed into the current, scarfing up plankton, facing us, as if he planned to watch us and see what we would do. I thought we might have held that standoff and happily watched one another for a few minutes, but some of our divers swam over to him, this seemed to surprise him, and so he flicked his tail and took off upcurrent and that was the last we saw of him, until next time of course, but we had to do our safety stop without him :-).  Daniel got some great pics: http://tinyurl.com/daniel-divepics

I decided I'd take Camille on a shallow dive to see if we could see the whale shark again. I had 100 bar and I didn't change my tank, I expected conditions to be much the same as the dive before, and I'd keep the diver short but conditions had changed. We put in at the same rock we had started at an hour before, and at first we just slowly settled to the bottom as before, except I noticed that the vis had gone cloudy. It was feeling strange, the current even started to grab us and carry us along so this would be a one-way dive, not like the one before. I kept to 10 meters. We passed the big batfish and schools of jacks, but apart from the phenomenal schools of fish, nothing really big in evidence. We were really trucking along with the current and I was down to 70 bar when I noticed Daniel overhead snorkeling. I decided it wasn't wise to continue diving there with a beginner so we ascended to meet him. He reported that the boat was just downcurrent, out of sight around the corner. I could see the water rippling at the surface at that corner where the current was in turbo mode. I wouldn't have gone for it had Daniel not said the boat was just on the other side, so with a grip on Camille's bcd we went into it like long swimmers in a rapids. It was like river current, fun, and took us right to the boat, where we were rescued aboard.

That was the last of the great diving we would have that day, though in the calm bay at Ras Morovi, there was a devil ray that entertained us with arial acrobatics, doing several somersaults out of the water, and then entertained our snorkelers. Cami and I saw it as we finished off our surface skills for her o/w course (and I bounced down briefly to see the mottled brown markings on its back).

Ianthe had asked to complete her navigation work in the calm shallow waters of Ras Morovi and I could take Camille there and have her do the skills for her o/w dive #3 at the same time. In order that she could do her o/w compass work there I devised a cunning plan. For this I would need two plastic drinks cups from the boat trash. Starting at the alcove in the corner of the bay, Ianthe would lead us west her calibrated 30 meters, where I left the 1st cup wedged in the coral, hopefully not in such as way as to damage it. She then led us back to our starting point, a rock on which I'd placed a sea cucumber. Now it was Cami's turn. I instructed her to lead us south 30 meters, but the metric I used was the number of kick cycles I'd counted for Iante's leg, so the distance would be the same, see? Cami then led us back to the north to the rock where the sea cucumber still held vigil. Ianthe then led us west again where we recovered the first cup from the coral. But now she headed south the requisite number of kicks, stopping exactly where I thought she should. She was actually doing an excellent job. I was following, letting her lead, but double checking her direction, which was spot on. She also looked back now and then to be sure her buddies were with her, helping her avoid rising up in the water by checking she was still at the level of her buddies, another excellent habit I may have taught her :-). In any event, the test was on the next leg, where we expected to find Cami's cup. Ianthe stopped at the right distance as did I but we didn't see the cup right away. But the terrain looked right so we scoured that area and found it. From there it was a simple matter to return to the rock where I in turn returned the sea cucumber to his proper bed of sand.

There's something very satisfying about navigation. It's reassuring when theory is corroborated by reality. It's nice to see students appreciate their accomplishments in navigating a course successfully, doing something that's challenging, and that they could not have done when I started training them as open water divers when they were even younger kids a couple years back.

We finished the day with everyone diving the tongue extending from the protected cove at Ras Morovi. It was the most convenient spot and is usually a lovely dive, but on this day it was brown and murky with cold thermoclines that kept us above 10 meters most of the dive.  Still the squid were there and the lovely fish, nice way to end a great weekend.

Coda: Some of my advanced diver candidates have vowed to never again touch whale sharks, and I have made it a part of my dive briefing since then.  It disturbs them and makes them want to leave the area. When you touch them, they visibly recoil.  Let's not do that anymore :-)

Ho hum, another Whale Shark - Dibba / Musandam April 30 / May 1, 2010 - My logged dives #967-970

 Photo credit - Daniel Sobrado - Link here to more photos from this weekend by Daniel

I had been teaching a course for two of Bobbi's colleagues at work for the past couple of weeks. The ladies had borrowed the DVDs and watched them, and they'd taken the tests up to module 3 so they could go in the pool for modules 2 and 3 on Thursday night so they could do dives 1 and 2 in the ocean on Dibba Rock with Freestyle Divers on Friday.

It had been hectic and not entirely smooth going but two very keen ladies had persevered and turned up outside our flat at 7:30 Friday for the 3.5 hour drive across the UAE to Dibba. We arrived at the east coast at 11 and had plenty of time to get the newbies kitted and sorted for their very first ocean dive at noon-ish, as it said on the schedule of who's on what boat at Freestyle, which in the event turned out to be about 12:30 departure, which fazed not one of the laid-back customers enjoying their day at the beach with the relaxed boys at Freestyle Divers (Hayley wasn't there, so it was just the boys).

Although the shore-facing side of Dibba Rock is a forgiving 8 meters maximum, and therefore suitable for beginners, there are sometimes currents, and today it was a stiff one pumping to the east. Fortunately this carried us on to the reef from the western mooring, but of course i had to be careful that the ladies turned with me to zig zag on the reef. They were controlling buoyancy well and accomplished this manoeuver well enough, and we were rewarded with a turtle resting on the reef. We didn't see much beyond the schools of tropical reef fish after that. I recall a pleasant dive, some parts of the reef thick with snappers, 26 degree termperatures, mediocre visibility (better than 'bad'), and the first diver low on air at 31 minutes, not unusual for first-time divers adjusting to the changing buoyancies and current pressure in an unfamiliar underwater environment, so we surfaced.

We signalled the boat to pick us up and while waiting we drifted off the reef. When our low-on-air diver got picked up, three of us still had 100 bar so we decided to descend and go on compass to the Rock where Bobbi had seen sharks playing last time she was there with Daniel Sobrado. We were fighting the current to do this but Channin managed it well for a first time diver. We arrived in the shallows and found improved visibility but no sharks cavorting, so we moved into an area of red corals teeming again with fish, even some small bat fish, and got some relief from the current there. It was pretty here but we'd been down an hour by my wrist watch (my computer had restarted timing while we waited at the surface), so at 13:55 I signalled up.

My divers had to complete a couple of module 3 confined water skills we hadn't quite got to the evening before when they ran us out of the pool at nine, so as soon as the boat tied up to discharge the other divers my students and I re-entered the water to get through our confined water oral inflation of BCD underwater, emergency swimming ascent siimulations, and breathing from a free flowing regulator. This non-stop activity was a bit demanding on a hot day on first time divers, who had to then exit onto the shore and immediately replace their tanks with full ones and get out to where a boat load of divers and snorkelers were patiently waiting for us. Therefore it was understandable when Ala opted not to do the skill set for dive number 2: mask clear, regulator recovery, and alternate air source breathing, but rather to make it a fun dive for experience instead.

A fun dive it was. We saw some of the best Dibba Rock has recently had to offer after the subsequent eco-disasters of Cyclone Gonu and the prolonged Red Tide. We found a couple of turtles and a school of barracuda that we could swim among (and one of the turtles was swimming alongside the barracuda, serene). We found some cuttlefish and squid, and at the end of the dive, a big blacktip shark that prowled in close across our path. Ala, right at my shoulder, pointed excitedly and flashed the very OK sign. Channin didn't see the shark but she had passed her first two dives plus all the diving skills for modules 1-3, and Ala had done the same, up through the first o/w dive.

The evening had only begun. We washed and packed our gear and headed over the border into Oman to be welcomed by Chris and his family and staff at the Discover Nomad hostel, bed and breakfast plus the best meal deal in Dibba. Ala and Channin busied themselves with the academic portions of the final two modules and after dinner I helped them understand the tables and then waited while they took their final exam. It was after midnight by the time we had gone over the 50 question final exam and signed off on their papers. Bobbi was already asleep, and I was too as soon as my head hit the pillow.

I was disoriented in the morning when the knock came on the door that it was time to get up and prepare to go in the pool at 7:00. It didn't seem enough sleep, but the girls were getting ready and Daniel's friend Borja joined us as well. The boys had driven down the evening before. Borja's PADI certification was back home in Spain and we couldn't find in PADI's online database what combination of Francisco de Borja etc could possibly constitute a first name, middle initial, last name, and birthday that PADI requires be entered exactly as it is in the dbase before the system will return you a hit. So I checked him out in the pool and he was fine in the water, had obviously done the course and was well trained, The ladies too soldiered through the last two pool modules of the course, and we were out of the pool and into the croissants and coffee by around 9 a.m.

Chris's staff were sending everyone to the dive boats. I was designated 'guide' on one and I was assigned in addition to Channin and Ala and Daniel and Borja (and Bobbi and I) Robert from Munich and his team of divers Karsten and another Daniel, with Robert's Phillipina 'buddy' Ashley along as a snorkeler.

My job now was to ensure that all of these folks got their equipment and weights etc on board, and that I didn't forget the food, and that we had enough tanks. These small tasks having been handled mainly by others, and the personable Captain Mohamed having appeared to conduct us north, our boat left Dibba by 11 a.m. and we set out upon choppy seas, with some overcast misting the mountains of Musandam.

Despite the rough ride I managed to squirm into my wetsuit so that on arrival at Lima Rock I could jump over the side and test the current, which I find is the only sure way of knowing what it's doing. Today I detected a strong current driving toward the Lima headland and I suggested to Robert and his group that we not dive there just then, too challenging for beginners, who could be swept from one end of the rock to the other if they had any delay in descent, or ear problems keeping them near the surface. Robert's team agreed to my call, and I suggested Ras Morovi instead. Again general agreement, and Capt Mhmd willingly motored us over. I had him pull into the calm bay one back from the channel between the headland and the island. Here my divers could kit up comfortably, and the water was smooth and clear and beckoning.

This turned out to be an excellent dive, mainly due to the clear visibility. The rocks were alive with fishes and morays, including a honeycomb (always impressive) that was curled up and hidden entirely in a hole. We found cuttlefish and squid, or perhaps young cuttlefish, not sure, but they were darting about in large numbers, and in one place they played right in front of our face masks and tried to hide in the rocks, nice try, but only inches away from us, within grabbing reach (but I'm sure they were faster than we in the water, and would have elluded our grasp; in any event we observe, do not disturb). We again found turtles swimming, and in the tall alcove just after where we had turned north into the channel and passed over the cabbage coral, we found a cloud of fish fry almost stationary in the water in the back of the cave, and beneath them an electric ray resting. Nearby under another ledge there was a large brown sting ray resting in the sand, blinking at us to please go away.

No rest for the weary, after an hour down for Bobbi, Channin, Daniel and Borja, we collected all divers and motored back across the chop to Lima headline where we could eat lunch out of the weather, again in calm waters. After a short break to do that, it was back in the water for Ala and Channin and I for dive flexible skills for both ladies. We worked on compass and on breathing through snorkels, and tired diver tows, and cramp removal, and then I Ala exited the water and I took Channin down for her controlled emergency swimming ascent, the rehearsal and then the real thing. While we were waiting for the boat, Channin removed and replaced weights and BCD, completing all but the final dive to complete her course.

And what a dive that was. Our German friends were amenable to whatever I decided for our group but Robert asked if we could try the calmer lee or north side of Lima Rock, and that was fine with me, as long as the current was ok for my students, but in negotiating this we decided I should check out the current again on the weather south side, and I felt there was no harm in that. On the way over I asked Mhmd what he thought the current might be doing on Lima Rock and he said in fact he wasn't familiiar with the currents here, but he was happy to take me to check it out.

The seas were choppy still but I found no current so we decided to go in at the middle of Lima Rock. In retrospect we should have gone to the lee side to kit up. It wasn't long before someone started getting ill. Another lost his mask over the side and jumped in the water to rescue it, to no avail, it was adding to the confusion, and I suggested he reboard, kit up, and try and find it on scuba. The Germans kitted themselves in good order and rolled over backwards. Our team was more affected by the unsteady conditions and taking more time. Then the German Daniel shouted from the surface that a whale shark was directly below. Channin was already in the water, where she had gone for some relief from boat sickness. Some of the others decided the best bet was to go in the water on snorkel. I was among those but I couldn't find my mask. I soon spotted it on one of my divers in the water who had grabbed it in his haste to jump in to try and see the whale shark. By the time I managed to find a mask one of the snorkelers wasn't using and get in the water myself the whale shark had passed and all we could see of the Germans was their bubbles. Knowing that whale sharks like to hang around divers I tried to reassure my divers they might see it later and get them back in the boat and get them kitting systematically and taking their time and not hurrying and missing out essential steps of the buddy check system. This plus the pitching of the boat plus divers wanting to get off the boat and into the relatively calmer water made this something less than a military operation but my divers had at least all been well trained :-) and they were waiting for me in a group and resisting the dispersal tendencies of the slight current when I finally managed to enter the water myself.

The visibility on the rock was quite nice and I found that if I kept at about ten meters I could see the surface and also the sand below at 25 meters, so I led us on a comfortable up-current fin where we admired the fishes, finding some moray eels and lots of huge batfish enjoying the wrasse at their cleaning stations. Hoping to allow everyone the best air time I kept the group shallow and didn't even drop in the sand for exercises. Eventually I found a rock we could rest on and had my divers do their mask exercises and hovering on it. Channin had the technique down by then and Ala was making consistent progress. When the current became more noticeable near the point I wheeled us around and revisited the way we had come. 35 minutes into the dive Ala needed to surface so I brought her up and got Bobbi and Channin to stay just below where I could keep an eye on them. When the boat came for Ala I descended and continued the dive. Daniel was next up (he'd gone deep in search of the missing mask), and I let his buddy Borja accompany us until he too got too low on air, so I kept my eye on him as he surfaced proficiently.

Bobbi said later that she knew what I was doing. I was keeping us underwater and at just the right depth for as long as possible in hopes that maybe, just maybe, the whale shark would return. Channin's air was holding out as well as Bobbi's and mine. We all had 100 bar when Borja went up, and no one had told us 50 minutes or 50 bar. So we continued around the rock to the north side, and found some blue crayfish in their lairs in the rock wall. We were comfortably maintaining ten meters depth, just cruising slowly and methodically, when Bobbi noticed we had been joined by a 4th buddy, a whale shark that came right along beside her. So she got the best view and I saw it as it turned in front of us, showing off its remorahs. It was small for a whale shark, maybe 3 or 4 meters, but an impressive fish, docile, and just the thing you want to show your open water student who has just completed her final dive for certification. Bobbi, who had been down the whole time of that dive, had 64 minutes on her computer, and I had 59 (5 min on the surface waiting for a boat). So my strategy paid off with yet another whale shark experience on Lima Rock. The boat ride home was a joyous one for the three of us and the Germans, who had seen it first, and everyone had a great weekend out of the capital, so there were no complaints as we motored back to Dibba Oman harbor, home port :-))

Reactions from my two students this weekend: http://screencast.com/t/NWY1MjhiZ (Thanks!)