Mergulho em Abrolhos 2: My dives 1000 and 1001, Aug 4, 2010

This continues my saga of arranging diving in Abrolhos from here:

http://vancesdiveblogs.blogspot.com/2010/08/mergulho-em-abrolhos.html


The diving off Caravelas was to me, disappointing. As you've seen if you've visited the link above, I arrived there Saturday night, discovered there were no liveaboard dive trips going to Abrolhos that week, but I could come back Monday (closed Sunday) and get on a day trip to the islands Tuesday which was really for whale watching and snorkeling, but I could be assigned a dive guide (monitor) and be taken on one dive there.


But as it happened, the boat to Abrolhos on Tuesday broke down in one engine and turned back halfway to the islands. It at least got to an area where there were a lot of whales, and we spent an hour with them. But I returned to Caravelas at mid day still without having got wet with diving. The company that had to abort the trip (Horizonte Aberto) offered all its passengers to come back next day and return for free, and many did, and those staying at my pousada said the snorkeling at Abrolhos was great, good vis and lots of fish. But I had booked the diving the following day (and already paid an advance to book the boat) so I was given a complete refund. When I said that I was going to Parcel das Paredes the lady at Horizonte Aberto said, that's good! That's also a good dive site, you'll enjoy it.

So next day I was looking forward to it as I hoofed it down to the pier (everything is in walking distance in Caravelas, or jogging, as I most often got about if I needed to use the Internet or grab a bite). Rodrigo and Mauricio, a divemaster I'd met whom I was aware would be accompanying us, were loading the boat, which they called a tototo after the sound the engine makes as it chugs to its destination.

Rodrigo had said we were diving under the auspices of Apecatu, the dive center which had a house on the wharf where we had gone the day before for me to try on a wetsuit and BCD. They had taken 3 regulators from there and they were loading these and our tanks from the deck of a liveaboard, the Titan, onto the tototo tied alongside. There was a lot of gear lying about on the liveaboard and I asked if they were taking spares. As people who dive with me know, I always pack a spare dive bag with at least one extra kit. Even when training I take along a spare tank, and I have o-rings in my dive bag. Also, I pay regularly to have my regs serviced, but despite that they sometimes develop leaks, so it's always good to have a spare, and I try to see that I have at least one handy when diving.

So later I discovered there were problems with the equipment. The low pressure inflator connections had corroded on all the regs and were hard to clip into place, though Rodrigo was able to do it. When we started diving I discovered my depth gauge didn't work, so I had a look at Rodrigo's computer, 51 feet (our max depth that dive). Back on board when I asked for another reg I was told that none of the depth gauges worked on any of them and in any event they had brought no spares, so I had to do both dives without a depth gauge.  Rodrigo assured me we wouldn't go over 14 or 15 meters.

On that first dive, Rodrigo had an interesting rig, no BCD (he had rigged an air bladder around his waste for buoyancy control) and he had a harness to carry his tanks side-mounted. He explained the advantages, for diving in caves and wrecks for example, but on the first dive he carried two tanks, each with just 100 bar. This was strange, why not bring full tanks? 

This turned out to be doubly odd because for the last dive, the valve on Rodrigo's tank was faulty and spewed air when turned on, so we couldn't use that tank, and he had brought no others. Fortunately the first dive had been shallow and short and I had consumed just 70 bar, so my first tank still had 130. I noticed when he was testing the valve that his tank had just 150 bar anyway, so I suggested he use my first one, which is how we barely scrounged tanks for two dives.

We were diving in Parcel das Paredes, an area with chamaraos, or mushroom formations Rodrigo said were similar to those in Abrolhos. The boatman whom Rodrigo had hired, who was a very nice fellow, used no means of navigation that I could discern; that is, he had no compass, nor GPS. He steered seemingly by instinct, but one thing I noticed, when we arrived at the site, we still had land just visible on the horizon.

I took over steerage on the return trip because my companions were sleeping in the tiny cabin and the boatman was pulling in a fish on the line he'd trailed aft, and once I got the till, he just left me with it. The one time he took the till back was to get between the waves that marked the safe passage on the return to the river, so that had to be done in daylight for sure.

When I was steering on the return trip, the boatman indicated the direction through knowledge known only to him, so I put my compass on the top of the cabin and navigated according to that, which was between 320-330 degrees. I had noticed on the way out that the boatman had gone southerly and then easterly.The return compass heading gives me a fix on about where we were, more or less 150 degrees from the mouth of the river at Barra, and it took us about 3 hours to get out there going not many knots in the tototo, and a little over two hours to get back. The first and last hours were in the river and its brown water as it entered the sea.

The shoals we dived both had names the boatman knew. The first place was called Pedra de Leste, and the second Sequeiro do Sol. I got Mauricio to write that down for me/

I have been Googling the places we went, and I found this document
http://marte.dpi.inpe.br/col/dpi.inpe.br/sbsr@80/2008/11.17.21.38/doc/6595-6602.pdf
It has a map of Parcel das Paredes and Pedra de Leste is indicated as being in (or near) that chain, and Pedra de Leste is also mentioned as being in Parcel das Paredes in this document:
http://www.conservation.org.br/arquivos/MarineRAP38Bra.pdf
And finally, I found a map of the area at the bottom of this document:
http://www.ufsc.br/prolarus/abrolhos.html
and I hope they don't mind if I put it here, with credit to the makers of that site (and I'll take it down if they ask me to):

 

The two sites we dived were not far from one another, both essentially the same environment. The second dive was supposed to be on a wreck, but during the surface interval I was told the GPS had been dropped in water, so they wouldn't be able to find its location.

All of this could be taken in stride if the diving itself had been worth the trouble and expense, but it wasn't. There were lots of coral mushrooms, but the bottom was silt here. I stuck my hand in it to check it out and penetrated easily to my arm. The silt made the water milky, so vis was only 4 meters or so. There weren't many fish there, some angel fish, some parrots, some fusiliers, a couple of crawfish. Rodrigo pointed out the fire coral and brain coral and whip, or black coral. It was very poor diving, reminiscent of the breakwater at Abu Dhabi, on the inside, on a poor day. Each dive lasted about 40 minutes including the safety stop, and on each dive I exited the water with well over 100 bar in my tank.

In fairness I have to say I was not there in season.  Apparently in summer (winter in the northern hemisphere) water clarity there reaches 20 meters. Winter, the time I was there, was the season of whales, and there were plenty of those about. As we were about to motor back to port, I noticed spouts on the horizon and got the captain to turn the boat around and go to where the whales were playing. In the small boat we got much closer than we had the day before. There were lots of whales at play but we approached three arching out of the water in unison. They were on the move so by spotting them surfacing more than once we could anticipate where they would come up next and point the boat in that direction. They came up together like three roller coasters cresting and then sinking back gradually into the sea, and then they changed direction and came toward us. But we didn't know that until they re-emerged all together just off out bow, heading our way. That was impressive, and I just managed to get the picture at the head of this post before my camera malfunctioned (I'd just changed the batteries, but they were bad apparently). Anyway, I'll never forget the site of those three whale backs, like glistening elephants, rising together out of the water, arching, and with loud huffing, rolling back under the waves. But they must not have liked our boat because the next time we saw them they were heading away from us.

My trials continued the next morning when I got up to catch the one direct bus at 6:20 from Caravelas to Porto Seguro. Gao had said it stopped right on the road right outside the pousada.  But when it didn't come by 6:30 I asked some passersby what had become of it.  They said, not today, tomorrow.  Huh?  I walked the kilometer into town with my pack and checked at the bus station and there found the words on the schedule Secunda e Seixta.  And that's how I acquired the names for those two days of the week.  Seixta was the next day, Friday.

The next bus out of town was not until 10:00 so I went back to the pousada and rested and then returned to town around 9:00 to use the Internet.  At the station I could get a ticket only to Teixa da Freitas, the nearest transport hub on BR-101.  I already knew, having checked at the station a few days back, that I would not be able to catch the noon bus to Pto Seguro from there (I'd just miss it) and the one after was not until 5 p.m.  So I was anticipating a day just hanging out in bus stations, with an after-dark arrival in Pto Seguro.


On the bus to Teixa da Freitas I read my lonely planet more carefully.  I saw under "Getting there and away" that there were frequent buses to Eunapolis, an hour west of Pto Seguro on the BR-101, so when I arrived in Teixa da Freitas and asked for a bus to Pto Seguro and was told not for 5 hours, I then requested a ticket to Eunapolis, on a bus leaving in only an hour.  If you ask for a ticket to Pto Seguro, they don't offer you the obvious time-saving option.


The day got even better when I reached Eunaopolis and from the bus saw road signs for Arraial d'Adjuda and Troncoso.  I was thinking to go to Troncoso from Pto Seguro the following day anyway, but in Eunapolis it occurred to me that maybe I could go directly there and sleep there.  Checking Lonely Planet I found it had a central square called the Quadrado that was magic when seen at night, and also there were cheap pousadas right on the Quadrado.  


So on the spur of the moment I got the bus from Eunapolis at 6:00 and arrived at 8:00 to find a busy center square lively and brightly lit.  I asked the way to Quadrado and arrived there shortly, was ushered to a peaceful pousada on the Quadrado with wifi, and to make a long story short, it was magic just like the Lonely Planet said, and now I'm writing this over prolonged breakfast, view of the sea from the garden breakfast area, much happier than I would be in hectic Pro Seguro.  Which is where I need to head today, via the coast road and the people ferry across the river into town.

Mergulho em Abrolhos

I came to Brazil as part of what we call FLNW, not much to do with diving, but for what it's worth, http://braz2010vance.pbworks.com/

Long ago I met a guy online whose name is Felix.  He was one of the first participants in a community of teachers and students called Webheads, http://prosites-vstevens.homestead.com/files/efi/efwbahia.htm.  I almost visited him last century, the year I almost missed Christmas with my family in Houston because I was stuck in Caracas due to incessant rains that cut the road from the city to the airport.  I didn't visit Felix that year due to the expense of going south from Venezuela but I always wished that I had.

So this year, going to Brazil for the BrazTESOL conference and FLNW, I decided to pay a visit to Felix since in 1998 he had been one of my first stops in the future of learning in a networked world.  So I booked a flight from Sao Paulo to Porto Seguro, near where Felix lives.

The day before I was due to fly I caught Felix on Skype and he told me his uncle had just been killed in a car accident and he had to rush there.  He was unable to meet me in Porto Seguro as planned.

However, these days, when you buy a ticket online, you use it or lose it, so I flew to Porto Seguro as planned and after two nights, even with a visit to Arraial d'Ajudos, I was bored and decided to move south to Caravelas, opposite the Abrolhos Islands.

The Abrolhos have humpback whales this time of year and reputably Brazil's best or second best diving, depending on where you get your information.

However, if you don't speak Portuguese you are at a disadvantage if traveling on your own in Brazil. People there resemble Americans (the USA ones, I know, we're all Americans, north and south ... ) in that most speak only one language, and only a few speak a little Spanish.  If you speak Spanish you can accomplish a lot in Brazil in the way of eating, sleeping, and getting around, since the languages are similar, but if you want to arrange diving, which I quickly discovered was mergulho in Portuguese, well, you can see that the languages start to diverge at that point (buscar in Spanish).

In Porto Seguro I looked for any kind of travel agent where anyone spoke English, stopped in at hotels (that's where I learned it was mergulho) but I couldn't find anyone who could advise me about diving in Abrolhos.  My hotel had wireless access so of course while passing time there (while the neighbors were out partying, the quiet time of night, but they returned at 4:30; OUCH, radios, yelling) I got online and managed to send an email to a company called Sanuk Abrolhos via their website.  They responded with a pricelist in Portuguese, I ran it through Google translator, and I replied that yeah I'd like to do that, if I come down Saturday can I get on a trip Sunday?

That was Thursday, no reply Friday, and having exhausted all other avenues I decided Porto Seguro wasn't meeting expectations, I'll just go to Caravelas.  So I went to the bus station Friday and worked out the route  (no other way to get the info but go to the station) and Saturday, won't bore you with details, I wound up in Caravelas at sundown.

Here I found a relaxed but pretty, shall I say normal, or backwater (not sure how to describe it, suffice it to say that everything closes early in Caravelas) town with a main road and a small quarter of streets surrounding a small cathedral, all parked on a river that empties into the sea 10 km downriver at Barra.  I had a Lonely Planet Guide that listed two pousadas in Caravelas and a hotel in Barra for over 100 riais a night.  Commentary on one pousada was that it was nice but  out of town and "there are a lot of mosquitos."  So guess which one I chose (the one in town).

Getting off the bus I asked some people if they could direct me to the Pousada Canto do Adoba.  A couple of locals indicated the direction, one said it was a kilometer and I should take a taxi, I had a backpack so I said I'd walk, and to my surprise he showed me his car and said he would drive me there.  That was my welcome in Bahia, pretty much what I would find as I stayed on. Friendly Bahian people.

At the pousada they had plenty of rooms, I was the only guest.  The lady who ran the place, Gao, struggled to communicate with me but she gave up easily and resorted to the phone, where she called a friend who spoke French. My requests were twofold, diving and wifi.  As I would find out, neither were really available in Caravelas.

However the lady in French directed me to contact Fatima, who worked at a dive center and spoke English. Fatima didn't answer at first because she was at the supermarket.  However when Gao located her, she said they might be making  a two day trip to Abrolhos on Tuesday, she would check.  Later she called back to say that it would be a one day trip, which was mainly for whale watching, but they would be taking people try-diving, and I could join them.  It would be expensive about 400 Riais ($250) for the 4 hour trip out, two hours on the island, an hour diving (just one dive, beginners you know, shallow, splash splash) and then 4 hours back on the boat.  On the upside, we'd likely see whales.

She told me if I was interested I could stop by Monday and pay.  They were closed on Sunday. Sunday was looking to be a slow day in Caravelas.

No wireless but Gao had a computer in her office where the old old dog slept underneath.  Would I mind the dog? she asked.  If not, I could use the computer.  There I found a reply from Rodrigo who had been directed by Sanuk Abrolhos to get in touch with me and see what the heck I was on about in my foreign tongue.

I replied to Rodrigo, telling him I had just arrived in Caravelas, and next morning when I again checked internet after breakfast his reply to me came while I was at the computer. He said there were no Abrolhos trips that week but we could go to a nice dive site halfway.  I dashed back a reply that I'd be up for it that day or Monday and since he had given his number I would call him.

Meanwhile I was motioned to come to the kitchen. There was a guy there named Renaldo, same as the soccer player he pointed out, who spoke some English, and Gao wanted him to help me.  He said he didn't know much about diving but as to my second request, to find wifi, I might check at the hotel in Barra and he was going there, and i could ride with him.

So I called Rodrigo and told him I would be going to Barra and could we hook up later, and he told me he was in Barra at an Internet cafe.  I called Renaldo over, and Renaldo learned over the phone from Rodrigo where to take me to meet Rodrigo.

Rodrigo was a young PADI instructor born in Rio but living in Brasilia, but his girlfriend Luciana, who was there at the Internet cafe, had tempted him to come down to Caravelas and check out the lifestyle there.  So he was on a three month trial teaching diving, which he'd learned in Florida.  This long story I got later down on the beach over several beers and fish and farofa. Luciana was of Italian ancestry born in Curitiba.  She was living in Caravelas traveling 100 km a day on her motorcycle teaching in 4 jobs, which she loved because the people there were so appreciative.  I can relate to that! That's why I'm in Brazil and Argentina right now.  So Rodrigo was living mostly with Luciana in a house in this small town near the beach in Barra, both of them diving at every opportunity (she's a divemaster), and trying to decide if he should make this his life's calling. Duh!!

Let's hope he makes the right decision.  Meanwhile I'm trying to get on a diving trip. Rodrigo was working on a boat for Monday but meanwhile his company was supposed to maybe run out to Abrohlos Tuesday and pick up some people there and bring them back so it would be a three day dive trip for me. Sounds heavenly, expensive probably, but nevermind.  And that's the way we left it on the beach at Barra.

Rodrigo drove me to Caravelas to check if any of the three Internet cafes there were open.  None were so we returned to Barra where I hung out in the Internet Cafe there where I had met him and Luciana earlier and I caught the bus back to Caravelas.  I rode past my pousada into the city center, such as it was, thinking to get a bottle of wine at the supermarket and take it to a restaurant. Wine is problematic at restaurants in this region.  Red wine is kept in the fridge and you are offered sec or suave.  One is dry, one is sweet, and both are cold and crap if you are expecting a nice room temperature red wine with your meal (and both are 13 riais a liter in the supermarket here). But guess what, Sunday evening, sundown, the supermarket in Caravelas was closed, as was the Comidas self serve I'd eaten at the night before.  All dark and shuttered on a Sunday in Caravelas.

However, driving out of Caravelas earlier that day on our search for Internet Rodrigo and I had passed a bar with nobody there where the band was warming up on the open air platform outside.  This bar just opposite the BR petrol station in the center of town was in full swing when the bus pulled up at sundown when I returned to Caravelas.  There's nothing else to do there so I checked it out.  A big beer 600 ml was just 3.50 riais, $2.  Hey what else you gonna do on a Sunday night in Caravelas, Brazil?  I sat myself down among 100 other revelers.

The music was magic. I don't know what else to say about it.  Also all the town freaks were there.  There was a noticeable gay crowd, most you wouldn't notice except for the occasional grab for the crotch, cause they were dancing with ladies (not grabbing at their crotches ;-) Well one senuous sensuous guy slim with long hair and moving with the music, facial expressions beckoning (moi?) was obvious.  The blacks did their own thing with handshakes, one got me to fill his glass, but another came along and refilled it, helping each other. Also there was a dwarf.  It was a Fellini film, with samba.  Bahia.

When the band petered out, after people walked out of the crowd and sang (competently) I went across the street and ordered a chicken dinner for a lot of money 30 reais.  I found out why. It was a meal for three people.  I ate it anyway.  This was open air and the air was filled with music.  I paid the bill and walked back into the street.  The party, the same queers and blacks, and others recognizable, had moved around the corner, where another impromptu band was playing.  I figured they were impromptu because they were passing instruments around and I could see how one was mentoring another percussionist, trying to emulate the former's riffs.  Difficult.  This was cool stuff. Street music.  People recognized me, spoke to me in Portuguese, one in English.  Where do you stay here? I'm always evasive about that question.  Eventually I returned there.

Rodrigo called when I was in the shower.  They knocked at my door so I got out quickly and came to the phone in receptao.  The 3 day Abrohlos trip was not confirmed he said.  He would try for another intermediate trip for Tuesday.

Hmmm .. next day, Monday, was looking to be a slow day in Caravelas.

But hey, this is traveling. I like it!

Next day, no word from Rodrigo so I went for a jog.  I jogged to all the mergulho shops I had seen on my way up and down the one road in and out of Caravelas.  It was true, no one was diving that week.  Next week (smile, they were serious! friendly, what kind of dive resort is this??).  Anyway I ended up at Horizonte Aberto where all roads led, and to the place where I could at least go on a boat and get in the water next day at the Abrolhos Islands.  I sent word to Rodrigo that maybe he could set something up for Wednesday?  And then I jogged to LAN house and stuck a wire in my laptop (no wireless, remember?) and now I'm posting this.

By end of that day I had success.  I met Rodrigo in the road on my way back to the pousada to call him.  He had found a boat for the next day, but we could use it Wednesday as well so I decided to go with Horizonte Aberto on Tuesday (whale watching and try dive, except they would give me my own 'monitor' so it was sounding better than a splash) and Rodrigo on Wednesday.  I dropped by HA and paid for the trip, and gave Rodrigo an advance.

Next day was the big day.  I was actually finally going on a dive trip.  Only one dive to be sure, but they had me try on gear, they brought it to the boat, I met my 'monitor' who spoke no English, but we had common hand signals.  The boat filled with tourists there for whale watching and looking forward to snorkeling in Abrohlos.  We were told we could eat sandwiches and drink coffee as we liked and we headed out the river and into the open sea.  Within an hour we saw whales, lots of them.  Some came near the boat.  Some poked their heads out of the water, or rolled and waved huge fins in the air, or dived and showed us their flukes.  Water spouts dotted the horizon.  Occasionally one would leap from the water, they knew how to put on a show.

Meanwhile, disturbing alarm sounds were coming from the instrument console, then part of a carburetor appeared on deck, then we were told we'd be turning around and heading back, one engine out of commission.  We were back in port by noon, instead of at 5 or 6 as anticipated, and no diving, no Abrolhos Islands.

There were many GOOD things about the trip.  The whales were amazing and there were dozens of them.  We had a pleasant morning out and spent about the right amount of time on that activity.  I came back full of fruit and sandwich.  I reported immediately to the HA offices in town, just ten minutes walking from the wharf, wondering how much refund I would be able to manage, and they apologized and were sorry I still didn't make it diving there, how unusual, how unfortunate, and without argument simply refunded me all my money. Now, that was fair to a fault. A free trip whale watching goes a long way toward tempering disappointment!

Plus I get to spend the afternoon in an Internet cafe reporting on the situation.  I'm supposed to meet Rodrigo at 4:30 to try on my dive gear for tomorrow.  Rodrigo has one last chance to convince me that there IS diving in Caravelas.  He's reading my blog and wishes this were not the case so far.  I said it would be different if I could go on Portuguese websites and book diving in advance, and then I wouldn't just fall from the sky as it were during a week when there was not diving in Abrohlos.  He said normally I should just be able to fall from the sky, normally there is diving, but on the other hand, he agrees that the situation could be improved, and there's a problem here that a diving instructor should fall into Caravelas and after 4 days not be able to go on even one dive.

As far as I'm concerned, I'm enjoying myself, very relaxed here.  Gao's Pousada is filling up partly due to the word of mouth from the customers who are spreading the word.  It's already full of over 200 cats and dogs which she rescues from the neighborhood and keeps on the premises.  It's a very comfortable place, and she no longer gives up on my Portuguese (smile).

Continued with the tale of my 1000th and 1001st dives, here:
http://vancesdiveblogs.blogspot.com/2010/08/mergulho-em-abrolhos-2-my-dives-1000.html

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 ;-)

6 Whale Sharks on Al Marsa Liveaboard Diving June 18 and 19, 2010

My dives #987-990 Friday; Saturday #991-993
See Nicky's photos of this weekend here: http://tinyurl.com/nix2010picasa
Thanks, Nicky, for permission to post some of these here:

Bobbi has been itching to go see number #2 son in Korea, but I persuaded her to stay one more weekend by bribing her with a liveaboard diving dhow sailing two nights off the mountainous coast of Musandam.  She came out to PI where I work at Thursday afternoon 4:00 p.m. and by 7:30 we were at the border post on the Dibba corniche showing photocopies of our passports to the guard on duty.  Our passports were at the Brazilian embassy, we explained, awaiting visa stamps.  The guard could have turned us back, but he waved us through, and not long after that we were on the top deck of the dhow, enjoying the wine we’d smuggled across and having dinner with our friends Nicky and Greg and Peter and Allistaire, and half a dozen others we’d get to know better over the next two days diving together at Lima Rock and points north.

The dhow headed up to Lima while we slept and 6 a.m. found us anchored at Ras Lima.  By 7:00 a.m. we were all in a speedboat heading for the island and half an hour after that we were descending on the south side, middle of the island.  Current was mild, all divers were experienced, and all went to depth at 20 meters or so pretty quickly.

Vis was decent. We came to a big boulder and everyone went left, between the boulder and the reef.  I went right toward deeper water and came upon a cow tail ray at 29 meters in the sand.  Bobbi followed me around the rock where on its far side we found a large honeycomb moray half exposed where the rock met the sand.  We continued up the reef and met the other divers just before the first whale shark appeared overhead. It was a baby (small for a whale shark, big by any other standard).  We saw it first by its familiar profile against the light at the surface but most of us were able to rise to its shallow depth in time to see it move slowly back the way we had come.  It didn’t seem to want to stay and play.  We saw why a few minutes later when its mother appeared, slowly finning after its calf.  These were whale sharks on a mission, with some place to be, cruising along Lima Rock.  But by now we had achieved the correct depth so we were able to swim nearer the second one.

If you can log in to Facebook, check out Allistair's video of this whale shark here: http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=429598613342&ref=mf

When the third whale shark appeared I was at just the right place to swim right up next to it.  I didn’t touch it, but when it noticed me right at its shoulder it decided abruptly to make its exit. It bolted as if I’d touched it, almost swiping me with a last powerful flick of its tail. (I brief my divers now, do not touch the whale sharks – it looks like I’ll have to add to that, keep a 1 meter distance; any recommendations on that?).

This was one of the most incredible dives we had ever made at Lima Rock.  Three whale sharks, a turtle, lots of the usual batfish, and at the end of the dive, when we turned to fin back against the current, 8 devil rays appeared just below us swimming in formation across our path, and keeping just ahead of us as they relished whatever nutrients they were getting from the current.  For the record, our maximum depth was 29 meters and we were down for one hour. And that was all before breakfast.

We did two more dives that afternoon, not as excellent as the first of the day, which would have been hard to beat.  After breakfast the dhow motored up to Ras Sarkan at the southern opening to Khor Hablain.  We did a dive around the ras and had to fin through a stiff current at the sea-most point.  We saw a couple of cow-tail rays in the sand, and had the opportunity to swim alongside one, at a point where we also encountered a school of barracuda.  Bobbi and I traveled with the group until 41 minutes into the dive I saw Allistair get out his submersible marker buoy, and I signaled him we would continue. He nodded assent so we kept at it for the rest of 60 minutes, having gone 26 meters at our deepest.

From our lunchtime roost on the top deck of our dhow, we saw yet another whale shark checking out our speedboat, proof that it is possible to see one while diving at Ras Sarkan. Meanwhile the seas came up and the boatmen decided not to head back to Lima just then. We had been planning to dive Ras Morovi but due to the waves we headed over to the north of the mouth of Khor Hablain, Ras Dilla. We dived a site called Muqtah which we reached by speedboat from where the dhow was anchored near a salient rock formation on a north/south wall inside Hablain, where south looked directly to Ras Sarkan. The boat took us around the corner and dropped us where we rode the current west, turned the corner, and headed north back toward the dhow, which we almost reached. This particular spot on this day was not very attractive. There was a lot of brown algae in the water so everything looked like an old photograph.

Because of the current at the start of the dive, Bobbi and I elected to descend rather than wait at the surface for the others, so we dived on our own for over an hour. There were a lot of fish but nothing of much interest apart from a remora that wanted to attach itself first to Bobbi and then to me, and a large turtle that swam up the reef when we approached it. When I shined my light in a small alcove full of fish fry, the kind that are like a dust cloud, that baffle your depth perception until you are finally able to focus past them, I saw that there in the cave was a small black bull ray. He was not happy about being discovered and kept moving around in the cave and rippling his skirts at me. He was hard to see because of the cloud of fish fry.  Later in the dive as we were about to do our safety stop at 60 minutes, we came on a bunch of squid near the surface, the kind who are curious of divers, and dart about us trying to figure out what planet we were from (or at least what part of the planet as far as they knew it).

I’m writing this on the boat after that third dive.  The boat has just developed a problem.  The rudder appears to have fallen off.  They are trying to get it to Ras Samid, in the Khor between Hablain and Lima, by steering it by means of a rope attached to the speed boat while the dhow proceeds slowly on its own engine power.  The guests on board are hoping this won’t compromise their diving.  The seas appear to have laid down a bit, and it’s fairly smooth out here at sea.  And I’m still jet lagged and sleepy, coming down with a cold from the extreme air-conditioning aboard.  I’ve been sleepy all day.

We anchored at dusk and got in a night dive at Ras Samid.  Neither Nicky nor Bobbi wanted to go, so I got to buddy with our buff Philipino guide, Brian.  That was a treat since I was coming to respect his skills.  He spotted animals so frequently that I didn’t have to think about what to look at.  One of his first finds was a … a what, not a lizard fish, but a flat fish buried in the sand, looks ugly otherwise, like an alligator head.  He found a couple of neat crustaceans, one a particular kind of hermit crab that likes to construct a feathered living shell.  I was shining lights in crevices lighting up the glass shrimp behind the red glow eyes there, and in one lair I found a couple of forearm length crawfish, deliciously just out of reach behind a wall of sea urchins.  Brian saw an octopus, but I missed that.  We found a lot of morays and lion fish decorating the walls with fluttery spines, wine red in the bright lights.  The sea temperature was so pleasant that after 45 minutes we didn’t want to stop the dive so much as get back on the boat and go after the food and drink.

In the morning we awoke surrounded by dhows.  Two had made the trip overnight to rescue our crippled one.  They were tied alongside when we reported above decks at 6 a.m. for coffee and briefing.  The plan was to go on our dive at 7 as usual but as we hadn’t made it back to Lima the day before we would do the first dive at Octopus Rock just south from where we were, current permitting.  Then we’d have breakfast and transfer our stuff to the blue dhow and proceed from there to Ras Lima and dive Lima Rock the second dive of the afternoon.  The third dive would be played by ear.

First order of business was the first dive, so we were all soon in the speedboat and heading out across the slight chop to the little pimple of a rock we used to call “The Stack” but the new generation of dives calls Octopus Rock.  People entered the water in good order and stayed near the rock despite a southerly current, which we realized was going to challenge us as we descended.  I have to admit, despite having dived here a dozen times, I don’t really know this site.  It’s got a couple of undersea hills to the east of the exposed rock, but I’ve never had a gentle day there where I could wander at leisure and figure out where they were.  Fortunately, our guide Brian knew the area well, and how to negotiate the currents.  He popped us right away into the green whip corals at 29 meters and Nicky had in no time found two large seahorses, top and bottom in the grasses in Yin and Yang position.  Right around the corner there was an interesting crustacean like a clawless lobster that I thought might be a vacant shell but when I swished it, it backed off. Brian led us from one outcrop to another, sometimes directly into a stiff current that sucked our breath away.  At one point we came on an eagle ray and startled it so, it took off straight up, bumping into Allistair in flight.  It rose like a rocket ten meters and leveled off overhead, leaving us just a glimpse of its diamond-shaped long-tailed profile.  In the valleys we found a few big barracudas, and morays in the pinnacles.  Somehow back at the rock after hopping from one outcrop to another, Brian signaled safety stop 41 minutes into the dive.  We clung to the coral for a last three minutes and the surfaced pretty worn out already after our first dive of the day.

We had our breakfast and then shifted all our stuff to the blue dhow for the slow trip back home.  This dhow took us to Ras Lima and moored in the shelter there, leaving the third dhow to tow our rudderless one back to Dibba without us.

The next dive was at Lima Rock.  Vis was excellent here down to 15 meters or so, where there was a chilly and murky thermocline.  Brian put in at the middle and told us the current was moving west but when we started that way it was into the slight easterly current.  I stayed above the pack because I’d been relegated to a 12 liter tank. They hadn’t filled the 15 liter monster I’d been diving from up to then due to their preparations for the move to the working dhow.  This was not of great importance for my diving except with the 20% advantage in air I’d been pushing the depths and staying underwater for an hour each dive.  This dive I didn’t see the need to go deep, if there was anything at 25 meters they’d call me, so I cruised along at 16 or so.  My priority was time in the water, not depth.

This put me in great position, when the first whale shark was spotted, for me to swim over to it, since it was at about my level and moving at a leisurely pace. Most of the other divers were at depth. I don’t think anyone else came up to the whale shark.  I followed it glancing back to where I’d now lost sight of the other divers though I could still see their bubble streams.  They were below the thermocline, and the whale shark was above it in clear water.  After a minute or so the whale shark went into the thermocline and wasn’t so easy to see, so I returned to where the other divers were.  Bobbi was easy to spot, good buddy that she is, she was the one looking around for me.  I’d forgot to mention to her that I was heading the opposite way for a few minutes, but did I mention the whale shark??

The next thing to happen along was a devil ray, cruising with the current at about 25 meters.  By now we’d passed the point where the current split heading to each corner of the rock and we were now being carried slightly with the current in the direction of Lima headland.  The effect of the current was getting more pronounced.  I wasn’t leading the dive so I guessed that Brian intended to let us be committed to the current, which would take us to the Lima end of the island (west) and we would then go around to the north side of the rock.  Brian let me speculate to myself on his intentions for about 5 minutes, when he cocked his thumb back the way we had come in a signal to reverse out of there.  The current had by now got stiff so it was hard work powering against it, but I went at it, checking back now and then to see that the others were keeping up.  I knew the current would lessen shortly, and when we reached the middle of the island then we’d be in the current going our way that we’d finned against at the beginning of the dive.

Bobbi stayed with me but I have no idea what happened to the others.  They didn’t follow us, must have seen another whale shark. Meanwhile, Bobbi and I found ourselves in a world of batfish, 12 meters depth, visibility clear as a swimming pool, a very beautiful part of the dive.  The bat fish are engaging creatures.  They get big, school in groups resembling schooners, like to come close to divers, like to hang out at cleaning stations and get serviced by blue wrasse.  They vacated the cleaning stations when we came on them leaving us in clouds of wriggling blue triggerfish.

Below we noticed a spotted eagle ray.  Normally skittish, the ray didn’t notice us, and we were able to descend on it, 16 meters or so.  It never fled, just headed out over the sand.

We were coming to the end of the dive, being carried now by the easterly current.  I signaled that we should move up to safety stop depth – 5 meters - and I noticed also that we were coming up to the wall around which I know the current really picks up.  At first I thought we should avoid that but the current was now too strong to fin against.  Best thing then was to prepare for it.  I sent my marker buoy up and as we rounded the corner had to tug it a couple of times to free where it wanted to snag on outcrops.  It was a good thing I was watching for that, I was able to jerk it free twice by catching it in time.  Now Bobbi and I were caught in the rapids being carried along at 5 meters depth and counting down three minutes for our safety stop.

Just ahead of us at the end of the island was another whale shark, keeping itself pointed into the current, positioned to take advantage of it by extracting whatever morsels that the current brought it.  We let ourselves be swept right past it.  What a safety stop! Nice dive, Lima does it again!

There were some choices for our last dive. Ras Morovi and Wonderwall were two good sites just north and south of where the dhow was anchored in Lima headland.  However these were not convenient to our hosts.  Seas had not been exactly flat as we motored back from Lima island to the headland, and we were told it wouldn’t suit the dhow to take it to the south facing Wonder Wall, where it would be more exposed to open sea.  If I’d been running the show I’d have either sent the speedboat there or at least back across the protected stretch to Ras Morovi where people always seem to enjoy their dive.  But it was decided we’d just dive where we were, off Lima headland, which has some nice boulder formations going down to 20 meters and on a clear day, colorful fish within, and sometimes some barracuda off the point. But this was not a clear day.  It was in fact a brown algae day, murky, everything a shade of brown. Some on the boat said afterwards that the dive was boring.

However, Bobbi and I got lucky.  Since the boulders were cloaked in brown I decided to head over the sand in search of sting rays and we were soon off on our own. I was checking out all the deeper clumps of rock, coral, and grasses at 20 meters deep, well off the wall, and here it was that I lucked into a resting leopard shark.  What a nice find, I hadn’t seen one of those in a long time.  Bobbi and I watched it from a distance when Greg Golden and his buddy Johan appeared, and I conducted them to where the shark lay.  Bobbi had just found a knife in the sand and I was using this to bang on tanks to attract the others, but none from the main group came. Meanwhile we were drifting nearer and nearer the leopard shark and finally, as leopard sharks do, this one became mildly annoyed at having its nap disturbed and lifted off the sand, did a small circle and came back to rest exactly where he’d been a moment before. That happened to be where we were by then on top of him, so he repeated the maneuver, this time gliding gently right at us, around us, between us, circling us, coming close enough to where we could pet him. He didn’t react adversely to that, but eventually he ended up in a different spot a few meters away from the first. We could have played with him like that for some time, not much else to do on that dive, but we didn’t want to intrude, so we moved on our way and left him in peace. Leopard sharks have mild personalities, but this was one of the most docile and playful leopard sharks I’ve met yet.

Thanks again, Nix, for the use of your photos :-)

June 5, 2010 - Certified Elizabeth O/W at Bateen Breakwater off Abu Dhabi

My logged dives #985-986

Cyclone Phet had been churning through Oman and its tail had brought the surf up along the coast of Musandam, but Abu Dhabi was little affected apart from wind, which by Saturday had largely passed. So I engaged Allistair and his Al Mahara boat to take us from Bateen Harbor to the breakwater where conditions allowed us to dive the Bateen Box on one dive and around the corner on another.

The breakwater was pleasant with excellent vis and warm temperatures 31 degrees. We were diving in 6 to 8 meters, 45 minutes each time. Allistair had a student Merwan and I was conducting Elizabeth's last two dives for her course, and Marika and Natalie's very first open dives. We had spent much of Friday in the pool where Natalie had breezed through the first three modules of the course. Her boyfriend Jonny was with us, doing his advanced boat and navigation dives.

The batfish entertained us as we cruised through the exercises that can so well be done in shallow relatively calm conditions. There was not much to write home about, but the day went successfully. Elizabeth qualified with honors and the others made progress in their training.

And did I mention the watermellon?!! This seems to be a steady feature on Al Mahara dive cruises, and a delicious tonic to counteract the effects of inhaling salt and dry air for 45 min underwater, and the munchies after diving, very considerate of the Russells to have on board!

Afterwards I left Allistair to tend to his boat engines and raced home for a quick shower and then to a villa nearby where Rachel and her friends were putting on a string quartet for us in the true tradition of chamber music (ca va dire, dans une chambre). Between the diving and the wine, Bobbi and I found ourselves in bed not long after sundown and now I'm writing this in the early hours of the morning.

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 :-)