Damaniyites Diving with Global Divers, Al Ansaab, Oman, Oct 26 and 27, 2012

My logged dives #1168-1171

My good friend and dive student (and world-class lawyer) Jay Fortin was flying into Muscat with his wife Robin for the weekend and wanted to dive the Damaniyites, so he made a booking with Global Divers, in Al Ansaab, in the Muscat, capital area , Oman, for Oct 26 and 27, 2012. They asked if Bobbi and I would join them and help with a refresher for Robin.  Of course we agreed.

Global Divers <http://www.global-scuba.com/> operates from the Aviation Beach Club in Muscat, where I was a member and kept a sailboat from about 1990 to 1995.  It was a great little beach club, pleasantly rustic, and accessible via a straight road from one side of the main highway between the Airport and the Ghala / Alansaab roundabouts.  We used to drive from Sultan Qaboos University where we lived for ten years and make a u-turn at the Ghala roundabout and then drive back to the turn where the straight sandy road traversed a vast tract of scrub lands where we used to sometimes hold running events.  What a great playground.

It's much different now.  First off, there is no airport roundabout.  There's a flyover now, and past the airport where we started looking out for that straight dirt road, there are massive roadworks where a superhighway soon to connect Muscat to Seeb has churned up our playground and thrown up buttresses for flyovers, and we couldn't even see the coast from there. Even the town of Al-Ansaab had been overhauled with shops and banks, but we found the coast road and drove it past a new Spinney's Al Fair to work our way back up the coast behind the airport.  We passed an elaborate gate and hit the brakes.  We backed up and sure enough, there it was written Aviation Beach Club.  What a makeover.  Just inside the gate we could see signs pointing the way to Global Divers, though there was no signposting from the road.

For those of us coming from UAE, it's an hour further to reach the Seeb area, so I don't know how often we'll use Global Divers in future as opposed to Al Sawadi, especially as we can find comfortable accommodation for 15 riyals a night and intriguing local nightlife in Suweiq, but if you're living in Muscat or landing there, then you save that hour driving outside Muscat to Al Sawadi.

Damaniyites is an island chain that stretches offshore between Suweiq / Barka and Seeb in such a way that there is some point in the chain that it is about equidistant between the two, so that the boat ride to that point is about the same for either area.

Global Divers favors the island with the ranger post, which it can access in no less time than it takes to get there from Al Sawadi, though to dive the Jun island part of the chain, this would be a long trip from Global Divers in Seeb. However, Global has decent access to the Aquarium, which is closer to Seeb than Al Sawadi, and very popular with divers.

We had great vis there and warm temperatures. The thermocline didn't kick in till around 18 meters, three millimeter wetsuits were quite comfortable,  and some divers wore shorties.  On Friday October 26^th  we went to the bay just north of the ranger station and dived Three Sisters to the west and a site they called Noodle to the east.  On that first dive we found large honeycomb rays, at least one turtle, smaller morays, and a sting ray under a rock at the 18 meter point where we decided to stop punching current and turn around, ascend gradually, and fin comfortably with it.  Bobbi and I had been joined at that point by a third diver who ran low on air and ascended just as a mackeral or some large fish cruised by just off the sand. Further on we found a pair of crayfish brazenly exposed on a ledge outside their lair.  If I'd have had a net or a pair of thick gloves I could have easily snagged one of them.  They were both waving their feelers at us, and relying on that moreso than eyesight.  It was only when I stuck a finger in the way of one waving feeler that the animal backed in high alarm back into his hole, and the other followed suit.

On our second dive on Noodle across the bay, we met with a current on descent but once to the seaward side of the island, we had a good long dive.  All our dives were an hour on this trip (because they asked us to come up by then). On this dive I recall more of the same, especially a turtle or two and the large honeycomb morays.  We ended up being swept over an area that was not reef, and came up midway between the island with the ranger post and the next one over to the east.

Next day, the 27^th  we continued our exploration of that area by diving the back of the island to the east of 3 sisters, so we'd dived the whole face comprising two islands by the time we were through.  We again had nice vis. We found an easy ledge for Robin to descend on, but Jay and Robin got ahead of us and kept going when we clacked to call attention to a large honeycomb moray and we saw no more of them till back on the boat. So we joined where Global instructor Ali was leading some other divers at 18 meters in the sand and we positioned ourselves midway between them and the boulders on the wall. We figured if they saw anything  in the sand they'd call us over.  From our vantage on the wall I saw a turtle fin vertically up the wall and called Ali's attention to it. At one point a ray swam past Ali and we tried to give chase. I noticed another hiding in a crevice and again I called attn to it. Later we came on a number of honeycomb morays including one just lying on the bottom.  Again we had a nice long dive and we thought an interesting one, until we got back on the boat and found everyone including Jay raving about the leopard sharks.  Since Jay had gone ahead of us and saw it after that, I don't know how we missed it, but we've seen so many of them, we were not all that crushed.

Our second dive was planned for the Aquarium, arguably the best site in that area.  At times there we have seen sea horses, free swimming morays, scorpion fish, and rays.  Our anticipation was excited by reports from the boat that had done its first dive there that they had seen leopard sharks too.  However, for our afternoon dive, the wind was picking up as was the current, and conditions were less favorable than they had been in the morning.  Still we moved through clouds of snappers and saw a sting ray at 20 meters in the sand.  Bobbi found a scorpion fish and we came on a number of honeycomb morays, including one whose head was poked outside some sponge coral, being cleaned by blue wrasse, looking satisfied indeed.  At the end of the dive we came on a school of darting squid, all in all not bad for a day out.

Due to the changing sea conditions, the boat ride back was fairly miserable, spine-jarring bouncy and wet.  Everything got soaked, and it reminded me of the best sailing days off Aviation Beach back in the '90's.

Meanwhile, we bid adieu to Jay and Robin, until next time ...

Certified Peter Eberle and Simon Fryd in o/w at Nomad Ocean Adventure

My logged dives #1164-1167
October 11-13, 2012

Thanks Tim and Laura Charge for arranging a fun week for their visitors. They had their guests enjoy a number of water sports ending with just the thing for a visit to the UAE, a scuba diving course in Musandam, Oman, and who better to conduct such a course than their own o/w instructor, me :-)

Taking a break from diving last weekend we enjoyed a “Bistro Brunch” at the British Club in Abu Dhabi last Friday with Nicki who invited others, including a helicopter pilot named John, and his wife Thelma. John was a diver and at some point during the brunch, Bobbi was telling them that last weekend we'd had a minor problem with timing on the dive boat we were on, with some customers complaining that my students and I had taken too long at the surface interval and delayed the boat's return to port which had caused some difficulties that Lisa and Theo at Nomad had had to deal with and therefore we had been asked to not do training during surface intervals. However, Bobbi said, this used to be not a problem when sometimes we would have enough people to get our own boat. So John said he had friends that would come with us and with the Charges and their visitors, maybe we could get enough divers to put together a boat load and do our own thing and not be constrained by these other “customers” whoever they were. It seemed like a great idea, but then again, it was “Bistro Brunch” at the British Club, where many a scheme is hatched, only to come to naught in the clearer light of morning.

However, somehow this worked out. John and Nicki came through with three other divers, Terry and his young 12 year old jr. advanced diver, Nick, and Jorge, another pilot (I think) who was exploring tech diving with John. So with the Charges and their three guests in combination with these other folk, plus Bobbi and I, we had a dozen people diving two days with Nomad Ocean Adventure, who graciously organized a boat to be made ready for whatever peccadilloes we could envisage on it for Friday and Saturday.

I'm working in Al Ain now and am forced out of my workplace at 1:30 on Thursdays so I drove from there straight to Dibba where I arrived at 4, just beating the Charges and their guests to the dive center. When they arrived, we did the paperwork, including the exam to ascertain that everyone had done the eLearning, and then we got our equipment together and entered the pool. Due to the inertia that must be overcome getting 3 people who have never been around scuba gear before, and one who had not even snorkeled, into the pool and moving around it on snorkels, then donning scuba gear and snorkeling with that, imagine all the things that can go wrong, we were just about to go below the surface at 7:30 when someone from the kitchen came to tell us that dinner was being served. We were on a roll though, so we went ahead with our Module 1 training and finally made it to dinner at around 9:00.

We still had two modules to do in the morning. PADI standards allow dive 1 to be conducted after module 1 but to do dive 2 you have to have completed module 3 in the pool. Since we had our own boat we didn't have to get up at the crack of dawn for it. All the divers were staying overnight for diving the following day so no one had to be driving Friday night back to Abu Dhabi, the main reason for an early departure and early return. So we decided we'd meet for breakfast at 6:30 and pool at 7:00, and shoot for a 10:30 boat departure. The only problem was that Bobbi was getting up at 5:00 in Abu Dhabi and she and Nicki were taking a taxi over to John's, where he was planning to leave at 6:00 to arrive at NOA at 9:00 for an expected 9:30 departure. People hate to get up at 5 when they could sleep until 6 if it's only to be kept waiting for a boat whose departure is delayed, but as it happened, their paperwork somehow didn't reach the border post so when they arrived there they were delayed 45 minutes while that was sorted, so they turned up at the dive center at 10:00, not 9:00, just as my students and I were exiting the pool, perfect! (for us :-)))

It turned out to be an amicable lot. They didn't mind that our first dive site would be Ras Morovi, where there is very easy entry for students. John and his friends hadn't dived it much before if at all, and John the pilot was attuned to my directions (head south, then east, then north, etc), since he would be leading all the others apart from the Charges and their guests, my students. So beautiful day, a little warm for 5 mm wetsuits, calm seas boating out, coral blotches clearly visible through lagoon green waters, and not only that but a sting ray visible in the sand just under the boat, my students dipped beneath the salty waves for the very first time in their lives.

Thankfully there were no ear problems. Buoyancy was an issue as it often is with students in shallow water in 5 mm wetsuits. Weighting was about right though. When we all got down we went over to visit the sting ray, who thought us rude, and showed his disdain by wandering off in such a way that we could follow him just at the edge of vis, which was not bad. We took the hint and went along the coral where a grey moray was seen swimming away from its cover. Acting like we'd caught him naked he scurried under a rock and poked his head out abashedly.

We continued along the coral to where the saddle is and just to our left was a cave where two weeks before I'd found a couple of large crayfish inside. At that time my two students might have missed the crayfish due to ear problems, not being able to get down to see in the cave, and this time they missed it due to buoyancy problems starting to take their toll where at that moment one of the students, riding a bit high in the water, touched the surface, his buddy rose to assist and ended there himself, and as he was regaining control and coming down the 3^rd got himself in difficulty and a yo-yo scenario was unfolding.

I managed to get the two students to get down and stay there with Tim and Laura and as the 3^rd wasn't descending, I went up to see what the problem was. He was uncomfortable and anxious, and though it doesn't happen often, hardly at all, he thought he'd better get back on the boat and try again next dive. As this was the first dive, and he'd made it 18 minutes, and the boat was right there, I saw him aboard and went back to rejoin the others, who were still right below. There was a mild current though, so as the student wasn't coming down right away, I needed to get back down before I lost contact with the others.

The rest of the dive went well. One of the students was inside of 100 bar already, so I led us up along the cabbage coral to 5 meters. We were fighting the current slightly so when he went down to 50 bar I turned and let us ride the current. The decreased depth and effortless motion stopped the air hemorrhage and the student became comfortable enough that he was signalling me OK at 50 bar even though he was easing down to 40. The cabbage coral is a good place for turtles to hang out and we saw one there. Floating effortlessly now we drifted back on to the cave with the crayfish, and this time they both saw them. A lone barracuda was hunkering about there as well. At that point my student admitted to 30 bar in his tank and we made an easy ascent to the surface, 37 minutes after having commenced our dive.

We went back across the bay to Ras Lima for our lunch break. The mystery meat sandwich wraps seemed much like chicken until someone remarked that one of the cats that Aliona had left us seemed to be missing. Naw, really the food was great, and plentiful, potato salad, fruit, cakes. Nomad takes care of its divers stomachs. They're French :=)

Ras Lima would have been a good place for a second dive except that there was algae there. If we hadn't had our own boat, that's probably where we'd have dived, as we have done before, nevermind the vis. But as we had our own boat and could negotiate amongst ourselves, we decided that Lima Rock north side would be a better spot. I had the boatman take us to the middle, which is where I dived with my divers. I warned the others about the currents at the ends and I hear that some divers got caught in them, but they can write their own blogs, or leave comments in this one.

My students and I along with Tim and Laura took our time kitting up and descended tentatively, no ear problems particularly, but buoyancy being still a threat. I had warned everyone to stay close to the reef, to use it as a reference to enable them to keep their depth, and avoid currents that might appear in the open waters off the reef. Everyone was fine as we descended to a sand patch at about 12 meters and did our exercises. The stressed student had accompanied us but declined to participate in the skills. The other two got through the reg clears and recoveries, the alternate air source breathing, and the mask clears ok. One diver's air was beginning to get low so we headed back up the reef, coming on yet another turtle.

Two divers were playing it high on the reef. I managed to get one back down but the other, the anxious one, surfaced, so I had the other two do an alternate air source ascent the short distance up to where he was. The boat came over. The anxious diver wanted to leave the water. He'd improved, made it to 25 minutes this time. The low on air student was down to 60 and we had accomplished our objectives so I thought it was time for him to exit as well. The other diver, whom we called Fred, still had 90 bar so I suggested we continue with perhaps a compass heading, get that out of the way. We agreed and descended into a cluster of dancing squids. We saw Tim and Laura to our left and I tapped my tank to attract them. They looked around but didn't see us, so Fred and I continued our descent. Near a rock with blue soft corals we headed out over the sand, reaching almost 18 meters, and back again to the same blue rock. Fred was now pushing 50 so we headed up found Tim and Laura at the surface.

It was a great day's diving. On the trip home, I had a chat with the student who had discovered that diving was not for him. The discovery had surprised him but I encouraged him to continue with the pool work which we had almost finished and join us in fun diving the next day. He took me up on it as far as pool after dusk but ended up on the ladder while the other two worked on their hovering and no-mask swims. As we exited the pool he accepted that he was having a visceral response to perceived danger and the training wasn't overcoming it. He decided not to join us next day, visited the beach instead.

Meanwhile Fred and Peter finished their pool work and we went to dinner and good company with knowledge that we could sleep late next day. The boat wasn't leaving now till when we wanted to go, but we made an effort to depart at the same time as Lisa and Theo in their two boats with Nomad's other customers. Destination, Lima Rock south. I told the boatman to head right for the middle and announced to all aboard that we were going to check current using the human dummy method. That would be Fred, who did a ten minute float for us as one of the requirements of his o/w course.

This 3^rd o/w course dive has a two skills, mask flood and clear, and fin pivot with oral inflation. We dropped down on a sand ledge at about 10 meters for that, and under the nearest rock was a small sting ray. After admiring that we did our skills and then finned into the slight current, dropping to about 16 meters in the process. There was excellent vis and water temperatures very pleasant for diving, even in the cold thermocline. There were a lot of bat fish about and blue triggers, but one of my students was low on air early in the dive so I led us up to 12 meters and eventually to 5, letting us go with the current to conserve air, and keeping us at safety stop level. When that diver went down to 30 bar, we surfaced and did some surface skills while waiting for the boat. Peter hopped aboard and Fred and I went back down to burn off his 80 bar. On that part of the dive we saw a turtle swimming near the surface. We had agreed that when he went low I'd rig an SMB and he'd surface on CESA, controlled emergency swimming ascent. Fred did that just fine and of course we had to re-descend to get my reel tied off on a rock at 7 meters. Coming up from that I decided we'd better do a 3-min safety stop in the coral gardens there. So we had a nice long dive, something like 47 minutes.

I had the boatman take us to Ras Lima for lunch. While there, Fred had to complete his swim which put everyone including me in the water to check out the vis. There was definitely algae there so we negotiated a second dive at Lulu Island, between Ras Lima and Ras Morovi. It turned out to be a good call. It seems Ras Lima was collecting all the algae which was sweeping past Morovi and Lulu, and not impacting Lima Rock at all. I think the group enjoyed their dive on Lulu Island though I spent it with my o/w students. We stayed in the inside channel, doing the module 4 mask removal / replacement (and clear) and hovering, and I rigged an SMB for Peter and had him do a compass out and back to it, then a CESA from there. When we surfaced on that we completed the flexible skills with weight and bcd removal replacement, the two students putting on stellar performances after exacting pool training. The boat came and we put Peter aboard and Fred and I slipped below the surface to retrieve my SMB and burn off his remaining air. We heading north, turned east, but on the south leg hit current which swept us back the way we had come and caught the line to my SMB in coral knobs. We were ready to come up anyway, and everyone else was putting their gear away on the boat. Two divers successfully certified, great weekend.

Certified Tracy Lavin and Lucy Cowan PADI o/w via Nomad Ocean Adventure, Musandam

My logged dives #1160-1163
September 28 and 29, 2012

Divers pictured: Graeme, Jonny, Vance, Tracy, Bobbi, Lucy, Faye

We spent another great weekend, Bobbi and I, in the company of good friends in our running group who came over to Musandam, Dibba to do some diving with us. There are changes afoot at the border. The border was wide open the first decade we lived in UAE. People just drove back and forth to and from either side of the wadi marking the boundary, and apart from the dip in the dirt road, you wouldn't know you had left one country and entered another. The impression that it was all UAE was maintained by the fact that you could drive through Oman from UAE Dibba to Ras Al Khaima. You passed an Oman border post on the way blocking the dirt track up the mountain that came down the other side on Kassab, but even the RAK hash house harriers held an event every year where teams would run from RAK to Oman Dibba and end with a party on the beach there.

They still do the Wadi Bih run each year, but now it runs from Oman Dibba to the top of the mountain and back down to end with, thankfully, a party on the beach, but it's not possible to pass the Oman checkpoint to continue into RAK. The Omanis still have no border control in Dibba but a few years back UAE put one at each of the two road borders and has been waving across people with valid UAE entry documents. This caused very little impedance, until now they have started requiring tour operators drawing clients from UAE to submit a copy of each customer's passport and UAE visa. This has caused no end of frantic emails and disruption to business folk on the Oman side, as we scan documents and they scramble to comply with the new regulations. According to the newspapers they have even closed their inland border post, the one on the main road, leaving only the one on the corniche open, This was ostensibly so that they could better match permits with passports by funneling traffic through just the one border, and according to those same news reports, this has caused demonstrations to occur on the Oman side which blocked the border for a time so that no one could pass <http://www.thenational.ae/news/uae-news/protest-prompts-butinah-border-rules-talks-between-oman-and-uae.

So it was that we anticipated some delay crossing into Oman via the only UAE border point that was open after work on Thursday night. However, when we arrived at the border checkpoint at around 9 pm there was no traffic apart from us, and they waved us across after the usual cursory glance at our passports and visas. My students Tracy and Lucy were following in a car driven by a driver borrowed from where one of them works, and they were concered because they'd made no provisions for the driver to cross the border, but they tuned up at the Nomad hostel in Oman at about 11, with the driver, who had made no prior arrangements to cross he border. Graham and Jonny however, with Faye in the car, were delayed when they crossed the next afternoon. They were made to sit 20 minutes in a waiting room before being allowed to pass. Go figgah, as we used to say in Hawaii.

Meanwhile Tracy and Lucy had arrived too late Thu night to get anything done on their PADI open water course apart from fill in the paperwork and take the quick review test. They even missed dinner, which was waiting for them under plastic in the oven. We went to bed about midnight and agreed to meet by the pool at 6 in the morning.

I had wanted to meet IN the pool at 6, but there was no one around to issue them equipment when they'd got there so late, nor was there anyone up at 6 am, through we discovered they'd left the equipment and tank fill rooms open for us, so we were at least in the pool after briefing and showing how the gear worked by around 7. But it's difficult to get through the first module in less than an hour, and PADI standards are to exit, de-kit, and re-kit for a second session, which we didn't start until after 8. We finished it comfortably by 9 but Nomad's new system is to get the boats to sea by 9:30 a.m., and whereas that is welcome if you're hoping to get back to port by 4 and back to Abu Dhabi by 8, if you're trying to teach a course starting on Friday morning, it makes it hard to get the required 3 modules in before the second dive of the first day.

Lisa was in charge of our boat and she chose sites that would provide my students an easy first dive at Ras Morovi, with a second dive at Lima headland, where we could do the third confined water module during the surface interval in order for the students to qualify for doing the second dive of the day as part of their PADI course. We had a nice ride out and chugged into the familiar shallow bay at Ras Morovi where I've started many a PADI o/w dive course, and were descending under the waves by 11:30.

It's a nice dive. There's a pretty reef with hard and soft corals and plenty of fish. From time to time we've seen sting rays and eagle rays here, barracudas out in the channel, and at times of the year playful squid spawning. Today the ladies began their dive careers a little tentatively, as students often do, nursing ear problems, having trouble coming to depth, but controlling buoyancy well. I finally got Tracy to come down to a cave and see a ledge full of crayfish, their feelers spread wide almost two meters apart. Right outside that ledge Bobbi found a crayfish carapace discarded by some predator, possibly human. As we passed around the corner you can hardly detect unless you have a compass, and glided over the cabbage coral there, Lucy pulled my fin because I was passing by a turtle I hadn't noticed. We followed him as he swam casually away and then rounded the coral to the north coming in over sand and boulders that aren't all that interesting unless you see turtles there, as we sometimes do, or enjoy the clownfish in the anemones, as we saw on this dive. But I know that just ahead lies a coral garden decorated with blue soft corals, and with a ledge and a cave that have been productive in our experience for interesting ray encounters. No rays today, but continuing on there are coral coves that ride above the sand at depth. We were staying at around 10 meters, and I led us up to 5 where we did our safety stop from 50 to 53 minutes in our dive. With students, Bobbi and I are pretty good about adhering to dive times.

Back aboard we crossed the wide bay to Ras Lima on the other side. Most of the divers tucked into lunch but Tracy and Lucy and I took small tanks over the side to try and get through module 3. We had some problems. My 5 mm wetsuit required me to go deeper than 1 or 2 meters in order to compress it so I could stay down comfortably, and the ladies were having ear problems preventing quick descent to 4 meters. There was a little surge in the shallows where we ended up, but we managed to get through it before we exhausted the patience of the divers back on the boat, and made it back aboard for the 2^nd dive on Ras Lima.

We were the last in the water since we had to change our tanks, and the ladies were becoming a little waterlogged. But we eventually made it beneath the waves where we were a little disappointed by the poorest vis of the weekend. We started down gradually along the coral, enjoying the fish, especially the big sweet lipped puffer fish. Eventually we found a sand patch suitable for the dive #2 skill set. Happily neither Tracy nor Lucy had any problem with mask clearing or any of the tasks they were asked to do in the water, except maybe hovering, which I recall was a challenge even for the instructor candidates at my IDC in 1993. Once we were at depth our dives went well. This one was kept to 10-12 meters again, moving up to 5 meters at 47 minutes and surfacing at 50 after a safety stop. Toward the end of that dive I found a turtle in a cave looking like it was thinking to bed down for the night, but we disturbed it and it meandered off, possibly mildly annoyed with us. There were plenty of covered ledges in the area, and we were the last divers it would see that day, so I'm sure it survived the night.

We had stopped our dive a little short of the point but one diver who went there reported better vis and devil rays and eagle rays off the point. I do like the point myself, the water seems to go riot with bigger fish as you near it, though the bottom gets deep there. But we were happy to have got through the day with 3 pool modules and two dives completed, and now we were heading home to do the last two pool modules for the course, which we completed just before dinner at 9. We were so tired, me in particular now that my work requires me to drive to Al Ain every day. I was falling asleep at the dinner table, so Bobbi and I excused ourselves and we went back to our room. So glad we didn't need to get up for any pool modules next morning. We were exhausted from a long work-week and a longer first day of the weekend, 6 to 9, 15 hours (of pleasure, it's a great privilege to be in a position to teach diving as a professional hobby.) We slept soundly, me from the time my head touched the pillow, till after 8 next morning. I guess we needed it.

Rested for the following day I had only to plan a program that would get us through our last two dives of the course and include all the so called flexible skills as well. Because of recurrent ear issues I decided to plan the controlled emergency swimming ascent as the last item of business for the first dive (dive #3 in the course) and do all the other flexible skills during the surface interval. That would leave the u/w compass heading, which we'd leave for the last dive.

It was a calm day's boating and currents on Lima Rock were pretty benign, so we pulled in there for a first dive on the south side. Vis was not bad on the rock. I had a slate with me and I wrote a note on it for the ladies to keep an eye out for the little blue cleaner wrasse that the batfish so love when they park themselves at the cleaning stations and let themselves be administered to. The schools of batfish, and the seedy side, those somewhat obvious but tolerated cleaning brothels where the big batfish like to hang out, are one of the attractions of Lima rock. So are the huge honeycomb moray eels, though we didn't see any today, but we saw another turtle, and at one point, once the ladies had cleared their ears and we had got almost to 18 meters, we came into a huge school of barracudas, hundreds of them. We swam through them and enjoyed them until they managed to distance themselves from us, and we headed back to the rock and ascended slowly until we found a place where, 45 min into the dive, I thought we might tie off my smb, or submersible marker buoy, or what we more commonly call a sausage. By tying it off on a rock and fixing it to its tie, I was able to partially inflate it before releasing the reel without having it drag me up in the process. This allowed me to jam a lot of air in it before I released it which made the line quite taught. Of course this wouldn't work if you were planning to move with it attached to yourself, but it was a well deployed line if I say so myself. The ladies were able to CESA up it to end their dive on a high note.

For the second day in a row we missed our lunch break to work on our dive course. It's a little hectic to do it in just two days, but we managed. We got all the surface work done and then dropped in near the headland end of Lima Rock North side, near the submerged tunnel that goes clear through the rock at that end. As usual we worked our way slowly downwards as ears permitted but not far into the dive we encountered a current sweeping us eastward. At one point it was even a down current so I was constantly checking how the clearing was coming and struggling a bit myself to keep us together and at a comfortable depth. Our ladies did very well in such adverse conditions. Eventually we were able to work down to the sand where the currents are lighter. We also had some coves to sneak into for relief from the current. Here I decided to have their ladyships do their compass work, which they pulled off quite well given that 12-15 fin kicks north took them far whereas turning and trying to do the same thing back took them almost nowhere. But their direction was true so we completed the compass heading on target and regained our point. After that, we played in some swim-throughs, and Tracy and I both got some sea urchins in our knees, something which concerned Tracy a lot more than it did me. By now the current seemed to have shifted and we rode it comfortably back the way we had come. As I was taking us up to our safety stop we hit the point where the current was again blocking us so I eased us into a ledge with neutral current and again 47 to 50 min of our dive we spent in safety stop. We'd got down to about 16 meters on this one, nice dive, certified two new divers, very happy day.

Will the following entities please stop spamming my blog

Whereas I have been experimenting with Google Ads on my blog, just to see what would happen (nothing much has :-( but I don't care :-)) this blog is essentially non-commercial.  I therefore would respectfully request that the following providers of services in the UAE please desist making vacuous comments on my blog (such as those shown below).

Comments are welcome if they contribute to the conversation around diving in the UAE or anywhere, but the incessant comments generated no-telling-how show no understanding of what is in my posts apart from the fact that they are targeting a blog whose content is often about sea sports in Musandam.

If you would like to comment with any kind of substance regarding the content of the posts, welcome, but the comments of which the following are but a small sampling are becoming annoying, and I've been moderating them as spam (but they keep coming, so Google/Blogger needs to improve its spam filter).

The above were published apparently, but I removed them as spam using the tool shown.  Interesting there has been no spam as yet on THIS particular post :-). I added some appropriate tags to see if I could attract some ... 

Meanwhile, my Google ad earnings have been hardly stellar. I'll leave it on a while longer and maybe switch it off :-)

As a footnote here: I have renewed my request that the spammers please desist from spamming my blog here: http://vancesdiveblogs.blogspot.ae/2013/05/adsense-and-nonsense-not-dive-log-entry.html

Amazingly, they have left spam comments at almost every post apart from this one, suggesting that they ARE reading the blog.  In that case, thanks :-)

I take that back, checking below I see that they did get one post through in Dec 2012.  Ok, the brute force attack does let some get through, and now you see what I mean.

Musandam with Nomad Ocean Adventure: Fun diving with Bobbi and Nicki

Logged dives #1158-1159

Bobbi and I hadn’t dived the entire month of August.  I was away on holiday the whole month in Georgia and Armenia <http://georgiarmenia2012.pbworks.com/>, hiking for exercise, no diving, and Bobbi was there with me for two weeks of that. I returned home a week ago but we spent my first weekend home resting and reuniting.  Then I had my first week of classes which is always stressful, and after 5 days of that, we decided to get some sleep Thursday after work and not drive over to Dibba to dive on Friday so as to take it easy that morning and not have to drive across the UAE until late afternoon.  For comic relief, we took Nicki with us and we arrived at Nomad Ocean Adventure in Oman Dibba right about dinner time.  It was perfect to arrive there after a relaxing day, fall into eating good grub and enjoying old friends and dive buddies, and eventually fall into bed and sleep comfortably all night, and not have to get up next morning until 8.

One of our acquaintances there was Khaled Al Sultani, a serious sea-life photographer younger than Dusty but larger than Glenn, and even more talented with a camera, whom we’d met on a recent trip to the Damaniyites. Here’s a link to his videos from that day <http://vancesdiveblogs.blogspot.com/2011/09/bobbi-and-vance-fun-diving-at.html>.  On this day in Dibba, just one boat was going and we were all in the one, so we met again underwater where Khaled was photographing a pair of huge orange nudibranchs lying one atop the other under a panoply of purple processes.

We were at Octopus Rock. Current was right for it, just gentle to the north but not throwing us off the rock, vis was excellent, maybe 15-20 meters, and we’d descended in clouds of blue triggerfish. There were morays everywhere it seemed, large crayfish under ledges, caught in my torch beam, and then Khaled waved us over to see these phenomenal nudibranchs which he illuminated in his video lamps.

We rounded the rock in the blue coral patches and found some barracuda hulking in the far valley, lots of them. We found a ledge heading north-south, perhaps the wall Theo had told us about, and followed it south away from where we’d seen the barracuda, with every intent to retrace our fin kicks and recover the rock where we started. There were lovely things to see there and back, little blue crayfish with white feelers jutting out the rocks, morays, lion fish, Nicki found a black nudibranch but couldn’t find it to show it to me.  But she found a remarkable slipper lobster <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slipper_lobster>.  She also found a small scorpion fish in the sand just before we met divers coming the other way presumably from Octopus Rock.

But we weren’t at Octopus Rock.  We were at the submerged rock just north west of it.  It’s a complicated site.  I guess the north south wall we had found might lead us back to Octopus rock at its southern end, but that had not been obvious from there, it just seemed to fall away to depth.  But we rounded the little rock we’d arrived at instead and in fact it’s a great place to do a safety stop, about 5 meters deep, and swirling with jacks and smaller schools of fish weaving in and out of one another in shades of silver.

Back aboard our boat we broke out lunch, good fare on Nomad boats, sandwich wraps of mystery substance, but tasty rice or pasta, fruits, soft drinks.  After eating and changing tanks, we headed south along the coast past Ras Morovi  to Lulu Island.

At Lulu Island we kitted up and descended on our usual dive where we drop on the west of the island, then round it to the north, and proceed underwater on an easterly heading to reach the other islands just further that way, finning at 16 meters along the bottom.  As we started heading east Nicki managed to rile some aggressive clown fish in the anemones on the way over.  We arrived finally in the usual spot amidships on the far island north and we headed clockwise around the island.  As we were turning the north corner we came on a black marble cowtail ray nudged up against a rock, trying to pretend we couldn’t see him but getting agitated over the fact we wouldn’t go away.  Eventually we left him alone and completed our circle of the island to come into the gap between that one and the next further south.  There in the sand beyond we saw a ray flying past, possibly the same one we had seen earlier.  We tried to chase it but he was just too far away and faster than we were.  So we continued south along the wall, finding morays and lion fish, until toward the end of that island again we came on yet another cowtail ray nestled into the wall like the first one, and rippling his skirts in the same way.  This could have been three ray sightings, or two, or the same ray encountered three times on one dive. Whatever, he was interesting to observe at close quarters with his nose pointed up against a rock wall, and no means of escape short of panic.  We were careful to give him space so as not to trigger that.

We were in a bay of islands which we followed south and then predictably west, heading for the seaward side of the island where we’d put in on the landward side. Visibility wasn’t as good as on the first dive, lots of particles in the water, though still good visibility.  We were looking for turtles reputed to be here, and we were gliding over coral patches sloping down into sand that looked inviting to turtles and divers as well.  But eventually this petered out into sand sloping deeper to the north (funny, we were diving with a 4^th guy named Peter J), and I thought if we headed west over that we’d arrive back at our island.  We were at about 17 meters, it was deeper to the north, so I tried to angle slightly to the south.  Ahead of us was a dark spot that seemed it could be land, but turned out to be mirage, just receding dark water.  We went over this until my air was approaching 50 bar, 45 minutes into the dive.  The only good thing was we had a 4^th ray encounter, another cow tail, but not the same one, this one was bigger and took off in a cloud of bottom silt.

            

The group seemed content with this, but I was concerned and decided to surface and see where we were.  When I did so I discovered the current must have nudged us north because we were past the island we were shooting for and almost to the wall of the mainland. So I went down and led the rest of the way west over the sand to where the coral resumed with beautiful fish and we were able to conduct our safety stops with something to see.  

Because we were in a place we weren’t supposed to be I got out my SMB, or submersible marker buoy, otherwise known as a sausage.  They are tricky to deploy.  First timers are liable to get dragged up with them as they fill with air if they’re not quick enough to release the trigger letting the reel spool out the line as the sausage shoots upward. I got mine up fine and Nicki decided to deploy hers because there’s this thing among divers to see whose sausage is bigger and can be deployed fastest.  Mine was first, but Nicki wanted me to mention that hers was new. She had also come across a reel in the sand and plopped it in her BCD pocket.  These things can cost $70-$100 so it’s great if you find one.  

When we surfaced, again at 57 minutes, Peter told us we had missed seeing a trio of seahorses that Nicki was showing him, about the time I’d decided to surface to see where we were.  I thought "darn!" at the time, but we’ve seen lots of seahorses lately.  But when we were talking to Nicki about it in the car on the way home she said she didn’t see any seahorses.  Turned out they were pipefish, sort of a straight line version of a seahorse with a seahorse head and beak.  Nicki hadn’t mentioned them earlier because every time she was going to, Bobbi had said again how happy she was with her new mask which she bought in Texas after having problems with ill-fitting masks earlier in the summer in Philippines and Perhentien in Malaysia.  Her mask had developed a leak in the skirt just as we were leaving on that trip and the one she took with her hurt her nose with its plastic.  She bought a new one in Malapascua but that one was just as bad.  So when she was in Texas she bought one from a company that accommodated special faces.  Anyway that’s about all she talked about on the way home, and she wanted me to mention  it in my blog.

Fun diving on Al Marsa liveaboard to Musandam

My logged dives #1152-1157

You don't get on a liveaboard to Musandam for superior diving. You do it to get away, to totally relax, to be pampered in a cycle of dive, eat, sleep, repeat.

I put my deposit down and let myself flow into the break from real life back on dry land.  On Thursday I lingered at work till about 2:30 and then hit the road, direction Dubai, moving slowly over to Dibba driving alone 3 hours in my car. I got torch batteries on the way, gas at the pump in Oman, took my time, and arrived at the Dibba Oman port well before dusk, in time to check out the large sharks hauled up on the boat landing slab at the impromptu fish market. One was a guitar shark. I was one of the first on board, others trickled in from 6:00 to as late as 7:30, and when all were present, we were invited for dinner on the top deck in the harbor. It's not practical to eat al fresco on a moving boat, so the first meal is served in the harbor.  This being the case, there was no need for anyone to get there before 8 pm.

I was along because one of my ex-students, Greg Golden, had assembled a group of his buddies for one more stage in a “summer of diving” while their spouses were away for the summer. I'd had to miss their trip to Kassab because Bobbi and I were in Malapascua, but two weeks before they'd been in the Daminiyites. I was finally able to hook up for this big splurge liveaboard trip, much more affordable while my spouse was away in Houston, though I miss Bobbi as a dive buddy. The cabins on the liveaboard are cramped but fine for a couple, and with Bobbi, all our dives last an hour. On this trip I was buddied with the dive guide, and he was obligated to end his dives at 50 bar or 50 minutes, whichever comes first.

Itinerary for the trip - Thanks to Simon Lange for use of the photo

We motored up to White Rock overnight where aboard the brown dhow I got a lie in till almost 7 a.m and awoke to a brilliantly clear morning moored in a fjord surrounded by stark mountains rising from the blue sea.

Thanks to Simon Lange for contributing the photo

 The dhow stayed where it was and we got in a speedboat and went to the seaward side of a ras called Kaisah. I don't think I'd ever dived that side before, but the current was ripping. We all got buffeted along until we'd hit an underwater cove and the backwash created a back-current that we had to struggle into till we reached the other side and hitched a ride on the rip current again. The current gave us good vis, but there wasn't much to see, nothing unusual at any rate, until we got out to the point. Just before the point we hit another back current and this was the end of the dive for Greg and his buddy, another Greg (Perry). Both were low on air from the hard finning into the back currents, and I myself was at 75 just 35 minutes into the dive, but pulling myself along on the rocks, so when Greg and Greg went up, Brian joined me, and we rounded the point. Here we saw a barracuda, and sheltering in the relative slack around the point, a turtle. It was a nice start to a 4-dive day.

Who trained this guy? Thanks to Greg Perry for this photo of Greg Golden, as he explained "demonstrating the risks of improper SMB deployment as part of my "Don't do this" series of advanced scuba instruction.  While it looks very realistic, I was totally in control of the sitch."

Breakfast was waiting on the sun deck, and when we'd had that we still had an hour and a half to kill so I went and laid down in my cabin and completed my lie-in with a morning nap. Then at 11 we all piled back in the boat for a second dive on the inside of Ras Kaisah.

This was the same place we'd overnighted last time Bobbi and I had come out with this company, only on that trip the dive leader had taken us inside Ras Kaisah on the first dive and then on the headland opposite for the second, and I recall that all aboard were a little disappointed in the choice of dive sites, especially once we'd seen that White Rock lay just off the mouth of the khor. But White Rock has variable currents. Whereas many people who shell out for this kind of trip are committed and experienced divers, there are also divers with limited skills, so dive sites are selected conservatively. Ironically you could get a speed boat from Sultan Qaboos Harbor to advertise a trip specifically to White Rock, if you wanted to dive it, but it doesn't seem to be on the Al Marsa agenda. They've been in the area a while, I'm sure they have reasons for avoiding it.

Brian explained that current would come from the north and strike the headland and diverge in such a way that current would be going out to sea from a particular spot and running inland on the other side of that spot. If the current had slackened we could dive to the left toward the point where we'd seen the turtle and had good visibility, but he seemed concerned when we reached the spot that the current was too strong, so he had us head inland with the reef on our left. This took us into poorer vis away from the point, and though it was a comfortable, pleasant dive, we didn't see much apart from lots of fishes, though Tom Longo, another instructor along with us, saw turtles in his buddy pair (with my cabin-mate Guy).

Red lion fish, photo by Simon Lange

So now it was time for lunch, and after that I lay down on the cushions on the aft deck for an afternoon nap, really shaking off stresses from a week at work where we were short of teachers and creaking at the seams to keep that ship afloat. Sleep was facilitated because the dhow was under way and the ships engine and the slop of the sea on the hull lulled me. When it came to anchorage in Khor Habilain, and the engine stopped, I awoke to the sound of Led Zepplin from someone's iPod playing from the top deck above.

Three p.m was time for our third dive, this one on the inside of Ras Dilla at a site Al Marsa have named Muqtah (no telling why). Brian again outlined a conservative profile. We would go in the speedboat a little ways out the headland and then work our way back towards the dhow. By not heading seaward out the point, we would avoid any threat of current (and the interesting animals that like current that one might encounter at the ras, or point, itself). As some people say, “it's all good”, and Brian is a good dive leader. We were settling into each other's dving styles, and the Lebanese named Roland whom Brian was shepherding was proving to be good on air consumption. So I didn't mind joining him again. Apart from Roland, I was the odd diver out. Everyone else was paired. Rather than assign me to Roland, Brian had had Roland buddy with him, leaving me to be a free agent, to attach myself to whomever I pleased. The last two dives I had ended up with Brian. This third dive I started out with him and Roland.

The direction we were heading had hazy visibility, but to compensate if Brian was looking in the coral walls I would look out in the sand, and if Brian moved to the sand I would keep an eye on the corals. The corals were teeming with fishes but the interesting stuff was out in the sand. At one point I saw a big fish there, the only time I had tapped my tank up until then. It was a yellow finned barracuda. On Brian's watch he tapped to show us a sting ray, a large marble one like the one I'd seen at Lima Rock two weeks before. He rippled fast along the sand but when we chased it, it wheeled toward the reef and the passed slowly before us, so I could clearly see its marbled dorsal side. It headed slowly toward a hole so we followed it there and shined out torches on it.

Scorpion fish, photo by Simon Lange

There was more in the sand. Brian showed us a scorpion fish I would likely have missed. He also noticed a small jaw fish and pointed it out just as it slipped deep into its hole, where I could barely see it in my torchlight. He also pointed out some tiny arch-backed harlequin shrimp in one of the soft corals. Brian is from Philippines so when he showed me that he took me back to Malapascua, where the dive guides were so good at finding the small stuff like harlequin shrimp time and time again.

When that dive was done we got back aboard the dhow and it headed south toward Lima headland where we would do a night dive and two dives the following day in the area where we normally visit on day trips from Dibba.

However, one great difference in liveaboard diving is that when we arrived at Ras Lima, it was dusk (signalled by a booming canon shot from the seafaring town of Lima at the start of Ramadhan), and we were about to do a night dive there. This turned out to be one of my best night dives ever. We had a large group and people stayed together and called each other over to their discoveries, which seemed to happen one after another. We saw lots of eels, including one peppercorn or geometric moray, hovering lion fish, and a couple of trumpet fish.

Peppercorn moray, photo by Simon Lange

There were lots of squids that were attracted to our lights. They would swim into them, right in our faces in other words, and then escaped in a cloud of ink when we touched them. There was a scorpion fish that was walking along the bottom on his lower set of fins, and a baby one just a centimeter long, very hard to see. I found a small crab in a rock and nearby a cuttlefish that became agitated when lit up. There were large pufferfish resting on the bottom that just ignored our lights. There was a rope running down to depth encrusted in marine life and at 18 meters deep we found a seahorse on it.

Seahorse at night; photo by Greg Perry

At one point a marble ray without a tail appeared and rippled through the divers lucky enough to see him. I was the last in the group so I saw him plop down in the sand away from the lights, raising a cloud around him as he did so. This dive lasted just 40 minutes, by order of our dive leader. At the end I wondered why my buddies, usually so meticulous about time, hadn't gone up yet, and then I discerned from their unfamiliar gear that they were divers from another dhow mooring in the same cove that night.

Fluids tasted so much better after a night dive, and I'm not sure how long after dinner I went to bed, but crew hands were stomping on the foredeck overhead of our bunks at 6 a.m so there was little chance of oversleeping the 7 a.m dive. This was planned for Octopus Rock, and during the briefing Brian mentioned that if there was current present at the dive site he would abort that site and take us to Ras Morovi. When we arrived at Octopus Rock there were two boats there already with divers preparing to enter the water, but Brian pointed at the obvious current and told the boat driver to take us over to Ras Morovi. I was disappointed on the way over but at least Brian's choice of Ras Morovi sites was the seawardmost face of Jilly Island, which I have dived only once before. I had been planning to join Brian and Roland on the Octopus Rock dive because the dive site is complicated and I've never led a dive there and knew where I was accurately. I was first kitted up at Ras Morovi before Roland had started to put on his tank, and Brian was helping others enter the water. First in were Tom Longo and Guy, my cabin-mate, so since I was ready I decided on the spur of the moment to join them. I didn't have time even to ask. I just let Brian know what I was doing and descended with them, and after a while they understood we were a threesome.

We hit a sand bottom at 17-21 meters and went along in fine clear water, each of us using torches to see better. There wasn't much to see apart from beautiful blue soft corals, a moray or two, and lion fish in the crevices. But soon Tom started banging on his tank with his torch, pointing to a ray in the sand. As he started to ripple he stirred fine silt and it was even then hard to see what was causing the commotion, but I arrived overhead in time to see a large cow tail ray, minus his cowtail, heading away from us divers. He was too fast to follow for any distance.

We went the length of the island north to south and where we turned the corner we encountered strong head current. No one communicated not to go so we clawed our way forward. Tom signalled 100 bar at this point and it was hard breathing to get through to where we were heading north on the other side. Guy pulled even with me and we found ourselves surrounded by bat fish, some undergoing complete makeovers from the administrations of the tiny wrasse. We were just entering that slack space, me in the lead by now, when a ray shot past me over my left shoulder (reef on my right). I thought it was an eagle ray from its speed but it was more brown spotted and diamond shaped (I think), but I remember the tight body, long tail, and speed so fast there was no point in having a camera. The guys strung out behind me would have seen it for a few more seconds as it overtook me. Tom said he thought it was an eagle ray.

I doubt that because I saw two more eagle rays later in my dive, and the one that shot past me was not one of those. I was just passing through 100 bar at this point and my buddies were rising higher on the reef. Below me I saw a turtle. Vis was decent but not superb so animals were vanishing into the haze. I could see my buddies were ascending, I could see their fins near the surface. We were only 40 min into the dive and my air was holding. I was still at ten meters and I had an SMB and I signaled that I was deploying it and I think it must have been obvious that if they wanted me I'd be below the SMB. We'd been finning into a mild current, it seemed to be bringing out the animals, and I decided I'd just hang out literally at 12 meters, and let the current carry me the way we had come. I figured I might encounter other divers from our group coming up that way, and I could join them.

That's when I saw the eagle rays. This has happened to me on wrecks in Abu Dhabi when for some reason or another I've been left alone and had the opportunity to watch the rays come back to the wreck. They seem to avoid groups of divers but they don't notice one diver hovering until they're already on the scene and then in the case of eagle rays, they shoot off like a jump jet. The first eagle ray did that and I thought like wow, when moments later another happened along. Just like the first, he rippled toward me, noticed that I was not one of them, and departed in an impressive display of power and grace. Two eagle rays, rare and sublime.

I played no games with time or bar. I ascended with 50 bar and reached the surface with 53 min. on my computer. I had heard the boat gears grinding just minutes before but when I reached the surface I was alone with my SMB. I was just on the far side of a gap in the rocks, so I swam through the gap and saw the boat, as well as a turtle passing on the reef below. The boat happened to be downcurrent, so I was there in no time.

Back at breakfast on the sun deck you could feel the anticipation of the upcoming whale shark dive. Peter was wondering what dive he could do with his advanced student and we were talking about a whale shark specialty dive and how in case the WS didn't show up, we could drag an object through the water and students could practice not touching it and how to keep buoyancy while keeping up with it and keeping the correct distance from it, and photographing it without flash and so on. In his briefing Brian always tried to avoid mentioning the something big so as not to jinx the dive, and he explained how he liked to dive the south side but if there was any current he'd switch the the north.

We headed over to the rock in the speedboat and Brian checked the current north, east and south of the island, and found one midway along the south side. But it was pushing to the east, he figured we could drift with it, and he figured on the east point we could round the rock to end the dive on the north side, and that was our plan.

I was planning to dive with Brian but Tom and Guy were in the water first and shouted for me to join them, so I jumped and went with them. There was a major current, more than I would have tolerated if I'd had to make a decision based on my usual method of jumping in the water and seeing if there's current, and if there is mid rock, go to the other side. But it was turning into a nice dive. My buddies kind of deferred to me so I followed my whale shark strategy of keeping at about 12 meters, though the current was pitching us all about, and we were sometimes at 16 meters or more. Meanwhile the other divers had gone deeper, to 20 meters and were diving deep. Vis was very poor. I didn't think they'd be able to see a whaleshark overhead whereas at 12 meters you cover where the WS is most likely to be.

But the problem is when vis is bad you can't see far enough out into the water to see where the WS is likely to be. We saw lots of interesting things. There were shoals of barracuda passing and we finned back against the current and managed to join them. At times we found ourselves in the midst of playing trevally darting about. Always we were carried by the current, at times faster than at others, but always cognizant of the fact that the current might want to sweep us off the rock and make us miss our turn through the gap to the other side. So I was playing this dive 12 to 16 meters and close to the rock.

Other divers were playing it deeper and farther from the rock, due to the slope at that depth. Consequently we heard their tank banging but I thought maybe a divemaster was warning a student to get in out of the current. But no, that was their first whale shark sighting. They said it passed overhead. They were too deep at 20 meters, the WS was at 16 and moving against the current, and they couldn't chase it, so they didn't get a great look. But we were at 12 and couldn't see to 16 and that far out to sea.

Picture by Greg Perry (with thanks)

When I saw Brian at the corner he signalled me a definite WS sighting, so I knew then that we had missed it. Back on the boat he told me they'd seen a second small WS as they were doing their safety stop at the corner. Meanwhile guy and Tom and I were heading for the spot on the north side where I'd seen a WS two weeks earlier, but we had no luck on our outing this day.

Except for the missed whale shark, in aggregate it was a phenomenal dive weekend. When we came up and the boat came to pick us up, we saw a pod of a dozen dolphins breaking the surface just beyond the boat. I tried to swim over to them but they dived and moved further away, always out of sight. They and the barracudas and trevally on the Lima Rock dive made it a better than normal Lima Rock dive. I've seen my quota of whale sharks already the summer. I had a great weekend out, relaxing and highly charged in spurts, challenging diving, nice company, nice time.

Chasing dolphins, photo by Simon Lange (with thanks)

Fun diving and starting Daniel Sobrado's PADI rescue course

My logged dives number #1148-1151

If you have permission: http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.3649363705743.2146494.1023969539&type=1

Very nice dives this weekend.  Friday July 6, Daniel taxi'd to my house and we drove over and picked up Nicki before 7 a.m.  In 3 hours we were at the Nomad hostel on the east coast, drinking nescafe (yuk!#) and waiting for Chris to organize us.  One boat had already left for the far north, but sea conditions were not good on this day.  In fact, the UAE authorities had confined boats to harbor, as we learned via mobile on the drive down when contacting Freestyle about our diving the following day. Oman authorities were not so restrictive, and we got under way and headed north through rough seas, but not as rough as I have before seen them, heading for the relief of Ras Lima (Headland).

Our first dive there was a nice one.  It was a leisurely refresher for my former student Daniel, shepherded through his open water and advanced, and now working ostensibly on his rescue course.  We put in way back near the town of Lima, so as to avoid currents closer to the peninsula.  As we were kitting up we noticed a fin breach the water and a whale-shark sized shadow lurking in the clear green.  We grabbed snorkel gear as fast we could (where is my other boot, it was JUST here .. where?) but no one got in fast enough to see the elusive creature, so we treated that as a cooling off interruption in the 40+ July temperatures and resumed kitting for our diving, easing into the water, heading west with the reef on our right.

It was a nice dive. I saw over a dozen crayfish.  We found lion fish, batfish, lots of blue triggers.  Toward the end of the dive, over an hour, Nicki found a sting ray under a rock.  While she was photographing it, I found a huge puffer the size of my thigh hiding in a rock ledge just above the stingray lair.  Poking into more rocks, still waiting on Nicki, I discovered a crayfish whose tentacles were spread to where I could just reach each end with the fingers of my outstretched arms, that big.  Lovely animals hiding in lairs on the headland that day.

Daniel couldn't get our attention so he brought the moray closer where we could see it too

We came up eventually and back on the boat were feasting on mystery meat sandwich wrap, pasta or rice salad, and Lulu pizza, followed by cupcakes and watermellon, when Chris asked where we wanted to go next. It seemed he though Ras Morovi would be nice but Nicki would have none of that.  I interjected that there DID appear to be whalesharks around, and maybe Lima Rock north side would be a better option.  Seas were rough but there was shelter there.

No one objected so we headed over to Lima where there were already dive boats around waiting out their surface intervals.  We kitted up and went in leisurely. I'd been cold my first dive so I changed my 3 mm wetsuit for a more comfortable one of 5 mm and used that on through to the next day.  Surface temperatures were a warm 30 C ++ but at depth we easily lost 5 degrees C.  On this dive, I dropped to the sand at 18 meters, and immediately found a sting ray under a rock ledge there.  The three of us gathered around it.  I was shining a flashlight on it, Nicki was photographing it as usual, and Daniel was just observing, when Theo suddenly appeared next to us and pointed up.  I thought for a moment that this might be a new diver recall procedure, but he was pointing with his index finger, not his thumb. I pointed to the ray we had found, thinking he might be interested in that, but he seemed adamant, so, ok, I looked up, and saw a whale shark passing overhead.


We were at 18 meters and the whaleshark was at 12, so we didn't head straight up, but we kept our eyes on our computers (ok, one eye on the computer, the other on the whale shark) and made a safe ascent while we kicked to overtake the whaleshark and the half dozen other divers who were riding shotgun.  To everyone's credit, no one touched it, and we were able to come right alongside it, so close that when it turned to the right I had to back off to avoid being whisked by its tail.

That's me (Vance) just behind the dorsal fin.

And this is Daniel enjoying the view (he's dropped the ray by now - Nicki is behind the camera and didn't get in the photos :-)

These things are always curious when a bunch of other large bubbly creatures enter the water, though they keep moving slowly but steadily when among divers or snorkelers.  So divers can keep up with them if they wish, or they can enjoy for a few minutes and conserve their air for other delights in diving.  Someone reported spending 18 minutes with this particular whaleshark, but we dropped out after about 5 and went on with our dive at depth.

Or dive had not ended.  We saw another ray later and later yet another marble ray, with ripple-span again as wide as my arms might stretch.  But the unusual thing about this ray is I saw it coming toward us gliding over the reef, right at me, and then underneath me.  And then it wheeled about and came back around us and again across my bow.  I don't remember how many passes but it was only mildly perturbed at our presence and made a great show of itself, gliding near, as I said in my Facebook message, rippling like a Spanish dancer. Beautiful creature.

July 7 - Two dives on Inchcape 2

It would have been nice to return next day to Musandam with Nomad but we had made our booking with Freestyle, thinking originally to make a quick trip out to the Inchcape 2 wreck and return by 11 or so and head home to Abu Dhabi.  But when we called to confirm that we learned that they were doing Inchcape 2 and then 1, two wrecks, the first in 30 meters and the second in about 26.  Fish life is slightly different on each so we said sure, we'd be back around 1:30, early departure for Abu Dhabi, why not.

It was a nice plan and we got to see Andrew Moore again, who had facebooked that he had a weight belt with my name on it, so I could pick it up there, which I did. However, when we completed our first dive on the "inch" we were told, change of plan, the UAE coast guard didn't actually want us out there, so there had been a decision (made before we set out obviously, but we were just then informed) that we wouldn't be able to proceed further south that day so our second dive would be on the same wreck, the Inchcape 2.

It's a nice wreck, nice day out, who can complain, and 'nuff said, but on a wreck at 30 meters, the first dive is 20 minutes, and the second dive, after an hour (and nine minute) surface interval, is 12.  Sami in his briefing  said ten minutes, but we had checked the tables, since diving twice to 30 meters with no change in levels is essentially table diving, and seen that the NDL if your SI is 1:30 is 14 minutes, and if you give it 2 hours, you can have 17.  So for those driving back to Abu Dhabi it was a question of 30 min. more sleep that night or 2 more minutes of dive time.  Anyway these calculations give you something to do while having lunch and waiting out your surface interval on a small rocking boat, many fighting queasiness.

The Inchcape is a pretty dive, clouds of snappers covering the wreck, parting when divers ease through. Sometimes there are honeycomb morays there, and seahorses.  There are often rays in the sand.  On this dive a huge flounder was seen, and some strange looking crocodile-like fish in the sand.  It's a cool dive.

Nicki and Vance hanging out at 30 meters. All photos in this post taken by Nicki Blower (or with her camera) with the exception of the Facebook screenshot shared by Julian Palmer