Annual bachelor (and others) liveaboard cruise with Al Marsa to Musandam

June 21 and 22, Al Marsa Liveaboard Dhow trip in Musandam

My logged dives #1200-1205

Once a year we pamper ourselves on the Al Marsa liveaboard dhow trip for diving in Musandam, two nights and six dives out of Dibba harbor. The weather has been very mild so far in UAE with cool evenings and very little sweating after dark, but with many expats away on holiday and for those who remain behind, an assumption of hot humid nights on the deck of a dhow, Al Marsa reduces its prices in summer, making the trip feasible for those on teaching salaries.

An Al Marsa Dhow weekend is about as relaxing as it gets on weekends in the UAE, if relaxing for you is something less sedentary than a weekend spent by the pool at a posh hotel. We shed the work week on the drive to Dibba, endure the increasing hassles and delays at the UAE border checkpoint, and finally cross into Oman for the short drive to Dibba harbor, where we give ourselves over to being pampered and catered for two nights. Most in our group were searched at the border and with so many expats trying to cross on weekends, it was almost 10:00 p.m. before we had all arrived on the dhow. The group were Tom Longo, another instructor, his friend and colleague Stella from Italy, Greg Golden and Greg Perry with his visiting dad who went by “coach”, Jay who'd flown down from Doha with his daughter Shelby, and two nice beginning divers, both named Tariq, originally from Egypt (but one born in Minnesota). We assembled for what should have been sundowners on the top deck followed by dinner, a nightcap, and restful sleep in a cold cramped cabin (under a cozy blanket) while the sounds of the engines lulled us to sleep for the trip up to Khor Hablain, the long fjord where we used to go camping with BSAC divers when we first came to UAE.

Some time after dawn (a lie-in for us; normally at home weekdays we're up before dawn at 4 a.m.) we got the knock on the door to get ready for our first of 4 dives that day, a short speed boat ride to the mouth of the khor, called Ras Samid. I don't know if I've ever dived there before. There was some discussion of how much wetsuit to wear. Our dive guide Robert said the water was 29 degrees. I wondered aloud if that was just at the surface but some were wearing shorties, and I dressed lightly in .5 mm lycra body suit, an only slightly thicker rash vest, and a 3 mm farmer john overall. Once I'd gone below 10 meters, I was almost immediately cold and vowed to revert to 5 mm next dive.

Vis was good and the dive was pleasant despite the chill. I don't recall what there was to see on the first part of the dive, but as we rounded the corner on Ras Samid we came into a large shoal of barracuda, possibly numbering in 3 digits. For some moments we were in amongst them, but then things returned as before, comfortable but not outstanding diving.

In our dive briefings we were always told 50 min, or 50 bar. Since we were given the choice, all our dives were an hour that weekend because we always went for the 50 bar option. We came up in surge that was booming on the rocks, making us think the boat was trying to recall us, but it was the waves hitting the headland with sharp retorts carried clearly underwater. We were recovered by the speed boat in higher than normal seas and back safely on the dhow, we enjoyed breakfast on the top deck and retired to our quarters for an hour's nap.

By the next dive at Ras Morovi I had sorted the problem with the SD, but there still wasn't much to take pictures of there. Robert had suggested we do the outer island which was fine by me, but he wanted to dive inside, in the channel. He figured the current was running north to south on either side of the island. I aked if we could do the outside and he readily agreed. The briefings were conducted on the dhow and our equipment was left in the speedboat all set up for the next dive. As we left the protection of the khor in the small boat we hit heavy seas that sprayed us in the face and made working our way to Morovi tedious. But when we arrived, Robert figured we could carry out the plan. Most of us were advanced or better and the Tariqs were game, so we put on our kit and the boat brought us near to the rock where we entered the water and descended to the relative calm beneath the waves as quickly as possible.

The plan was to go with the southerly current on the east side of the outer island and end up rounding the south tip to the west. We carried out the plan despite the current being contrarily against us. This made it hard going but all the other divers followed except Robert, who reversed with Tareq and Tareq to ride the current around to the west side, where they saw two very large sting rays. It seems the current was spiraling around the island because even when we crossed to the other side we had it against us and Bobbi and I ended up letting it carry us back the way we had come, to the south tip of the island. The year before this very spot had shown us close ray encounters including a pair of eagle rays <http://vancesdiveblogs.blogspot.ae/2012/07/fun-diving-on-al-marsa-liveaboard-to.html>, but today we were only able to find crayfish hiding in the rocks, in addition to surrounding us with the usual panoply of reef fishes. It was a pleasant relaxing dive though. I was fine in 5 mm wetsuits, Bobbi and I the only divers in the group to have them.

The routine on Al Marsa trips is to make two dives from wherever the boat has spent the first night, and on this day it hadn't traveled far due to sea conditions and a late start due to most of our group having had to queue up to be searched at the border. After the second dive lunch is served on deck and the dhow is moved to Lima headland. The kilometers long headland is a natural and consistent overnight shelter, but the default dive from there is the headland, a common destination for day trips out of Dibba, followed by a night dive in the same spot near the dhow. In his briefing Robert suggested a conservative plan that would keep us back off the point, start a little inland, pass under the dhows, and be picked up as far toward the point as we would get. I suggested not passing under the dhows but start on the seaward side of them. This would also give some the option of diving the point, and others the option of staying safe and not risking the currents there. Vis was poor near the dhows but improved as we neared the point.

I had left my GoPro behind by accident, which of course guaranteed that we would see interesting creatures. We started out with a torpedo ray we almost descended on top of. Bobbi and I opted to go with Robert and see what he could find us, and he found us a small (not nudibranch, but a common slug with orange, black, and white thorny processes). One interesting thing we came onto was a pair of morays having a fight. They slithered along the sea bed beside one another with their heads cocked each at the other and mouths wide with fangs bared. They held themselves this way as they scooted along the bottom together, but no blows were actually struck, and one suddenly broke off and went for cover.

In the last part of the dive, as we neared the clearer water near the point, we found lots of big puffer fish. As we were about to ascend after an hour's dive, a turtle came up from depth and we went down to see it. It was in clear water, it passed near us unperturbed, I framed a picture of Bobbi swimming with it, but that picture is in my mind and not on my GoPro :-( And back on the boat Greg and Greg thanked me for suggesting the starting point I did because they made it to the point and saw a pair of eagle rays there :-)

Back on the boat we made tea and waited for sunset. The two Tariqs and Stella went off in the boat with fishing gear and came back with a half dozen snapper that made a great lunch next day. By then it was dark and we had put fresh batteries in our torches. We started from the speedboat which took us around the first point in sight of the dhow, object being to dive back to the dhow underwater. Conditions were perfect with warm balmy air stirred by a sea breeze and comfortable in the water with 5 mm suits. We scoured the undersea features for animals and the first thing I found was a bright red miniature crab in some hard lattice coral. We found caves and walls full of grasshopper shrimp whose eyes glowed in the torches, giving them away by the hundreds, and fewer but frequent delicate red and white banded crabs. Tom Longo found a couple of crabs that wear anemomes on their shells, or anenomes that hitch rides with this particular crab, whichever. We found sleeping parrotfish, puffers, lots of lion fish that were red in the white torchlight, and Bobbi found scorpion fish. The find of the night was a ray hiding under a ledge several meters long from head to tail, and we left him alone when he started to ripple at being discovered.

Back on the boat we were served dinner, another buffet washed down with smuggled seafarer's grog, and we went to bed to be ready for our diving on Lima Rock next day. We did two dives there, starting with the north side first thing in the morning. Robert called the currents well. He briefed the first dive to head east, reef on the right. Of course he mentioned we might see a whale shark and everyone was anticipating that.

We saw no whale sharks in our two dives there, but the first dive we saw much else. The first thing was to find a small cave that Robert told us about that I had never noticed before. It was more like a chimney where you could see up to lighter water above. The next thing to happen was a ray shooting over the top of Bobbi and I, heading into the sand, but then doubling back and passing right beneath us while I struggled to get my camera in play. I finally got it working as the ray was heading away from us over the sand. I chased but he easily pulled away from me.

The north side of Lima is full of swim throughs that have batfish in them, and no telling what you can find it you shine a light into an alcove. We found a moray out of its lair and I think I captured it on video, but by now my camera was running down its battery … it doesn't hold a charge well. I almost prefer diving before I got distracted with such considerations.

Current improved in our favor and we found we could easily work out to the point. Bobbi found us a honeycomb moray hiding in a rock near there. We turned to shoot the gap between north and south Lima. At that point we were following Tom Longo and his group but I got attracted to all the jacks buzzing us there and lost track of the other divers.

We expected strong counter current to hit us on the south side but this was not the case. Instead the current on the south side was running westward, toward Ras Lima. And it was a powerful current and made diving effortless as we drifted along the famous Blank Wall at Lima. We came around the wall but hit some back current where the sand and reef resume. We were both low on air here but we hung out at 5 meters for 3 minutes before surfacing to discover we were in a bracket of rock and needed to move out to sea a bit so the boat could see us, as they might not be looking for us on that side. Eventually they puttered along and picked us up.

So it was back to the dhow anchored off Lima headland for breakfast and another nap. The air conditioner in our room had gone off in the night and kept us up an hour fiddling with it, so we wanted to catch up on sleep, but the aircon problem persisted and we had to wait till the boat started motoring back to Dibba before we could get a proper nap.

This one's for Jay!

By then I had recharged the GoPro and we had had our second dive, again at Lima Rock, south side this time. Robert again called the current, dropping us far to the west and telling us the rock would be on our left when that morning it was raging in the opposite direction. But he was right, we had little current at the start and were able to easily make our way in excellent vis. I went deeper than others to about 20 meters looking into the sand. Most went along the reef at 12 or so and moved ahead. We ended up with Robert and the two Tariqs. Bobbi found a nice pair of nudibranchs, which I attempted to get on video. There wasn't anything else special until a half hour into the dive I dropped to a ledge, shined a light inside, and found a black cowtail ray hiding there. I videod till it started to get agitated, then left it in peace. Bobbi tried to call the others down but they were already heading up, low on air, Robert accompanying them.

The current was downright benign so we found ourselves finning again along the blank wall but with no resistance from current from the direction we had come that morning. Until we reached the gap that is. The point with its current is of course the sweet spot of a Lima Rock dive. If you can find the current and stay there then animals often come to you. Jacks swirl here, you can easily find yourself surrounded by barracuda, and if you can get deep and off the point you might find devil rays cavorting. Current is also a favorite haunt of whale sharks, who like to use their powerful mass to keep themselves positioned so plankton is swept by the current into their mouths. If you can reach the points in this area, find the current, and stay there, this could be the high point of your Lima Rock dive.

We were unable to pull to the other side through the current pouring into the narrow gap. It was the kind of current that could sweep a mask off your face. But we managed to cross the channel and climb the rock on the far side where the current here pinned us to its face. Working our way atop that rock we found a fish net attached there and held on to it we could keep ourselves in the current and see what would come to visit us.

On this day we saw only jacks. But others before us found the barracuda here which might have been below where we were. We hung there as my air slipped below 50 bar. We must have been at about ten meters so we would have to let go to do our safety stop. This can be a pleasant journey. Often when we head mid water from here, we pass through the barracuda that congregate off that point. But not today, for us, though others saw them.

I like this kind of diving. Bobbi less so, though I'm proud that she can, and will, do it.

Fun Diving with Nomad: Cheese Divers

May 24-25, 2013
My logged dives #1196-1199

Fun diving with Bobbi and Nicki, Rachel, Steve and Anna, and Bonnie Friday, add Charlie and Liv on Saturday, cheese diving at Nomad hostel in between

Our first dive Ras Morovi, we got dropped in at the north. It was a glorious sunny day, not too hot, and water cool enough for 5 mm wetsuits. First dive was very nice and relaxed. I took pictures of different colored soft corals, a large honyecomb moray, and some lionfish hovering around a rock. We went into sand at 20 meters coming round the point and then followed it up into the shallower channel, a good move for the divers low on air. Rachel and I somehow lost the others when I realized we were coming on to my favorite cave at Ras Morovi and I scurried to get to it while Nicki was back taking her own pictures. The cave has a small alcove where there are sometimes rays and then a deeper alcove in the back. Since Rachel was with me and likes caves I decided to go into it as far as I could and really examine what was wayyyy back in the back. We found a couple of large fish hiding back there, agitated that we had lit up their world, and we lit up the red eyes of some glass shrimp as well, and found a long spiky tentacle of an ever-feeding invertebrate. Leaving the cave area we met back up with Nicky and Bobbi and found a turtle in the cabbage coral. We had only consumed 100 bar but we were an hour into our dive so we surfaced, and Bobbi and Nicki followed minutes later.

We pulled in to the bay to have lunch. Nomad goes out of its way to accommodate multiple dietary preferences, so we had had a flurry of emails during the week about which vegetarians would eat fish, who was strictly veg, and when egg and cheese sandwiches were suggested I replied that I didn't eat egg. So on the boat one sandwich was produced which said 'no egg', and it appeared to be for me. It was just cheese. This was almost worst case except that there was an additional container with meat and cheese. Apparently the cook had remembered that I had had a diver before who couldn't eat bread and although that diver was not with us, the cooks had associated me with him and had included this spare chicken to be put with the cheese wrap that James said resulted in a man-wich. It was funny because the evening before, when I had sent joking email saying that two of our divers didn't eat meat but were partial to “lobster and large shrimps” two plates of fish and shrimps were brought out and the vegetarians concerned were sought.This happened both nights, so we all shared the windfall at dinner. Nomad do go out of their way to please our palates.

After lunch we motored past Lima Rock because James didn't want to take his discover scuba divers there for risk of current and we ended up at Ras Sanut instead. This turned out to be cracking dive, our best ever at Ras Sanut. While waiting for our group to descend I went to investigate a large boulder out to sea and found a large marble ray parked next to it. He was friendly. He tried to ignore me at first but then decided to move, but instead of fleeing, he came towards me, and then went around me and then circled back and came right up to me again. When he moved off we found another one like it a little further on, who put on the same performance. And further on from that we found a huge cow tail ray pointed into a rock with his tail sticking out. We photographed it with our GoPros.

This was a super dive. Later on we found a turtle, and shoals of fish hovering dreamily off the deep rocks. At one point a huge lone barracuda passed right over Nicki's bow and headed up the reef. I followed him to a cleaning station where he opened his mouth wide for the wrasse to enter and clean. We found large honeycomb morays on all our dives that weekend. Toward the end of the dive I went to a deep boulder with a school of bannerfish hanging off it and Rachel followed but we lost the others. We found a swim through there with a huge crayfish inside. We surfaced through the picturesque corals past the batfish cleaning stations and places where the triggerfish were hiding in rocks and found a last sting ray, this one more diamond shaped than the others. The dive lasted an hour and was superb.

Later we found that the first whale shark sightings of the season had been made on Lima Rock that day. We were disappointed to miss the whale shark but we had had a great alternative dive instead. Next day we returned to Lima Rock and had two dives there, but no one saw any whale sharks from any dive boat (from any company) our second day there.

Still our dives were pleasant.  There was a little current on Lima Rock so rather than fight it out to the east point we opted for a nice drift dive most of the way on the south side of Lima Rock. There were lots of honeycomb morays, including one that came up behind us when we were filming its cousin and went through my legs on his way to a suitable lair.  As usual on Lima Rock there were lots of batfish being cleaned, including one arge batfish with a serrated edge, and a school of batfish at 5 meters followed by a school of young barracuda on the western point.

For our last dive, we decided to try Lima Rock north side and attempt the east point from the rear that way.  Our group comprised Bobbi and Nicki and Anna and Steve. We started on the north side of Lima and rode the mild current (going clockwise around the rock it seemed) to the corner where we shot the gap and hit current coming up the other side. Bobbi and I pulled ourselves along with our hooks but there were no huge barracuda here like before and no whale shark. We found as we turned the corner on the south side of the island that the current essentially dropped off, but vis became crystal clear, and Nicki found a turtle resting on the bottom with no intent to move off no matter how intrusively she caressed it with her camera.  It was a beautiful dive but we'll have to come back to see the whale sharks.

Back in port, we took a parting shot at the Dibba Oman fish market:

AdSense and Nonsense: Not a dive log entry

Bobbi and I are taking a couple of weeks off diving, but very much looking forward to next weekend when we will be back up at Nomad Ocean Adventure, our favorite home away from home.

AdSense

Meanwhile, in case you are wondering what I am doing with the proceeds from the ads I had embedded here as an experiment through Google's AdSense program.  Unless you've been underwater WAAAYYY too long, you probably know that Google has made billions off clicks on its ads.  It offers a trickle-down to bloggers who enroll in the program on their blogs.  I have a number of blogs, and decided to experiment with this one; hence the adds in the sidebar and accompanying each post.

I've been in the program for almost two years and have just received an accounting from Google of the phenomenal earnings I've been enjoying.  Here it is:

So now I'm wondering what to do with the windfall.  Invest in new gear? Start a foundation?  Any suggestions (if you won't click on the ads, you could at least leave a comment below :-)

Seriously, I'm not at all suggesting that readers here click on ads, it was just an experiment, and my blog is an outlet for my passion for diving, not an attempt at making money.  I just wanted to see what would happen, and I thought you might be interested now that we know.

Nonsense

On to a more irritating topic, my blog has attracted incessant spam postings from numerous users, all linking in their comments back to Musandam Dibba.  I've stopped flagging the comments as spam; this has had no effect.  Instead I'm simply letting them accumulate, unapproved of course.  Let me show you the attempts to spam my blog from just today:

The posts are all something like this, each with a link to the Musandam Dibba website, and each with some self-serving comment on tourism at Musandam Dibba might see it, and none of them reflecting in any way on the content in the blog post itself:

Except for one thing!  The spammers are reading the blog.  They have carefully avoided commenting on this one post, entitled "Will the following entities please stop spamming my blog!"
http://vancesdiveblogs.blogspot.ae/2012/10/will-following-entities-please-stop.html

So this is a second request for the spammers to please desist from sending nonsense posts to my blog.  If anyone wants to comment on the content of one of my posts that is fine, I welcome that.  But comments to this blog are moderated, and readers will always be protected from spam comments which do nothing to forward the conversation about a passion for diving.

Diving Musandam with Nomad Ocean Adventure: Fun diving with Daniel and Camille Sobrado

May 3-4, 2013
My logged dives #1192-1195

On a typical Thursday I wake up at 4 a.m. and leave the house before 5 to arrive at my workplace in Al Ain before 6:30 and teach classes starting then or at 7:20.  This goes on for a few hours until by 1:00 I head home, arrive back in Abu Dhabi exhausted by 3:00 p.m. and often collapse in bed until prayer calls awaken me at 4:00.  However, if we're diving on the weekend, I'll pack when I get home and be loading the car with dive gear for when Bobbi pulls away from work and arrives by about 4:30.  We try to be away by 5:00 for the 3 hour drive to the UAE Dibba border.

Today we would be joined by Daniel and Camille Sobrado, ex-students of mine and great friends who enjoy diving with us.  Daniel had contacted me to ask when we would be leaving the house, and I txt'd him from the road to say we were passing Shahama, a half hour out of town.  He txt'd back to say he had thought they were riding with us, and when we reviewed our communications, everything we'd said to one another made sense in Daniel's assumption we'd be swinging by to get them and my erroneous assumption that they had by now purchased a car, since their family was growing.  But they were such good friends, we agreed to pull over at Ghantoot and wait for them to grab a cab and catch up to us.

We used to spend a lot of time at Al Jazeera Resort in Ghantoot, a fantastic place with a fanciful royal palace all built inland from the sea but with a channel snaking something like six km through the desert to allow the palace and the hotel to both have marinas.  Only now the Palace, always a quiet place, had been turned into a second 4 star hotel.  It was very pleasant in the evening before sundown, balmy weather, birds cawing in the orchards, sprinklers swishing over incongruously spacious green lawns.  We drove down to the beach to see if the dive center was still there on the road we used to run, a 16 km circuit, in annual races from the Al Jazeera Resort to the beach and back on the continuation of the loop, organized by the last truly social running event organizer in Abu Dhabi, Steve Reay, sorely missed.  Like Steve, the dive center was long gone and the army had taken over the bungalows. So we drove back to check out the hotels and ended up having $5 double espresso and capuchinos while using free and robust wifi in the hotel and waiting for Daniel and Camille and tiny Stephanie to appear in a cab.

Though our stop was pleasant, we had been delayed a bit, so we didn't reach the border in Dibba until 9:30 pm, and there we were delayed even further through the UAE border security taking on a life of its own and becoming an increasingly significant obstacle in tourist visits to Oman.  The Omanis have nothing to do with it, they have no presence at the border, but the UAE authorities are adding 30 min to an hour of border crossing time while they try to match permits to passports and sometimes search cars.  It's not as bad as it could be and hopefully they'll streamline the process, but in the meantime, tourists try to be patient, border guards try to do their work efficiently, but what used to be a drive over a speed bump in the road has become an elephant that's hard to get around.

But at last we arrived, and from then on the weekend was mellow.  Food was superb and waiting for us.  Sylvia has learned chicken redang from Fizzy's mom to further extend her eclectic repertoire, and we mellowed nicely that evening, and slept as long as we liked in the morning, dragging ourselves out of bed only to go diving!

We had two really nice dives.  The weather was pleasant, air temperatures not quite at 30 degrees, and water temps pleasant at 23-25, refreshing in 5 mm wetsuits. All divers in our boat were advanced or above so we headed for Octopus Rock, and like last time, found the current to be benign.  We put in on the north side of the rock and easily finned back to the part where the fish congregate and went down there amid schools of blue triggerfish.  I led us east into ridges that direction and followed the contour down to 25 meters or so, looking for sting rays in the sandy valleys, and sea horses in the green whip coral.  We found none of these but at a place where the ridge ended in white soft corals, interspersed with orange and violet, I led us back up the ridge at 16 meters or so, lots of fishes, but nothing exciting until Bobbi following behind deployed her clacker and showed me where I'd just passed over a scorpion fish hiding like Waldo next to a rock.

From there the diving was excellent.  We found numerous crayfish in various configurations in rocky crevaces on the west side of Octopus Rock, including one where I was calling Bobbi to come look but she was on the other side of the bommie calling me to come look at hers. We saw lots of moray eels here. Visibility was good, current was light, so it was easy to pop over to the next ridge west and follow it along. There were no exciting animals here but we did see that the rope reaching from an anchor dropped on Octopus Rock that was running in a green line beneath the surface was connected to a huge blue net with openings the size of fore and middle finger joined on either hand that blocked our way to go deep. There were no fish in the net, but it looked nasty if anything the size of a mackeral or a turtle came along, it would likely be ensnared. However, divers need to co-exist with the fishing industry here; it is not ours to adjudicate, and not a good idea to destroy things people use to feed their families, so we left it alone and rounded the point and headed back up the other side. Here we found a sting ray and more crayfish, and at one point Bobbi and I were each banging on our tanks with different intents. I had found a spritely squid, and she had spotted a honeycombed moray. So I watched my squid dart out of site and gave up looking for more and went back to look at Bobbi's moray.

There were other morays here, two free swimming. Daniel and Camille had surfaced by now, Camille had indicated 50 bar at around 45 minutes into the dive, so Bobbi and I continued over the rock and found Fizzy and her group from another boat coming up the other side. I mentioned to Bobbi later that it would have been easy to assume we were on Octopus Rock after encountering the other divers there, but I knew we weren't and led us east over sand till we came on the anchor with the green rope leading to the net. This time we ducked under it and continued around the rock. We circled twice, passing through clouds of blue trigger fish and snappers, and disturbing batfish in the act of getting cleaned, which they seem to resent as if you'd walked in while they were on the toilet. They usually let the wrasse get one more morsel, that's it, a little up and to the left now, ah, got it … then (these divers are so rude!) hasten to exit the cleaning station. After 60 minutes diving we surfaced just north of the rock, at the exact same point we'd put in.

That was such a nice dive, good vis, good fish, and so little current, so after lunch we decided for the next one to test ourselves on Lima Rock south. Our group was last to enter the water, and we'd seen the others being carried to the east in the direction of Iran, so once we'd all jumped, I gathered my group in a sheltered place and briefed them on staying together and staying close to the reef and out of open water as much as possible, and I said if we hit the current we'd go with it, just hang on to the rocks to keep control (Bobbi and I both had reef hooks) and we'd try to duck in the gap to the north and escape the current on the other side.

So we began our adventure. At first the current was pretty easy on us as we went deep and passed along the middle of the island. But we could soon feel ourselves being carried with it. Bobbi found at least one large honeycomb moray, and at one point I ducked down to find a black marble ray squirming in a cave, since we'd blocked his escape. Daniel and Camille had raced ahead of us and were peering back at us from where they'd grasped a rock, but they worked their way back to where the ray was. Then we rode the current along the rock face, slowing ourselves with our hooks, Daniel and Camille doing well until we got a little higher up the reef and eventually they got task loaded and surfaced. I think they had seen the swarms of jacks by then. There are big fish off the point that love to play by the hundreds in the current. There were barracuda among them, effortlessly holding their ground, and now a school of them right next to us. We hung on and enjoyed it while our air lasted and eventually worked our way into the gap and out the other side. Chris had asked us to surface after just 45 min. and there were 49 min on my computer when we hit the surface after a 3 min safety stop.

After a very relaxing evening at Nomad, with early bedtime and an early morning jog to the Golden Tulip for me, we got back aboard our boats for a return to Lima Rock. We started on the north side this time, near the slack low tide, so we planned to dive to the point we were at the day before and round it to the south this time, if the current would let us. The vis was a little milky and apart from the lovely coral encrusted swim-throughs there wasn't much out of the ordinary until I rounded a point in the sand and came on a brown cow-tail there. I backed off though the current was carrying me closer. Cow-tail rays will swim away if approached, and when Daniel came on the scene, this one did, but not too fast. We swam after it a bit and into the sand at 22 meters, but it's stamina allowed it to keep its pace; ours didn't.

Bobbi asked me if I'd got its picture. We had just that morning got our Go Pro camera working. Long story and I don't want to embarrass anyone, but I myself was embarrassed to realize that the thought hadn't occurred to me. I've been diving so long just enjoying nature au naturel that I'd forgot about the camera, an it's not that straightforward to operate because Bobbi got one without a display, but I'd been practicing. And the next thing I saw coming up to about 16 meters was another lone squid, but he would not have been that photogenic. However when Bobbi turned up yet another large honeycomb moray I passed in front of it and got my first underwater video shot.

However, old mindsets are hard to break. The other events on that dive went unrecorded on digital film though things did start to get interesting. I was just passing below 100 bar as we neared the point. The fish here were bigger and more numerous, the water colder and clearer, and the current was taking us with it. Daniel and Camille were low on air and wisely surfaced but Bobbi and I continued around the point where we had a good look into the depths. No devil rays were there, but I did see a large blob on the bottom that looked too large for a patch of coral, but not quite like a ray. I descended on it. It was resting at 30 meters and it was indeed a huge black bull ray, deceptively round, with only a stub for a tail. Again, it didn't occur to me to pull out the camera, though he was sitting still in crystal clear water. I was nearing 50 bar now, so we started edging our way up hitting stiff head current as we rounded the point. We used our reef hooks to claw our way up it and were soon surrounded by hulking barracuda. Again the water was clear, Bobbi seemed comfortable and in control, but we had to stop at ten meters atop a wall that plunged downwards and had nothing further for us to ascend on. I had a look at Bobbi with the barracuda hulking nearby and preserve that memory only for me, as again, it didn't occur to me to take a picture. I wish I had rolled the video at that point though because it was clear we would need to let go our perch and ascend to 5 meters and then float with the current midwater while we did our 3 min. safety stop. This trajectory put us right into a school of a hundred barracuda … I'm guessing and extrapolating; we could see a couple dozen at a time come into view as we drifted along with them at 5 meters. We ended on the surface a hundred meters east of the island, but this was a really wow dive.

Our next dive was at Ras Sanut, a disappointment after the 3 previous dives. Fizzy had selected Ras Sanut, and I got to choose north or south. Steve wanted to do south because he had seen mola molas there on three occasions, he said. I wanted to do North because I had had such a great dive my first time there with Amelio in excellent vis, but my last dive there with Bobbi had been disappointing, poor vis, and we couldn't see the distant rays. We should have gone with Steve's choice. When we motored to the north side we found an Al Boom boat there about to discharge divers. So we had some pressure on us to stay ahead of them. Bobbi and Daniel and Camille saw a turtle but I didn't see anything I wanted to take a picture of. Vis was cloudy, but it was diving, and come to think of it, that made it only a lesser degree of something already GREAT!

Diving Musandam with Nomad Ocean Adventure: Got started on a Scuba Review for Robin Fortin

April 19-20, 2013

My logged dives #1188-1191

Bobbi and I met at home on Thursday after work, me having just driven an hour and a half from Al Ain, but arriving home in time to get packed before Bobbi got there, and we were on the road by 5 pm. Traffic was worse than usual, half a dozen smashups causing delays, till finally we turned up at the border where Chris met us at 8:00 pm with our passes, and by 9 we were relaxing over a delicious meal and pleasant company, Fizzy's parents were there from Malaysia, and heading for bed as early as possible so as to be up at 6 when Robin and Jay were due to arrive for Robin's refresher course.

When Robin appeared next morning we discussed how to approach the full refresher. There are 20 skills to be done in the pool, and we figured we could get in ten of them before reporting to the port for diving that morning. All the refresher skills are to be done in confined water; o/w is optional in the PADI “Scuba Tuneup.” So we went over the quiz which was an appropriate way to check knowledge of concepts and start discussions over any points not quite clear, and then we went in the pool to play with weighting, reg recovery, mask removal and replacement, and alternate air source breathing. Robin got through all of this bravely and seemed much more confident than previously on doing her first dive of the day.

Checking and double-checking the weather caused us to not head for port until 10 pm. Skies were overcast, the wind had been knocking chairs over all night, and it was trying to rain. But eventually we set out. On the trip, the wind was blowing hot and dry and we caught a little spray as we rounded Lima headland. We had chosen the south bay at Ras Morovi for the easiest possible protected entry. While we were kitting up some fishermen came along and yelled at us to stay out of the bay as they were setting up nets across it. We complied and started our dive right at the batfish cave with its two crayfish reliably in the crevices in the back of the cave. We continued along the reef as it went south out to sea but I had us cross at the saddle to come up in the cabbage coral heading north into the channel on the other side. Vis was disappointing but I made out an unmistakable cowtail poking above the sand and managed to arrive on the spot just as the ray that owned it decided to make a fast getaway. I saw him ripple and depart, but the others in our group saw only his dusty smokescreen. We found a number of moray eels, and as we often do in the cabbage coral area, a turtle high on the reef. Current was benign so we were able to turn west into the north bay. I looked for nudibranchs in the notch that's fallen out of the wall as if it had been quarried. In the coral shallows Bobbi found a large honeycomb moray and nearby two little grey eels poking their heads out, making a pleasant end to an hour-long dive.

After an hour lunch break at the surface, we swung by Lima Rock, but it was pretty churned up on the south side, so we motored over to Ras Sanut, north side of the point. There were some unusual organisms in the water floating in batches we thought were brown algae, but turned out in fact to be little straw-shaped creatures clustered like upright toothpicks with something protoplasmic on one end. They looked like needles trying to form haystacks.

Vis was poor and Bobbi and I can't recall seeing much of note on the first part of that dive. There were a lot of big fish getting cleaned by wrasse and I made a mental note to point these out to Jay and Robin for the next day. At the end of the reef we encountered strong backwash as we entered a bay so we had to fin against it to get around a point in the reef and rise to a higher level but now in the direction of the current. I found a narrow but appealing valley with clear vis and headed down it, coming at the bottom to an alcove with a crayfish inside, illuminated in my torch. I turned to show the others but only Bobbi was with me. Above, near the surface, I saw Robin heading away and up the reef. I figured if she was there then Jay must be with her, and later we found that Jay had spotted a turtle and called Robin up to see it. By going shallow, I knew they would end up on the surface, in a safe spot, so Bobbi and I continued our dive at 10-12 meters, coming up with about an hour on our dive computers.

Robin was feeling good enough about her diving that she decided she didn't need to continue the refresher skills, so we sat by the pool and enjoyed the sundown till Robin and Jay went back to their hotel in UAE. That evening, Fizzy's parents made Malaysian food, chicken rendang, delicious, and Bobbi and I got a solid sleep till 8 a.m. When Robin and Jay came along, we headed to the port.

Our first dive was Octopus Rock, which was blessed on this day with benign current. I was quite happy with my navigation. It's an easy place to get confused with all the undersea ridge lines, and I often get lost there, but current being almost nil helped with keeping track of where we were. We started by circumnavigating the rock, heading through shoals of blue trigger fish and silver jacks and trevally swarming over blue and white, sometimes orange, soft corals, beautiful swirling panoplies of fishes. We came upon several batfish, many enjoying the clearning stations. When we completed the circle I suggested we head north along the ridge. Here we found photographers Steve and Nicolas poking along following close to the sand but I turned us around when they were heading past 18 meters. They kept going deeper and found a half dozen playful squids. We came up along the ridge, but I popped down to 19 to look under an arch I thought could shelter interesting animals. There was nothing there and I hadn't intended for others to follow, but Jay came down and spotted a moray. We showed Robin and then moved up the west side of the ridge trying to reduce depth because Robin was lightest on air with less than 100 bar. This is where it gets tricky. I knew that ridge would not reach the surface and might not even get up to 5 meters, so would not be a good place for a safety stop; in fact the only rock that pops above water there is Octopus Rock, but it's tricky to find. Since the current was not a confounding variable I could easily guestimate that Octopus Rock should be east of where we were so I guided Robin that way hi off the sand keeping us at 10 meters or so and was rewarded by looming shapes that could have been Octopus Rock or possibly the next ridge over, always hard to tell here. But my guestimate was right (so rare to be here without current) and we ended up right on the rock. I headed around a bare wall part of it and rounded the corner to the south into a current which I picked my way into by using my reef hook. Here the water was clear and the fish life delightful. Robin and Jay followed but continued a little past where Bobbi and I stopped at 7 meters, the better to view the fishlife. Jay was timing a safety stop. He had indicated a half tank some time before and Robin was on 50 so Bobbi and I let them find their way to the surface at 45 min dive time, not counting their safety stop. They were right on the rock, at the same place we had entered, and the boat would fetch them safely. Bobbi and I each had over 100 bar and we decided to continue diving.

We glided down into the area of green whip coral, resisting the urge to plunge to depth, following sand and ridge line, in a circle off the rock and back again. When we came near the rock, I had put up my SMB and was about to follow it up when Bobbi pointed out that right before our noses were a trio of nudibranchs slithering over one another, having a right randy time, waving their processes about, and never mind who was looking. We watched for a moment and then headed up the line, arriving at the surface with 60 min showing on my computer. The others had already started lunch so we were eating mystery meat sandwiches and lentil pasta and kima samosas in no time, and changing our tanks for our last dive of the weekend.

Our last dive would be at Lima Rock. We had an easy entry at 1:30 pm. Vis was decent near the surface though it got cloudy as we descended. We met up with Fizzy and her photographers and went to 20 meters to look at a torpedo ray they had found. This was a little deep for us so I led up the coralscape and found a cave at 16 meters in which there was hiding a flat black ray. He was facing toward the wall and couldn't elude the divers who were soon gathered round him. As I headed away from the cave I found Steve and Nicholas coming towards us, which was odd because they were supposed to be diving the other direction, but it was clear in moments as the current that had been only slightly against our progress was now more strongly preventing our heading east, so we wheeled to the west as well, and finished out the dive at leisure in that direction.

Robin seemed quite comfortable as we pointed out the animals we passed. There were two giant honeycombed morays, a turtle, and dozens of batfish at cleaning stations letting the wrasse do whatever they wanted to them, and obviously enjoying it, letting them disappear into their mouths, holding themselves with faces pointed up, opening and closing mouths in pleasure, a sight to behold. This area is peppered with fish swim-throughs that look like caves but show light at another entrance, all crenelated with mollusks and batfish and parrot fish and blue angel fish lurking within, and in one: a crayfish living frankly, a boring life. I don't envy the crayfish, having evolved all that body armour and feelers to protect what is to everyone but them a tasty tail.

Jay and Robin surfaced before we did and we came up with almost an hour on our computers including the safety stop. My computer registered deco time remaining in more than three digits, so all safe and sound, pack our bags, and motor back to Dibba port.

Certified Anand PADI Open Water - Sting rays, a leopard shark etc.

March 29-30, 2013 
My logged dives #1184-1187

The weather and much else was perfect for diving this weekend.  Some delay crossing the border, but once resolved, I met my two students in the pool.  They seemed keen to move through the course and dinner was still on the buffet when we exited from pool module 2.  Next morning we were told the boat would be late departing, perfect for us.  We got through modules 3, 4, and 5 while Yaz and his students were completing their modules 1-3, and we were looking forward to the diving and relaxing afterwards, and sleeping late on Saturday morning.

We had an open water boat, so we chose our spots for easy diving.  The first entry was a bit back from Lima headland.  I had my students enter the water and fin back to the ladder, and I noticed some stiff current they had to swim against to do that, so with us all clinging to the ladder I had the boatman take us WAY into the nearest bay where a dhow was moored.  We started there in much calmer water.  We could see a pair of sting rays as the boat towed us to our entry, and they were still there when we eased into the bay and got down to where they were.

We completed our dive easily and motored homeward to Ras Sanut for the second one.  Amelio our dive guide had been exploring.  He said the north side of Ras Sanut was "amazing" - normally we dive the south side, which we used to call Wonder Wall.  But I agree with Amelio.  The north side was the true wonder wall, lots of stuff to see there.

Michele developed a problem early in her dive that caused her to abort, and also her course for this weekend. We conveyed her safely to the surface and Anand and I continued with some pretty nice diving in good vis. Here I saw another cow tail ray head for deep water and finned over to where he had turned and parked on the sand in 16 plus meters. Near there, I agitated some pipe fish and showed them to Andy.  We saw lion fish, moray, batfish with wrasse, a big crawfish displaying fiercely under a rock, plus lots of lovely white, orange, and blue soft corals. As we were coming up on alternate air source, as required in dive #2, a couple of remora buzzed us on ascent. Andy and I both agreed this was a really nice dive.

I went for a jog when we got back but after that there was not much to do but relax until morning, and make it down to the harbor for a 9:30 launch.  On our first dive, we went to Ras Morovi, where Amelio again chose the north side.  Anand and I managed to get our gear on quickly and were ready to go when he jumped, so we followed his group to where they were all surrounding a resting leopard shark at 18 meters in the sand, just the right depth for beginning o/w divers.  The shark tolerated us for a few minutes but eventually tired of the intrusion and launched himself to find more privacy.  Anand and I followed but didn't see him again, and finished our dive in the shallows near where Nicki and Ian and I had started our dive one recent Christmas day.

We did our last dive at Lulu Island, following the usual profile of rounding the island nearest shore and then finning eastward under water till we came to the outermost.  There wasn't much to see out there and we encountered oncoming current as we pulled our way back south.  Consequently we were first back on the boat, but at least Anand emerged as a well qualified diver.  And we'll get Michele back in the water at some point soon.

Mola mola! Diving Musandam Feb 9 and March 8 and 9 with Paola and Arvid

A few months later Nicki saw what appears to be a very similar mola mola to the two we saw

February 9, 2013 
My logged dives #1182-1183

I haven't logged dives lately but it's not that we haven't been diving. Bobbi and I drove up to Dibba and slept at Nomad Ocean Adventure Feb 7 one weekend and then the next morning got up to run the Wadi Bih race. Nomad was crowded with other runners with the same idea, sleep comfortably and relatively cheaply, and have a good down-home buffet to boot.

On the morning of Feb 8, people got up and drove up the beach to the Golden Tulip resort where hundreds of cars were parked for camping. Our mobile phones don't work in Oman so we had to stand by the start and wait for our team members to come looking for us: Ali Bushnaq whose company, Wadi Rum Decor, was sponsoring us; plus Sami and Roger Norkie.

The Wadi Bih race is run each year, originally from RAK to Dibba beach, but now with the border hassles it's run from Dibba up the mountain and back down again. It's 72, km, shared by 5 runners, so each runner does around 15 km. It's a lot of fun, with no pressure from our team to compete. At the end of the run there is a buffet lunch, pretty poor quality food, does not make one want to dine at the Golden Tulip Resort. We saw a lot of our friends there, caught up with some, and ate abstemiously since we'd be getting a great meal at NOA that evening.

Obviously we were staying a second night for diving the next day, Saturday. On Saturday, Christophe was managing the shop all by himself and had a boat full of mostly advanced divers, whom Steve, filling in as boat guide for the weekend, managed to coral into a speedboat and conduct up to Octopus Rock. There didn't seem to be much current when we dropped the divers in. No one was drifting badly off the rock, but there was current. When we dropped to the bottom and tried to go left past the blue soft corals with batfish cleaning stations, we were beat back, so we reversed to the lee of the rock and dove in the gullies to the east where there's shelter from the current.

I don't recall much of what we saw there, or on the next dive at Lima Rock south. We figured the way the current was running we would be sheltered there, and we were. I recall seeing a turtle at some point during the day, but don't remember which dive. Bobbi and I dove peacefully along until toward the end of the dive we came to the boring rock face and I decided to fin it to reach the point at the end, and maybe we'd shoot the gap to the other side. There were the usual larger fish there but we hit stiff current coming through the gap and so used my new grapple hook to hang on. Bobbi didn't have hers so she hung on to me. This made it difficult to hold the position for both of us, the hook slipped, and as I was trying to re-anchor it, Bobbi let go and got shot sideways into ocean south from the rock. I had no choice but to follow. I would like to have stayed there 5 min to see what might wander along in that kind of current, but it was about time to end the dive anyway.


March 8-9, 2013 
My logged dives #1184-1187


I was quite busy with work and deadlines for the rest of the month, but I got the last major paper done, an article in a proceedings, just before Paula Lunden came to visit with her boyfriend Arvid. Arvid was a diver so we had agreed to take them over to, where else, Nomad Ocean Adventure, for the weekend. They had come to visit the Sunday before, arriving from the airport at 4:30 a.m which was just perfect, as I was just getting up to drive to work in Al Ain then. The next day Monday they got up with me and came with me to Al Ain, where I dropped them at the airport, near where I work, and left them to cab into Al Ain and get the bus to Dubai, where they had booked a hostel or cheap hotel for a few days.

On Thursday the got a bus to Abu Dhabi and arrived a little before Bobbi came home from work. We piled the car with gear and went to pick up Nicki from work, and by about 9:30 that night we had left the grueling workaday world behind and were chilling on kabobs and favorite beverages in the slightly francophone ambiance of NOA. Arvid had only done 4 dives before for certification, so Christophe organized some tanks to be left by the pool for us in the morning. It wasn't an awfully early start, 7:30 for coffee and 8:00 in the pool.

Arvid was an athletic looking chap and appeared to have been trained well, so his refresher went without incident, and we were soon on a boat bound for Ras Morovi. Chris was leading and in his briefing said he would be going deep, so I said I would follow and try to stay above them as long as we could. We started in the bay just back from the north entrance to the channel between the headland and the island offshore, usually the exit in the way we normally do that dive. Vis was poor with a bit of algae around, so doing the island in reverse, and with Chris leading deep, I didn't recognize where I was.

At some point Christophe veered deep and out over the sand in a way that Arvid and I couldn't follow and still keep above 18 meters without entering mid-water, so I motioned him to follow me over the reef. We crossed to a next reef over and there I saw what I thought looked like a big fish carcass, a vertical shot of silver grey dangling on the reef. When I move closer though I found it was a mola mola, a sunfish. These fish are large, several meters from fin tip to fin tip protruding ventral and dorsal from a massive round body. The fish swam right in front of me, followed by … another! They were maybe as surprised to see me as I was them, so they hastened to move away. Still something that large doesn't exactly disappear in a flash, so we got a really good sighting, though Arvid, a bit behind me, didn't see the second one.

We dove casually in the area, me looking for sand that appeared to be sloping upwards into reef, trying to find high points that would conserve Arvid's air. Eventually I came on Chris and his group who had rounded the saddle and were heading north up the other side. He was by now at 16 meters so I wrote “2 mola molas” on my slate and went down to show him. We then had a conversation in gesture and dive signal language. He signed, HUH!!? where? I indicated “over there” and tried to indicate “earlier”. Chris then said “why didn't you call me”. I said I was banging on my tank but he was too deep. Chris grasped either side of his head and went “arrrrghhhh” into his regulator, but then he thought hey, good on yer, mate, and gave me a high five.

Chris paused to wait for his divers to catch up and pulled out a kind of torpedo dart he started throwing to them. Arvid was by now pushing 50 bar, so I decided we should move on. I found a shark egg and wrote that on my slate and showed him. Then we came on the cave with bat fish around and crustaceans with long feelers living inside, which I illuminated for him with my torch. I now knew where we were, coming into the calm bay where we usually begin our Ras Morovi dives. Here we saw a large, lone, 1 meter long barracuda with pronounced dark stripes sidle past us. We finished the dive along the shallow reef but had enough air to head over the sand looking for rays. We found none, but what a dive!

We were the only ones who had seen the mola molas, but Nicki and Bobbi wanted me to write that they had seen a torpedo ray and a large nudibranch about the size of protrusion on a man, not his finger. We settled in for lunch, Arvid and I trying hard not to mention the mola molas. Paola had told the cook she was vegetarian so all the sandwiches on the boat were cheese. We joked that we usually got mystery meat sandwiches but now they were fromage mysterieux. Lunch on Chris's boats is always good though, today it was also pasta salad, watermellon, some kind of sausage surrounded by baked bread, followed by cakes and coffee.

Our second dive was at Lima Rock. Arvid was doing well on air and buoyancy, especially for someone doing just his 5th and 6th o/w dives. Current was benign, so we started at the east end of the rock and moved along the south side all the way to the west end. First we had to fin along the boring rock wall, but this soon gave way to coral gardens where we eventually found a huge honeycomb moray, neck the size of a sumo wrestler's, and some other yellow mouth morays besides. We ended the dive on a sting ray whose cow tail was protruding from the rock under which he had stuck his nose.

We'd had such great dives that day, how could the next be better. Unfortunately our first dive, a return to Ras Morovi, diving from the inside bay to the outer one where we'd seen the mola molas the day before, was not all that exciting. Vis was poor, but was peaceful, slightly chilly, as we drifted along the colorful reef teeming with fish on our way to the batfish cave with the crawfish inside, posing for us in the beam of my torch. Then we sauntered along and crossed the saddle with boulders full of soft corals, but didn't encounter much of note until Nicki came on a fish pot with a moray inside and tried to free it. Arvid and I moved on to the alcove where we sometimes see rays, but there was no one home today except clouds of juvenile fish hoping the shelter would give them a good start in life. Nicki and Bobbi caught up with us as we were heading to where we'd seen the mola molas, but all we found on this dive were some moray eels and a cuttlefish.

The day before, divers had also seen a mola mola at Ras Sanut, sometimes called Wonder Wall. It was interesting that they had been sighted in two different places at about the same time, but they had since disappeared. In any event we decided to do our second dive there. It was a good choice because vis was much better, fairly clear water, not so much algaie. Nicki started us out on some tiny harlequin shrimps she said were almost always in a kind of brown sea grass. She also had a glass shrimp climbing over the tank banger we had brought her from Malapascua. Then I found a turtle under a rock. It lifted off into the blue water where we saw it later overhead. It was one of three turtles we saw that dive, one more under a rock, which we managed not to disturb, and another sitting amidst some staghorn coral on a rock shelf at shallow depth. We also found a large sting ray under a rock with a tail that was bent at an angle, like a cat's tail. It was a very pretty dive, with huge puffer fish and schools of fish to swim through, and underwater rock islands to explore. At one point schools of fusiliers came hurtling at us with their mouths open. I had warned Arvid to be aware that the dives at Ras Sanut often ended in current moving swiftly out to sea, and told him if that happened, we'd just enjoy the ride. It happened, and we did.