Nasteran & Dara

Last Friday we decided to revisit our old favourite, the Dara, hoping for better things after the previous week and its less than ideal conditions. Except having got there we found some resort divers splashing around so we decided to head off elsewhere first. The first idea was to go to Cathy’s Barge which was last dived three years ago. Having got there and had a look at the pimple on the seabed that the echo sounder revealed, we concluded that it wouldn’t be as exciting as all that so Plan C became the Nasteran.

The Nasteran is an upturned landing craft that was once little more than a metal box although with a few interesting swim-throughs that needed treating with some caution. The passage of time is causing the hull to break apart and revealing more areas to explore. It was in one of these that Uwe found the spare prop that now does sentry duty outside the Dive Bar.

Last time we visited there were three or four marble rays on the wreck but no such luck this time around. Still it was a pleasant dive in reasonable viz with very little current. After lunch we headed back to the Dara assuming that the other dive boat would have gone by now as was indeed the case.

It turned out to be well worth the effort. The viz was around 15m which is to say pretty spectacular. It was one of those rare occasions when you could just float around a few metres above the wreck seeing a good part of it. Mike did a bit of net clearing but the rest of us were mainly sightseeing. There was a huge shoal of snappers and assorted other batfish, angelfish, parrotfish and others. Right at the end of the dive on the bow of the ship, a turtle was swimming around and stayed for a while before gliding away into the distance.

PJ made a video of the dive, an edited version of which can be seen above.