Welcome to BSAC 406 weekly Dive Report. Please contact Ian Hussey if you would like to contribute to the weekly newsletter that is distributed to BSAC 406 members worldwide. In addition, if you would like to feature in the published Dive Report please contact Polly Buckingham. |
![]() The Mariam Express (formerly Delos Express) We were a bit short-handed at the weekend after a couple of people pulled out and one overslept. Four is still a dive so we headed out to the Mariam Express, which I haven’t been to for a while. This is a roll-on, roll off cargo vessel which was overloaded in rough seas and sank whilst sailing from Dubai to Iraq in May 2006. It is about 30km from shore in 25m of water. Those who were there will fondly remember the early days of the Mariam. We were on it within days and had a couple of amazing dives on a brand new wreck before the coastguards politely asked us to do our diving elsewhere for a while. The authorities eventually lost interest and it remained an excellent dive site until another storm a couple of years later resulted in it punching through the thin hard layer and settling about 10m deeper than it had been, losing many of the swim-throughs in the process. When we got there, we found about half a dozen other boats already on the site, all fishing. We were on the point of going elsewhere when most of them departed, leaving us almost alone to hook the wreck. The anchor landed roughly halfway down the vessel which lies on its port side. Like the last few weeks, the viz was very good although the current, slight at first, picked up during the morning. There were plenty of snappers swimming around and a shoal of barracuda, just off the wreck. Denis and I also caught a brief glimpse of a stingray on the sand before it glided away. We did a swim through the cargo hold which used to be full of coffee sets which now reside in kitchens and living rooms all over the country. Polly and Nick going second wave saw a turtle which we missed although it did come to the surface as we were leaving. The second dive was on the Victoria Star which wasn’t so much fun. Poor viz, strongish bow to stern current and a recent visit from fishermen resulting in a wreck now covered in nets. We spent most of the dive cutting out batfish, angelfish, groupers and others in varying degrees of distress. A net cutting mission will be arranged shortly! Polly and Nick wisely decided that an early return might be a good option but managed a quick tour to free the anchor. ---------------------------------- Don't leave home without it - DAN insurance website: https://www.daneurope.org/home ---------------------------------- The Dive Club meets every Tuesday night in the Dive Bar. See you there!
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Last Friday nearly didn’t happen. As late as 3pm Thursday, the forecast was predicting thunder and lightning and had it stayed that way, we certainly wouldn’t have gone. By the evening update, the prediction had modified to cloudy and overcast and with a forecast wave height of 0.1m, there was no reason to call it off. If anything, 0.1m was an overstatement. The sea was mirror smooth for most of the day. We thus made good time out to the Jumbo which was target number one. This was a return visit after last weekend but the viz has been very good out in this area recently, so we wanted to take advantage.
Allen and Cara were first down the line and secured the anchor which was a little tricky as it had landed near the bow with not much to hook it to. Actually, they made a better job of this than finding it later; a slight navigational error of 180° found them finish the dive at the stern rather than the bow and they had to come up on a DSMB. Allen put his hands up to that one. Polly and Nick were next in and I went down with Mike Millis, an occasional guest from Kuwait. We found viz of 10m or so and a little current but nothing to worry about. The wreck remains snapper city and there were also a number of batfish following us around. The is still warm enough to do without wet suits but there are jellyfish about, particularly at safety stop level, so some skin protection is advisable. Rather than repeat last week’s itinerary, we decided to do a second dive on Mike’s Tug, another wreck that was discovered on the seabed survey. Being a tug boat it’s quite small but you can get inside in a couple of places and the fish life is usually plentiful. Again, the viz was 10m plus and the current had reduced from earlier in the day. A couple of weeks ago, Mike Anthony reported a missing reel. It was presumed to have been picked up in error and lying at the bottom of someone’s dive bag but there was no response when I put the word out. Now we know why. Allen found a reel on top of the tug and further inquiries later via WhatsApp proved is was indeed the one that had gone missing. The picture below shows it looking a bit worse for wear after three weeks underwater. In many ways, the most memorable part of the day, for me and Mike at least, was while we were alone on the boat, waiting for the others to come from their dives. We were alerted by a blowing sound and looking round we saw a whale briefly surface about 20m from the boat, before heading back underwater. It was impossible to say what type it was – we only saw its back and dorsal fin – but it was clearly an impressive size. We hoped it would come back but it never did, nor was it seen by any divers. A brief but exciting moment or two. Thanks to Cara for the pictures. See video above for further pics taken by Cara also. After all that it was back to the club for a few refreshments – quite a few as it turned out – before going home. The ever talented Nick was on stage with Blarney Stone Roses band, playing the Mandolin to some good ole tunes to a very packed out venue in the Wanderers Club central club house. --------------------------------------- While this was going on, Peter and Connie were in Oman, making use of the visas that had arrived too late for the club trip. He reports whale sharks, leopard sharks, eagle rays, stingrays and turtles. Sounds excellent and maybe he has some good video? ----------------------------------- Last Saturday, Saad ran a blending course so now Allen and Rayan are clear to mix nitrox. He’s doing another course in November, after which we should be in pretty good shape as regards nitrox blenders. Up until now we’ve been mostly relying on Brian, which is obviously not sustainable long term. ----------------------------------- Saad is organizing an event later this month: https://www.somewhatsalty.com/tdb/ Deco is an unavoidable part of deep diving. The Deco Breakfast elegantly presents facts & fundamentals, as well as strategies & controversies. The two presentations will be of value to divers who enjoy diving in the 40m to 100m range. Registration is now open. ----------------------------------- DAN insurance website: https://www.daneurope.org/home ---------------------------------- The Dive Club meets every Tuesday night in the Dive Bar. See you there! ![]() Back to the underwater variety of diving, we had two boats and ten divers out on Friday. The promised cyclone never arrived and in fact, the sea was as flat calm as you could possibly wish for. The first target was the Jumbo, which lies just over 30km from Al Khan in about 23m of water. This is a cargo ship that was known to exist for a number of years but couldn’t be found. It finally turned up on a seabed survey carried out for the Palm Island dredging and we’ve been diving it ever since. Other than this, not much is known about the vessel or how it came to be there. Despite the spring tide, there was little current and the viz was reasonable. The wreck is home to large shoals of snappers and there were also some batfish and angelfish swimming around. The wreck has some easy swim-throughs and a large propeller to look at. The stern and bow sections are recognizable but in between, the wreck is fairly broken up. Given that the sea was still flat, we decided to go to the Neptune which is very close. This is an upturned barge that came to grief in 1973 whilst supporting a drilling rig. It dragged its anchor, sunk the rig and ended up capsizing itself whilst under tow back to shore. Once only moderately interesting, the deteriorating state of the wreck means that new holes are opening up for exploration. There are a couple of easy swim-throughs from one side to the other but other routes need more care and experience. Again, there was a great deal of fish life even if not much was very large. Within the video above our club boats SP125 & SP312 get thier weekly drive out to the dive sites. ---------------------------------- On Saturday we had a try-dive to hopefully get a few more people interested. Some pictures from the day are below. Many thanks to Michelle and her team, also to Cara, Allen and Brian. We had six people who gave it a go, plus one other who was interested but was ill and couldn’t participate. They all stuck around for the barbecue. Please see the video above for a snapshot of where your diving can start and the opportunities beyond. Divers find their own niche from conservation, photography, extended range diving amongst many other specialities. ----------------------------------- Last Tuesday we had a presentation and discussion with Adrian Collier, BSAC’s Business Development Manager. This was to give us some ideas about marketing the club and growing it in size. Obviously, some of the constraints we operate under are not the same as the UK, but it was still very worthwhile. It was also good to touch base with someone from the BSAC HQ. Thank you for your time Adrian. ----------------------------------- Saad is organizing an event later this month: https://www.somewhatsalty.com/tdb/ Deco is an unavoidable part of deep diving. The Deco Breakfast elegantly presents facts & fundamentals, as well as strategies & controversies. The two presentations will be of value to divers who enjoy diving in the 40m to 100m range. Registration is now open. ---------------------------------- DAN insurance website: https://www.daneurope.org/home ---------------------------------- The Dive Club meets every Tuesday night in the Dive Bar. See you there! As advertised last week, Brian and Mike organised a trip out to the Zainab whilst the rest of us were in Oman. It was evidently a good trip with smooth seas and good viz. I don’t have many details, but Brian wrote on WhatsApp: We had ideal dive conditions on Zainab. I had a Kodak moment when Mike swam below the propeller. Loads of fish. Can only be spoiled if you guys saw a whale shark! More of that shortly. 😊 The Oman trip was organised by Angela for Sharjah and Dubai divers to dive the Damaniyat Islands which are about an hour offshore from Musannah on the Batinah coast. We arrived at the Millennium Hotel at intervals during Thursday, having crossed the border (or not) with varying degrees of trauma. There were fourteen of us in total which seemed to split about 50/50 between those who opted for an early night and those who wanted a refreshment or two by the pool before heading for bed. It seemed to me that Sharjah divers were disproportionately represented in the latter group but that might be my imagination. Having completed the formalities with the centre, Sea Oman, we set off for the first target which was Junn Island West Wall in the western islands. But on the way a diversion. At about half distance, the boat captain noticed some fins in the water not far from the boat. It turned out to be five or six whale sharks, feeding just below the surface. It was fins, masks and snorkels in seconds and we spent about 45 minutes swimming with them. Awesome! After that the diving threatened to be an anti-climax, but we had a good time nevertheless. The viz wasn’t great below 10m or so but the current was minimal. There were a couple of big nudibranchs and a big moray eel lurking in amongst some rocks. The second dive was on Sera Island, a few minutes away in the same island group. The viz was similar but we saw a cuttlefish, a large cow-tailed ray and a big pufferfish. It always seems to me that the fish of the Damaniyats (and also maybe the Musandam) are always a size or two bigger than their counterparts on the east coast of the UAE. The first dive on Saturday was on the Aquarium, which is generally known as one of the better sites and is popular. Indeed, when we arrived, there was already a boat anchored up from Global Scuba at the Aviation Club down the road. The Aquarium is a submerged reef and our boat’s anchor landed just on the edge of it. We spent about 15 minutes close to the anchor as the first thing we saw were three cuttlefish. There was also a free-swimming moray that found a home amongst the rocks, soon to be followed by a turtle. It was shortly after this that I was swimming along about 50cm above the bed when another large moray glided underneath me, mouth open. It gave me quite a shock. Polly has some video to share shortly of this very curious Moray. Going around the reef, we found quite a lot of morays, most quite big and some hidden among the soft corals. One had a “zebra” colouring which is quite rare. We also saw a torpedo ray. This was without doubt the best dive so far and we were tempted to stay around for a second dive on the same site. Regrettably, it’s part of the eastern island group and bearing in mind the journey home, we decided use the surface interval to move ourselves closer to home. This turned out to be the Mousetrap which is an underwater ridge between Junn Island and Sera Island. It took a bit of getting to as we were put in the water on the downstream side and had to fight our way into the lee of the ridge where we had a leisurely swim from west to east. We saw another torpedo ray and some more cuttlefish but the best of it was in the top ten metres where the viz was clearer and there were lots of smaller fish. The trip back to land threatened to turn into a marathon when one of the boat engines failed but we were picked up by the centre’s other boat and lost only about 20 minutes or so. The photos above were taken by Angela (whale sharks 3 & 4) Allen, .Cara and Polly. Thank you to Angela also for the Zip Line and Aqua Park antics……..always do your ‘background checks’ when it comes to Zip Lines – i.e. don’t put your hands on the line you will lose your fingers and stopping is an abrupt whip lash ending. (Polly’s words) Thanks to the dive centre, Sea Oman. Enormous thanks to Angela for organising the weekend and to my excellent dive buddies, Sandra and Polly. It was also nice to catch up briefly with Alison Mackenzie, once a 406 member but now resident in Oman since I can’t remember when. Saad is organizing an event later this month: ttps://www.somewhatsalty.com/tdb/ Deco is an unavoidable part of deep diving. The Deco Breakfast elegantly presents facts & fundamentals, as well as strategies & controversies. The two presentations will be of value to divers who enjoy diving in the 40m to 100m range. Registration is now open. Some news about former members. First Robin Hughes: I came out to Hong Kong in August to manage a tender response for an Engineering Services company, a newly formed subsidiary of an Asset Management Group (the majority investor in this Engineering Services entity). I was on a healthy day-rate but sadly I concluded they did not have the slightest chance of winning the contract, and so gave them a close-out report and flew off to Chiang Mai where I now keep a flat four floors above my friend Dave’s flat. The Chinese owner of the Asset Management Group, apparently struck by my relinquishing a month’s consultancy via impartial appraisal of 'contract win' prospects — everyone close was saying the tender was a 'sure thing’ -- called me back from Chiang Mai after only three days to look at another project (also non-viable). Then I was kept around to look at another project, and another, and another, until last week I was appointed as 'Director, Project Management' for the Asset Management Group. Doesn’t this say something both about the opportunistic nature of Hong Kong, and the huge number of ‘yes men’ floating around??? So, while I continue to assist the (rather small) Engineering Services company I arrived to prepare a bid for, I now look at other projects as well. It is interesting and varied work, and I am happy to be back in Hong Kong again after the arid and expensive Middle East. Second, Geoff Patch: Also, as well as diving with us in Zanzibar, Geoff has been doing some diving in Plymouth, UK, and has just completed a TDI CCR normoxic trimix course (‘Mod 3’). Geoff has written interesting reports on both which I’m putting aside to publish on a “slow news week”, along with the photos he sent with them. ---------------------------------- DAN insurance website: https://www.daneurope.org/home ---------------------------------- The Dive Club meets every Tuesday night in the Dive Bar. See you there! |
Authors-Ian Hussey and Dive Member Contributions. Archives
March 2023
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