UAE East Coast Temperatures

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After a couple of weekends where weather canned our dives everything looked promising for Saturday 4th Feb.

After about 5Km of driving however the weather changed and I went from 1,000m vis to 10m vis in dense fog and the sun still had not risen.

Long story short, by the time I reached the gap at Jebel Mlieha, it had cleared but I was now approximately 30 mins behind my usual schedule.

Dive sites were "Gunther's Wrecks" and "Inchcape 2"

Great vis on both sites, but I failed to find anything interesting on the first dive.

Descending on Inch 2 the whole wreck was visible from 9-10m depth with barely any current, fabulous.

I only found two nudis though!



Janolus sp.

Water temps 22C and I was in my Waterproof 7mm with 5mm hood, which kept me relatively warm. Air temps were 20/21C

 

[Pressurehead]

Water temps 22C and I was in my Waterproof 7mm with 5mm hood, which kept me relatively warm. Air temps were 20/21C

Warm, relatively warm you say, you must be a cold frog, 7mm and 5mm hood in 22C salt water, still 5mm diving for me, and no hood, a couple of C more and it's 3mm and thinner gloves and boots.

Anyway, we have a low-pressure system developing near Vanuatu is expected to "rapidly intensify" into a tropical cyclone mid-week as it moves towards the Queensland coast, the Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) has warned.
I have a 'shed load' of dives planned next week [in 22c water], we will see what happens, and hope it does not move South.

 

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relatively warm you say, you must be a cold frog

Indeed I am, living and diving in the ME for over 25 years. I'll probably manage the 7mm down to 18C if I have to, but I'd prefer a drysuit to be honest

 

[GDHLEWIS]

lucky Qatar is averaging water temps of 19 at the moment. an hour in a 3mm things start to get a tad nippy for sure

 

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Water Temp 22C, Air temp was around 18 when we took the plunge at least the water was warmer and during the SI we had 20C.

Looking for new sites today and we found one that we've called "Nord Stream Reef"



Basically it's 60m due north of the Angels Reef Mooring, depth 28m during low tide.

Huge soft coral bushes and some further dives required to explore more.

 

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It's still cold, 22C

First dive on our new reef was a bit eventful for yours truly as I managed to get entangled on my DSMB line that I'd sent up to mark the site by looping the spool around the pipeline and clipping it off. The boat captain was then supposed to use the DSMB as a market and plot the position on the boat's GPS. Obviously not bang on as there was a slight current.

We had used the base of Angels Reef mooring (which was cut ) and headed out on a bearing from there.

My buddies had disappeared into the gloomy 3-4m vis and when I tried to swim in the direction I had planned I could feel something tugging from behind and soon realised it was the line from my DSMB.

I spent a good 10 mins sorting things out, I really didn't want to cut my line of possible and ended up cutting the valve cover string on my tank. I was thinking of de-kitting at one point, but I was carrying a stage plus my camera rig, which may have made that a bit more awkward, plus I had not weights attached to me, they are all part of my rig.

Didn't give me much time to find anything to photograph.

Second dive was planned for Inchcape 2, but XR Hub had just pitched up at the wreck and had scooters, which always messes up with the vis, so we haded over to The Blocks and found some interesting stuff in a good 5m vis too. The mooring on this site has been cut too, but we found the line and managed to hook it onto the boat.

Goniobranchus annulatus



Pair of Flabellina rubrolineata laying eggs



And a nice 15cm seahorse



The wind was really beginning to get up when we finished the second dive and it was rather choppy.

 

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An opportunity arose yesterday to go diving with one of my instructor friends and two of her students post AOW at the east coast, howe could I resist. Conditions were flat calm but still a cool 22C.

Dived the new site again but still couldn't find any seahorses

Second dive on Inchcape 10 was much better and we had a variable 5-10m vis too.

Need a caption for this photo



Lots of small jellies around 8-5m zone making the safety stops more interesting.

 

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Two more exploratory dives around "Nord Stream Reef" this morning and we found the remains of a sunken dhow all broken up!

Visibility was bloody awful <2m. We left a DSMB attached to part of the wreck and did a second dive on it.

Was not shooting wide angle, plus the cr@p vis so no photos yet. We'll be doing this one again in two weeks.

In the meantime, here is the Guardian of Angels Reef Mooring

Pterois volitans

 

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It's getting warmer

Gunther's Wrecks had an amazing 15m vis yesterday and although it was 22C on the bottom (24m) we had 24C at 6m in jellyfish soup!

Nothing really special however, I did do a bit of exploring to re-establish myself with this site and assess where everything is now after the storm last year that moved stuff around.

I came across an overturned boat that had lots of Dendronephthya coral all along the keel, and found a small Oman Hawkfish living there.



Second dive was on Inchcape 2 wreck, usual nudi suspects but none of the spectacular ones I came across a few weeks ago.

I did find this neat cowrie though.



Water temp on Inch 2 was 23C

 

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Some more exploratory dives done yesterday around the area of Angels Reef.

My group covered lots of sand and although we saw several seasnakes, there wasn't much else observed.

We were heading northwards from Nord Stream Reef, with my group on the eastern side and Akram's group on the western side. Akram found a small reef and duly marked it with his DSMB, so we did the second dive on this reef.

Visibility was pretty good at around 10m and water temps varied 22/23C.

Again I was shooting with the 40mm lens in hope of finding seahorses, but unfortunately none were found.

However I did find this Xeno crab, Xenocarcinus tuberculatus



A rare find in these waters and trying to get a decent close up shot without the camera housing or strobes touching the coral was challenging.