UAE East Coast Temperatures

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Procrastinated too long last week to book with BDC and ended up diving with Divers Down at Al Aqah yesterday.

Day didn't start too well, one of my fingers got caught in the car door when I was closing it then a 90 minute drive in fog before it cleared just after the Truck road ended up near RAK. 45 minutes later we reached DD.

Dive sites were Inchcape 1 (30m) and Gunther's Wrecks (24m), and for some reason we did Gunther's Wrecks first!

Apparently a frogfish had been spotted the day before and despite being given the location we could not find it.

Nice pair of Hypselodoris pulchella spotted on the scaffolding.



Inch 1 had nothing special, although I found a small juvenile crocodile fish on the deck of the wreck at the stern.

 

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Still cold 23C at the bottom.

Dived Paradise Reef yesterday with BDC, topside it was choppy, and on the return journey back to FIMC there was not a dry spot on the boat.

The dives were exploratory and I was shooting mainly video with the TG6, but I took a couple of stills too.

Lots of sea snakes on the first dive.

 

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Six dives over Thu-Sat with BDC out of FIMC.

Two dives on Angels Reef, two dives on Inchcape 10, one dive on Anemone Gardens and one dive on Inchcape 2.

Best dive by far was on Inchcape 2, only four of us on the boat on Friday and had the wreck to ourselves.

Few nudis spotted on every dive, favourite shot is this Caloria militaris from Inch 2



Main plan for the first dive on Inch 10 on Thursday was to clean my cock for Eid!



It normally resides in the toilet shower area of the wreck and has been getting very silty recently.

Inch 10 has also attracted a Unicorn Filefish in the past month and it hangs around the mooring line at about 10m. Aluterus monoceros.





Great dives with two of my regular buddies Kerstin and Dimitris as well as our old regular Ernie who flew down from Qatar for the Eid holiday

 

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Went over to the east coast yesterday to dive with one of my friends, who was finishing off a deep dive with one of her students, and this was my first dive over there in almost a month.

It was bloody freezing at 30m, 22C

I had cast aside my 7mm for a 5mm too.

No wonder this scorpionfish looks grumpy

 

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Dived Inch 10 and Paradise Reef yesterday. New mooring on Paradise Reef now courtesy of Sharjah Municipality

Water was 23C at the bottom with a distinct thermocline at 10 and 22m, at least I could warm up on the safety stop where it was 27C.

Paradise was a bit of a boring dive though, really searched for seahorses and nothing!

Second dive on Inch 10 was okay, 24C slightly warmer. Watched some crocodile fish have a fight with each other, couple of nudis and that was about it. However on the ascent I got a great view of the snapper shoal being attacked by several jack, just wish the vis would be decent for wide angle photography.

One of many moray eels found on Inch 10



Obligatory nudi shot, Caloria militaris

 

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East coast dive with BDC yesterday and only seven of us on the Dhow. BDC's other boats were all with students of various abilities and were heading northwards to shallower depths, so we had a nice comfortable ride, although my daughter didn't take her motion sickness meds and had to lay down during the SI whilst we moored on Inchcape 10.

First dive on Angels Reef was 23C at the bottom. We found a couple of large seahorses as well as a slipper lobster.





Second dive on Inchcape 10 there were heaps of nudis with a bottom temp of 24C

Caloria militaris



And a Caloria sp. yet unnamed

 

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East coast dive with BDC yesterday and only seven of us on the Dhow. BDC's other boats were all with students of various abilities and were heading northwards to shallower depths, so we had a nice comfortable ride, although my daughter didn't take her motion sickness meds and had to lay down during the SI whilst we moored on Inchcape 10.

First dive on Angels Reef was 23C at the bottom. We found a couple of large seahorses as well as a slipper lobster.





Second dive on Inchcape 10 there were heaps of nudis with a bottom temp of 24C

Caloria militaris



And a Caloria sp. yet unnamed

Looks like some good dives going on your end, were hitting bottom temps over 30C now in Qatar. Should slowly start seeing less and less this end and it will be our Jelly fish season any second now.

 

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Back to the east coast yesterday with my buddy Joan diving with Barracuda and only five of us on the boat including "Arbab" the boss.

Water temperature was 27C at the bottom, and thankfully I checked beforehand so I was in my 3mm suit, first time in the east coast this year

My buddy had ear issues and took her time descending, but she spotted a frogfish within about five minutes when we left the mooring line.



Thankfully I was shooting with the 40mm lens on this dive and it was perfect for this fish.

 

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Back to Fujairah yesterday to dive Paradise Reef (twice) with my best buddy Kerstin, who was also celebrating her birthday. Only eight of us on the boat (BDC2) so it was nice and spacious

Couple of issues though, my AC conked out and we had a rather hot drive across to Fujairah in the morning, and Kerstin forgot to put her camera bag into my car when we loaded the tanks and dive gear. This was only noticed when we were about half way to Fujairah!

I lent Kerstin my GoPro and back up dive computer, so not a total loss for her.

The water temp was 27C, and very comfortable in my 3mm. There was a distinct thermocline at 7m where the temp changed to 30C, but hey a lot cooler than the west coast.

My other buddy Joan had some issues equalising on descent so I stuck with her and we dived together coming across a beautiful seahorse in the purple corals at Paradise Reef.



The drive back was horrendous and I drank at least 2L of water and was sweating enough to soak our t-shirts completely, recording 47C as we crossed the desert area in Sharjah.

 

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Yesterday was an east coast dive with my usual dive centre (BDC) and my usual dive buddies, but the boat driver fVcked up when we reached the first dive site, Gunther's Wrecks (also known as Snoopy Deep).

Usually there is a buoy, nothing much than large plastic container tied to a rope marking the site. Frequently it disappears because it gets cut or other reasons.

Anyway, today as we approached the site the boat driver sees two other boats, one with an anchor down and the other tied to the stern of the first boat. He concludes that they are anchored at the site we plan to dive. So we kit up and he drops us off at the bow of the first boat so we drift onto their anchor line.

Alas when we are getting near the bottom (26m) we note that this is not the site, although we do not abandon the dive but carry on thinking we might be close. As it happens we didn't find the site. My camera lens set up (40mm) was specifically to photograph the large frogfish and seahorses at the planned site and it wasn't much good for tiny macro subjects that we came across.

When we're back on board, I discover that the boat driver has the site marked on the GPS and recognised that the two boats were in the wrong place but didn't question it and thought the GPS might be wrong

Second dive at Inchcape 2 was much better, plenty of life and action going on. This was also the first time I've dived this wreck since Sharjah Municipality anchored mooring buoys in the area, and one is at this site. This base of the mooring is just a few meters from the starboard bow of the wreck.

initially, vis was a good 5m but deteriorated at one point half way through the dive, most likely due to the change in tide.

The 40mm lens came in handy when photographing this huge puffer fish