UAE West Coast Temperatures

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Another shore dive from Dubai side this morning, this time off Russian Beach, just south of La Mer.

Plenty of sea grass but no nudis

Water temps 29C, so very comfortable in a skin.

Found this fish which I initially thought might be a jawfish , but doesn't really look like ones I've seen before.

My main subject turned out to be a Highfin Fangblenny (Petroscirtes mitratus) that I found in some old fishing net.

 

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Found this fish which I initially thought might be a jawfish , but doesn't really look like ones I've seen before.

Possibly a flat toadfish

 

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Diving up in Ras Al Khaimah, so still in the Persian Gulf while the Gulf of Oman warms up a bit

The dive group

Diving in my 5mm, but it was a cool 24C on our first dive under a small unmanned gas platform!

Lots of jack around, fierce current once we dropped down but it eased off at the bottom (33m). Vis was awful, 2-3m

As we get there Daniel, who organised the trip as a farewell for Marcin who is moving to Sao Paulo next week (work), then proceeds to tell us that it's actually illegal to dive here but as long as the boat doesn't tie up to the platform, which isn't manned, we should be fine!

During the dive I heard engines approaching at high speed and the first thing I thought was "Coast Guard" and after drifting off the platform at 17m depth and deploying our SMBs I expected to see the Coast Guard boat ready to arrest us when we surfaced. However, when we surfaced I see that the other boat is only a bunch of fishermen, so all was well. As it's Ramadan I really didn't expect to see any coast guard as we had to wake them up when leaving RAK for them to check the boat.

We headed back to RAK and en route stopped to dive "Car Showroom" a recently discovered wreck by the RAK contingent of our tech group.

Great dive but only a few nudis and plenty of flatworms. Water temps slightly warmer with 25C on the bottom and 27C on the safety stop.

Video taken last March by Kim, another of the RAK team



Finally when we arrived back at the dive centre, Ernie mentioned that during last nights night dive they found a seahorse just next to the dive centre. As Kerstin still had loads of gas in both her tanks (she uses 15L steels) I used her first tank which had 90 bar left and we had a 40 min dive in 31C water looking for the seahorse, which unfortunately remained elusive despite finding the exact location where they found it. However I did find a nudi

So 3 dives followed by a late lunch at the Belgian Cafe nearby before driving back to Dubai arriving just as the sun set at 7pm.

Totally knackered but a pleasant day out

 

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Final day's diving of my three day weekend was off Dubai again at Sunset Beach.

As everyone else in Dubai was heading to work, my buddy Kerstin and I headed off for what turned out to be a 112 min dive in 33C water temps.

We once again hit the sea grass searching for nudis but all we could find was several Elysia marginata

Then we came across a couple of carpet anemones and one of them had a small shrimp, which for me made my dive

It was certainly a nice relaxing way to start the day.

Plan to do a night dive here soon ..... watch this space.

 

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Back to Sunset Beach again on Friday morning, but I ended up restricting my photography as I did a refresher dive for my assistant at work who did her OW last year.

Needs a bit of work on her buoyancy but apart from that a nice relaxed dive

The only downside was the 47C air temp and no relief really in water that was 33C.

Saturday night was night dive night

Kerstin and I had been planning a night dive here for some time with a belief that all the nudi eggs we see during the day belong to nocturnal nudis and few of the four species that we have already seen here. However with the sudden increase in water temps I wasn't very optimistic.

We deflated our BCs as the Maghrib (sunset) prayer call wailed over Jumeirah, and descended to 6m to start our search.

The light faded fast, which was fine as it's easier to spot your buddy at night, and we tend to drift a little further from each other compared to day time diving. As per our normal routine we normally use a red light for fish shots. Out of the corner of my eye I could see that Kerstin was shooting away and her red light was still on. I then heard some squealing noises and moved closer to find an excited Kerstin photographing a toadfish that was swimming around.

Having only once seeing this fish we were both extremely happy to find one out of its hole.

We probably spent around 5 mins with the toadfish which appeared to be 15-20 cm long

On several occasions I managed to block the fish with my housing and barely managed to focus to get a shot. This is when autofocus pays off I guess, but that always frustrates me unless I can manually override it.

Then it was back to nudi hunting.

Unfortunately we were unsuccessful but we found several small cuttlefish

As well as some really tiny (5mm) shrimp.

At 86 mins Kerstin signalled to surface as she was using an AL50.

Both of us were elated and plan to return again perhaps diving later close to midnight, nudis live here, we just gotta find them.

 

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Back to sunset beach this morning for a relaxed 90 min dive.

No nudis unfortunately but a plethora of upside down jellyfish Cassiopea sp.

Water temp 27C, very comfortable in a 3mm

 

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Been a while since I posted in this thread, but due to cancelation of dives on the east coast on the Friday, my buddy and I opted for a shore dive off Dubai on the Saturday.

Our expectations of finding interesting stuff was low, all we needed was a fix of weightlessness for a couple of hours.

In the end we did a 131 minute dive, max depth 7m, but not much to show for it photographically.

Upside-down jellyfish of which there were dozens laying around on the bottom, none swimming.

My favourite shot is of this small fish and large shell in the seagrass.

Vis was the usual 1-2m and temperature surprisingly 27C although since I had already packed my dive gear for the cancelled Friday dive on the east coast, I used my drysuit.

Hopefully back to the east coast next weekend ..... and a new dive site too

 

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I just noticed this thread for the first time ever. I'll be following

 

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I just noticed this thread for the first time ever

Yea I don't do much diving off Dubai

 

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Yea I don't do much diving off Dubai

I know. Many factors make it inferior to east coast in general. Plenty of wreck diving in the west coast but at the expense of decent visibility and marine life diversity I think.

I stopped diving in the west coast once I learned my way around east coast.