UAE West Coast Temperatures

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Had two great dives on the Zainab yesterday with my buddy Dimitris and his son, who is over from the UK at the moment.

Went out with Bermuda's boat, and it was my first dive at the Zainab for 10 years

After about an hour leaving from Port Rashid we reached the site in flat calm conditions. Vis was amazing (for the Gulf) at 10m ish but deteriorated later (of course).

I used to see lots of Goiniobranchus nudis on this wreck so I was set up for macro, I initially felt robbed of wide angle opportunities as a massive shoal of barracuda circled us as we descended onto the wreck (hard bottom 30m), but I got some portrait shots.



The wreck is laying on its port side and we did some exploratory stuff around but no penetration.

On the second dive Dimitris found the only nudi of the dive, a Goniobrachus cazae

Not what I expected to see, but it was a great surprise nonetheless.



Water temperature was 27C

 

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A nice long 128 min dive yesterday in 28/29C of water. Air temp was 39C when I arrived at the Bridge at 10:00

Major find by my buddy Azmey was this Verconia sp., which was around 5mm in length.



I found a slightly larger head shield slug (10mm) wandering around the sandy area in a field of sea pens.



A few cuttlefish scooting around too.

 

[GDHLEWIS]

See your water temps are just right as well. 27-30 in Qatar yesturday

 

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Definitely getting warmer for sure, 39C air temps yesterday and a steady 29C on the dive.

Haven't seen this one for over a month, happy to see she's still around

 

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Yesterday I went out to play with some new toys that I picked up in Singapore last month at ADEX, Backscatter filter set for the MS1 Strobes.

Sadly the seahorse was nowhere to be found and we did look, so I was left with a couple of static subjects to experiment with lighting techniques.

This is an example of what I was doing using one strobe off camera to light the area with a colour and another strobe with normal light on the subject using the snoot.



If these guys would stay still it would have been interesting, maybe I need to set a trap ha ha

 

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Found the white seahorse this morning that allowed me to experiment with the strobe colour filters and snoot.

This is my favourite shot



Then another seahorse approached and love was in the air



Added a bit of romantic lighting for the occasion

 

[BoltSnap]

Seahorse porno?