Smart Travels: diving

Showing posts with label diving. Show all posts

Sunday, 26 March 2017

Diving the Hai Siang

The Hai Siang is a 49-metre former Taiwanese fishing boat that was voluntarily sunk off the coast of Cap Homard (Reunion Island) in 1983. The name means 'wild pig' in Chinese. It lies on a sandy bottom at 55 metres deep and, if you are appropriately qualified, it makes for good diving as you can see from the photos below. We saw lots of snappers, unicorn fish, trumpetfish and clown triggerfish. Unlike the Antonio Lorenzo it rests upright.

Hai Siang looking at the bow

Hai Siang mast

Hai Siang stern

school of snappers

me with snappers

deck, looking aft

on the seabed, off to starboard side.

mast

looking down at the deck to the entrance to the holds

To finish with, a professional photo of the Hai Siang by Gaby Barathieu:

Sunday, 26 February 2017

Diving the Antonio Lorenzo

I did my second dive on the Antonio Lorenzo yesterday; the first was in October 2013.

The Antonio Lorenzo is a 53-metre Chilean longliner which lies at a depth of 38 metres in the bay of Saint-Leu.

On 1st September 1998 it was caught by a French patrol boat illegally fishing in French territorial waters 120 nautical miles from the Kerguelen islands in the southern Indian Ocean. Its holds contained 100 tonnes of Patagonian tooth fish. It was brought back to Reunion, where arrived on 14th September. On 16th December 1999 six holes were drilled into its hull, and it was sunk as an artificial reef at Pointe des Chateaux.

It lies on its port side, which explains why the mast sticks out a 45° angle. I'm afraid I'm not much good with technical language for vessel elements, so I can't label what different parts are called.

this almost looks like a coral reef but is part of the vessel

a last, somewhat ghostly, shot as we started ascending

me with my SMB during our 10-minute safety stop

Monday, 16 May 2016

Nature Photo Challenge

At the moment on Facebook the Nature Photo Challenge is currently doing the rounds. I've received several invites to participate but as I'm loathe to participate in chains I put seven of my favourite nature photographs all in one post, chosen simply because they represent a diversity of landscapes that I've had the chance to see around the world. Here they are, in no particular order:

the wide open steppes of Mongolia

Banzai Cliff, Saipan, Northern Mariana Islands, because
sometimes tranquil places can hide terrible human suffering

Kalahari desert, Namibia

Tibet, its mountains seen from the world's highest railway line

view from Mount Kinabalu, Borneo

Lake Baikal in Siberia, where we went diving

diving at St Leu, because 70% of our planet is sea

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Saturday, 31 October 2015

Diving in Oman

One of the reasons for our recent trip to Oman was to go scuba diving, as we'd heard good things about the the diving there. We dived at two locations: the Damaniyat Islands and at Qantab.

The former are about 18 km/an hour's boat ride north of Muscat, the capital, and we did two dives each day on two consecutive days there. The area is a protected nature reserve composed of 9 islands and covering about 100 hectares.

sea star

me, surrounded by teeming fish

crown-of-thorns - deadly for the coral reef

flatfish

honeycomb moray eel

large nudibranch

a zebra shark

cuttlefish

large mating cuttlefish

cuttlefish

anemone

swimming moray eel

another nudibranch

turtle

After leaving Muscat we headed to Qantab on the north-east coast, where we did another day's diving, this time with Extra Divers. The diving was pleasant, but the visibility was not as good, and we saw fewer things.

pipe-fish

unidentified?

snake eel

moray eel

What was most surprising about the diving in Oman was the tremendous temperature difference between the air/land temperature and the sea. Air temperatures were low to mid 30s°C, but the water temperature was up to 10° or 12°C cooler!

Sunday, 29 March 2015

Scuba Diving in Rodrigues

The island of Rodrigues, about 600 km ENE of Mauritius, is probably one of the remotest places I've dived after Saipan in the Pacific. The island covers only 108 sq. km, but the lagoon covers 230 sq. km! Its coral reefs are very rich, and we saw many species of reef fish while there, including some enormous porcupinefish, as well as some green turtles and lots of trevallies.

Rodrigues and its lagoon

We did 11 dives on ten different sites while in Rodrigues, all from the Cotton Dive Center in the east. The two most memorable were the St François Pass (which we dived twice), and Canyon where we had to used ropes! Below are a few photos.