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Dive Logs for Vance Stevens PADI open water scuba instructor #64181 Dives 356 to 357, August 16, 2000 Khor Fakkan

Diving with: Seven Seas, Khor Fakkan; Nandi driving the boat
Dive sites: Martini Rock and Shark Island (the usual)
Dive buddies: Bobbi, Glenn, and Dusty
Others in dive party: Josh or George from Scuba Dubai, his girlfriend, and his divers, e.g. Olaf
Conditions: A bit of a wind, flags flapping and chop getting out, mild currents, sunny through gray haze
Water Temp:
Visibility: poor, Martini Rock about 3 or 4 meters, maybe 5, Shark Island worse, 2 meters in places
Wetsuit combo: I wore my old ripped California surf suit, the one in the picture above
Weight: not sure, 4 weights plus one in the pocket which I put on the belt 2nd dive, so maybe 8 kilos

Dive 356, Martini Rock

Data (from dive computer):

Time started: 11:32
Max depth: 20.6 meters
Dive time: 00:40
Min Temp: 22° C
Nitrox 21% (normal air), No stop

Details of profile:

We didn't pay a lot of attention to profile. These were familiar dive sites, 20 meters the first dive, 12 meters the second, 40 minutes each dive, some surface interval parked at the beach at Shark Island. I had my computer and there was always lots of bottom time on it. Deco was not a consideration.

Description of dive:

First dive, Martini Rock, dropped in water a little off the rock but Nandi steered us there from the boat so we descended down the north side of the rock into water with visiible particles. Down to 11 meters was warm and below that freezing cold. We moved slowly offshore to deeper water without seeing much save one aggressive trigger fish (I'd been told a few weeks back they were all aggressive). Around the corner at 20 meters we encountered the other divers and a couple of pipe fish on the bottom, which we fondled. Further up the rock there was a scorpion fish on the bottom. We stayed in the sand up to 14 meters and the point where if we carried on it would be a Martini cove dive, and rather than chase after the barracuda we saw there, I turned sharp left and took us back to about where we'd begun our dive, but this time I stayed at above 16 meters and took us through the valleys. Here the dive became beautiful. We saw several morays, green and grey ones, and one small honeycomb moray. The fish schooled beautifully; at one point we were swimming under a school of yellow grunts that hardly parted as we came through. Bigger fish darted in amongst the colorful schools. At the end of the dive, Bobbi signalled 5 fingers, 50 bar, and I started moving them up, spiralling around the peak of the rock. I thought we might see a turtle if we did that, and sure enough, as we came atop the rock, there it was.

One thing I noticed was that a lot of the white flowered coral was dying. Some was limp in the rocks but lots of it was lying about on the bottom like cauliflower. Still the remaining corals were pretty on the rock, but the poor vis didn't make this the best of our Martini Rock dives.

Surface Interval: 1 hour 6 minutes

Dive 357, Shark Island

Data (from dive computer):

Time started: 13:18
Max depth: 14.5 meters
Dive time: 00:42
Min Temp: 23°C
Nitrox 21% (normal air), No stop

Details of profile:

Description of dive:

Second dive, off Shark Island, was set up as a drift dive. The island is ringed by rocks and boulders with not a lot of coral. We did see some interesting things. The vis was poor but we came upon lots of fish, including a school of 20 or 30 cuttlefish juveniles that moved off rapidly when spotted. Big bat fish came out of the rocks. At one point we came upon a school of barracuda. There were a lot of coronet fish, and I thought I saw a big one moving behind a rock. It moved in such a way that I realized it was the tail of a sting ray. So we hopped over the rock and came upon a big bull ray. We saw two other rays on the dive, grey brown like the color of the bottom, and a fourth ray left a cloud of silt where he'd vanished from. Due to poor vis it didn't seem at the time like that great a dive, but looking back, sure it was.

Vance Stevens, vstevens@emirates.net.ae | http://www.vancestevens.com/
Page updated September 29, 2000 in Hot Metal Pro 6.0