UAE East Coast Temperatures

[Searcaigh]

Today I met up with an old buddy Vanjie, well she is not old but I have known her for quite a few years when I used to dive at Scuba 2000.

We met at Barracuda in Fujairah and today's dives were being conducted from Mohammed's Dhow.

16 other divers on board, not something that I was looking forward to, however I had a cunning plan

First dive was on Inch 10 and we geared up as the dhow left the marina and were first to splash. It was 17 minutes before the next divers arrived so we had nice time without too many people disturbing the vis, plus we were the only people diving Nitrox, so we had a longer dive too.

While the air divers decided to do a 90 min SI, Vanjie and I splashed after just over an hour and used EAN40 for our second dive to 21m on Car Cemetery 2 for a nice 63 min dive and the site to ourselves for around 30 mins before the vis depreciated.

Today there seemed to be as many crocodile fish as nudibranchs .... stacks of them on both sites.

The highlight on the second dive though was a pair of Gymnodoris rubropapulosa providing an UW nudi sex show

Distinct thermocline at 14m, drop from 27C to 24C, I wish we had shallower sites near by around this side of Fujairah

 

[BoltSnap]

Is she still working at Scuba2K?

 

[Searcaigh]

Hi Burhan,

Vanjie no longer works at Scuba 2000 since Hassan sold it.

She has been jobless for quite a few months ago and has a pending offer from Al Doom, she is not sure what to do at the moment as the Al Doom offer does not involve diving.

 

[Searcaigh]

On the drive over to the east coast, the land temps were 15C at 06:30 on the Kalba Road, a new diversion was also in place, and I could barely read the sign post with the rising sun in my eyes.

Deep Reef today, water temp 23C and visibility 2m, a daylight night dive!

Fortunately I came prepared, 7mm semi dry and a Sola 1200 light on my housing set up for macro.

Three of us followed the shotline down into the darkness, I almost landed on top of a large sea snake, and was thanking myself for not choosing wide angle today.

Almost immediately Kerstin found a seahorse, however I had some issues with my LP inflator, and didn't quite manage to position myself to get a decent shot of it as it was deep in some fan coral. The poor visibility lead me to look deeply into some of the large white corals and no real surprise .... lots of small gobies.



The dive was all over too soon, we found another seahorse and came across several sea snakes before ascending and returning to the boat.

Our second dive was at Car Cemetery 2, and the visibility here was much better when we dropped down, probably around 4m, however there were two other boats at the site, and although Kerstin and I managed to get down first, after 10 minutes the visibility went to sh!t.

We moved off the main collection of cars to an isolated one and found it covered in Caloria indica



After about 20 minutes we moved back to the main area and although the vis had deteriorated somewhat I found many small crocodile fish.



On the way back up the mooring line when we did our deep stop, I noticed a small blenny hiding in the growth on the line.

Not the sharpest shot, but I had not seen this one before



A reasonable day's diving, but the water conditions were challenging, looking forward to at least a couple of more dives before year end

 

[BoltSnap]

In all of my diving off the East Coast, I never saw a "sea snake" there at all. You seem to see many of them now, is this something new or they have been there since way back? Perhaps the places I dove didn't have sea snakes anyways.

 

[Searcaigh]

Hi Burhan,

The only area on the east coast I see sea snakes is off Fujairah south of the oil terminal. I have never seen any around Dibba / Khorfakkan.

I have also seen a few in the Persian Gulf when I first started diving here in 1997, so they are not newcomers to the area.

 

[RainPilot]

I've seen a couple off Jumeirah beach so agree on their presence in the Arabian Gulf side.

 

[MasterChief D]

I've also seen sea snakes off the Dubai coast (a couple of times on Zainab and more than half of the times on Sh. Mo barge).

 

[BoltSnap]

Strange, did a lot of diving in the Gulf side from shore and on the wrecks there but never seen one.

 

[MasterChief D]

All the dredging that's been going on over the last few years has changed the coast from Ghantoot to Sharjah and I bet has changed the habits of the sealife also. We used to shuffle our feet when going in the water in the emptiness past Jebel Ali, so we would not step on the rays that were buried in 1/2 m. of water; now I severely doubt there are any...