Summer is fast approaching and the water is warming up (slightly) which is bringing more divers to the east coast to dive which is good news for all of the operators.
The increase is always notable on certain popular dive sites such as Inchcape 1 and Inchcape 2 which are small wrecks no more than 20M in length. This size of dive site can become very crowded when there is more than 10 divers milling around, in particular when most of them have no idea of buoyancy control, swim vertically and disturb the bottom substrate so much that the limited visibility drops dramatically. Additionally I have witnessed more divers standing on the wrecks damaging the marine life.
I am not sure what can be done to police this, I personally hate having restrictions but diving these two wrecks is just not much fun when there appears to be more divers than fish.
Last Friday I was on the first boat to dive Inchcape 1 and around 10 minutes into the dive it became really crazy, lots of idiots disturbing the whole area as per my description above. When I surfaced there were FIVE boats on the mooring.
Rare animals like the seahorse and frogfish are going to be gone with all this overcrowding and it is difficult to photograph small critters when being continually hit by other divers fins who have absolutely zero awareness of their surroundings.
Would it be possible I wonder here in UAE to have the dive operators schedule their dives on these wrecks limiting the number of divers at any one time on these two wrecks?
Quite frankly I doubt it, but some action is needed.
Inchcape 1 is at 30M, so dive time is limited 30 mins max on EAN32
Inchape 2 is at 20M, I usually spend a good hour on this wreck using EAN36, but it is very popular with OW divers due to its shallow depth and becomes crazy at weekends, even during the colder months.
Perhaps the only time to dive these wrecks is not at the weekend
Perhaps other UAE divers can chip in here to discuss a way to manage these wrecks and perhaps involve the EDA.
The increase is always notable on certain popular dive sites such as Inchcape 1 and Inchcape 2 which are small wrecks no more than 20M in length. This size of dive site can become very crowded when there is more than 10 divers milling around, in particular when most of them have no idea of buoyancy control, swim vertically and disturb the bottom substrate so much that the limited visibility drops dramatically. Additionally I have witnessed more divers standing on the wrecks damaging the marine life.
I am not sure what can be done to police this, I personally hate having restrictions but diving these two wrecks is just not much fun when there appears to be more divers than fish.
Last Friday I was on the first boat to dive Inchcape 1 and around 10 minutes into the dive it became really crazy, lots of idiots disturbing the whole area as per my description above. When I surfaced there were FIVE boats on the mooring.
Rare animals like the seahorse and frogfish are going to be gone with all this overcrowding and it is difficult to photograph small critters when being continually hit by other divers fins who have absolutely zero awareness of their surroundings.
Would it be possible I wonder here in UAE to have the dive operators schedule their dives on these wrecks limiting the number of divers at any one time on these two wrecks?
Quite frankly I doubt it, but some action is needed.
Inchcape 1 is at 30M, so dive time is limited 30 mins max on EAN32
Inchape 2 is at 20M, I usually spend a good hour on this wreck using EAN36, but it is very popular with OW divers due to its shallow depth and becomes crazy at weekends, even during the colder months.
Perhaps the only time to dive these wrecks is not at the weekend
Perhaps other UAE divers can chip in here to discuss a way to manage these wrecks and perhaps involve the EDA.
