Clare “Divebunnie” Wilders
http://www.divebunnie.com
I seem to be on the local rota again this week… and along with a couple of newbies from yesterday, I had a new team of day one divers to lead this morning.
Having dived the Southerly sites yesterday, we headed North to the Gardens today.
Fiddle Garden was to be our first stop.
I briefed and we dropped in. I had two instructors in my group, one of whom had worked in Sharm before, so they needed no looking after at all. And I had a few others getting settled on their first dive, one of whom turned out to be a good friend of my hubbie’s family! Small world strikes again!
Once we had completed our buoyancy checks it was time to head for the reef, sink and swim.
Within the first few minutes I spied a blue spotted ray… I always like to get something interesting in within the first few minutes of the dive, so things were looking good.
Blue Spotted Ray
Right by the mooring I then noticed the tiniest clown fish… on one of the tiniest anemones I have seen. Very cute indeed as he wriggled constantly. Seriously… he was actually thinking of attacking me!
We pootled along the drop off, found a rather large moray eel, and gently finned our way along the reef. I kept my eyes firmly blue-ward… well… in between my peeks at the reef looking out for the big stuff. Still… no pelagic fly bys for us this morning. One day… it will happen!
As we reached the final pinnacle, I noticed the groupers had been a tad greedy. There were only a few glassfish left! Hmmm… let’s hope they don’t eat the lot. They need to leave at least a few to keep the shoal going.
We turned around and meandered our way back towards the boat.
The highlight was just as we made our way in to the shallows for our safety stop. I found a seamoth!!! These are strange little creatures, kind of like fat, flattened, pipe fish with wings. They lie on the bottom, usually in pairs, and are particularly hard to spot because they the exact same shade as the sand. These are more often found in Dahab on the Canyon dive site… not that I have ever found one there, but I always look in earnest! Very cool indeed. It made my dive.
Seamoth
Right by the mooring I then noticed the tiniest clown fish… on one of the tiniest anemones I have seen. Very cute indeed as he wriggled constantly. Seriously… he was actually thinking of attacking me!
We pootled along the drop off, found a rather large moray eel, and gently finned our way along the reef. I kept my eyes firmly blue-ward… well… in between my peeks at the reef looking out for the big stuff. Still… no pelagic fly bys for us this morning. One day… it will happen!
As we reached the final pinnacle, I noticed the groupers had been a tad greedy. There were only a few glassfish left! Hmmm… let’s hope they don’t eat the lot. They need to leave at least a few to keep the shoal going.
We turned around and meandered our way back towards the boat.
The highlight was just as we made our way in to the shallows for our safety stop. I found a seamoth!!! These are strange little creatures, kind of like fat, flattened, pipe fish with wings. They lie on the bottom, usually in pairs, and are particularly hard to spot because they the exact same shade as the sand. These are more often found in Dahab on the Canyon dive site… not that I have ever found one there, but I always look in earnest! Very cool indeed. It made my dive.
