We were a little nervous about going diving. Northern Oman is supposed to have great diving, but in Southern Oman it is hit or miss. Some days visibility is good, and other days it is terrible. And there is no predicting what you are going to get. We chose to go to a relatively remote site farther out of town. The dive master, Ana, said it was shallow, and even if visibility wasn’t good, we would still be able to see a lot of fish.
The dive site is located in Mirabat, over 70 kilometers east of Salalah town, and roughly 100 km from Port Salalah. On the drive out, we followed the main highway out of town. The highway parallels the ocean most of the way. It reminds us of Baja California, Mexico. There are endless miles of dry, brown hills that melt into a stunning blue ocean. We drove for miles and miles with no development, and the areas with development didn’t have much to them. The beaches are stunning, and completely empty. Wow. Finding a deserted beach is not easy anymore.
We passed several herds of camels just roaming around. The largest of the herds was hanging out in the middle of the road, so we were stuck for several minutes until the camels decided to get out of the road. We also passed a few herds of goats. The largest herd decided to cross the road in front of us, and once again, we waited for several minutes as all the animals made their way across the road. We also passed some cattle. We were feeling very “naturey” seeing all these herds of animals freely roaming the range.
Today Mirabat is a sleepy fishing village, but in the past held more significance. The town is on a little peninsula. We drove through the town to the opposite side of the peninsula. There were quite a few buildings, all spread out, all different from one another. There was no road out to the beach we were going to, so we kicked it into 4 wheel drive to drive across the sand to the water.
We were going to the Chinese Wreck, also called Unknown Wreck, which sank 90 years ago. We did a beach entry and we had to swim a short ways to the reef. The visibility wasn’t great, maybe 20 feet in general, with a few spots having even less. But, the dive site is only 20 – 30 feet, so we had plenty of light and could see pretty well. The wreck reminds us of Tulamben, in that it is chock full of life. Every inch of the hull has been taken over by coral and other life forms. The hull has eroded to the point that it is difficult to tell it was once a ship. The obvious bits are a few small sections of hull with port holes and two very large and imposing anchors that are still in tact. There are other giveaways that it is a ship, but you would have to know what you were looking for.
Not only was the plant life pretty incredible, so are the fish. Literally thousands of fish around, with dozens of species. There were tons and tons of large schools of fish of all sizes and shapes. Several different kinds of snappers, including blue line, and we can’t even remember what else because there were so many of them. We saw quite a few grouper, mostly in tan and brown tones, but we did see a purple one. We also saw lots of file fish, which look similar to trigger fish, and are solid in color. We also saw some triggerfish. There were several spotted burfish floating around, which we believe is in the same family as porcupinefish and looks similar. We saw a number of red boxy fish, possibly a puffer or boxfish or porcupinefish of some sort that we can’t find in our fish books. We saw a couple of parrotfish, one quite large. We saw some oriental sweetlips. We watched a razor fish dive into the sand and hide from us. We saw a large batfish, a tuna, and a pompano.
The anemones are different from what we have seen before. We are used to seeing anemones with smaller tentacles. These anemones had very long tentacles that looked like really fat strands of spaghetti. The anemonefish are also specific to the area, looking much the same as the Maldives anemonefish, but with two stripes instead of one. And they are also much bigger than we are used to seeing, and they move farther away from the anemones than we are used to seeing.
We saw several octopus hiding in nooks and crannies. We even accidentally interrupted a pair in the middle of mating. Oops. There were a lot of eels around, in two varieties. Some of them were quite large. There was a leopard torpedo ray hiding underneath a layer of sand, only its bug eyes visible against the ground. We saw three varieties of scorpionfish and a stonefish. We saw a couple blue spotted rays unique to Salalah. The entire area was just chock full of sea urchins. There were the urchins we are used to seeing, with little black bodies and long, sharp needle like tentacles surrounding it, kind of like a koosh ball. But we also saw a couple new types of urchins that we have never seen before. One looks like a black baseball covered with small, white needles. It looked more like a cactus than an urchin. The other urchin is similar, but with a red, blue and white design instead of black. We saw a few five pointed starfish, in tan and brown. Some were very small and thin, some were large and looked like a cross between a pillow and pincushion starfish. At the end of the dive, we saw five little black and royal blue nudibranchs hanging out in the sand and one little flatworm.
In between dives, we had a box lunch with a club sandwich, apple, banana, potato chips (crisps), and fruit cake. We dove the same spot after lunch, and this time visibility was a little worse, but even more fish were out. The dives were pretty darn expensive, costing USD$120 for the 2 dives, but a big chunk of the cost was for transportation to Mirabal. If we had chosen a site closer to Salalah, the cost would have been significantly less.
On the drive back, we took different roads and did a little sightseeing. We stopped in Mirabat to get a quick look at the fishing village. We went to a viewpoint on a hill where we saw a herd of goats lounging in the shade of a covered bench. And we got to see lots more camels migrating going the opposite direction from this morning. We found out that the camels walk to the beach and play in the sand until evening time, then go back home at the end of the day.
We drove by some farmland on the outskirts of the city. We passed an archeological dig site. We drove by all three of the sultan’s palaces in and around Salalah. Now remember, the sultan lives in Muscat, the capital, so he doesn’t use these three palaces all that often. When we got back to Kosmos, the giant navy ship was gone. But the Shiekh of Dubai’s boat is still there. [88]