Continued from yesterday”¦ In our rest time between dives, they provided water. And nothing else. Once again, as expensive as the dive was, we were expecting Continue reading
Diving Pointe Ferry, Deshaies and A Shock at the Marina
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Category Archives: SCUBA & Snorkeling
Diving Aure Thomas and Pointe Ferry, Deshaies, Guadeloupe
Today we went on the dive trip we mentioned booking a couple of days back. We were really looking forward to the dives, especially because our cruising guide had made the diving sound so great here. It turned out that the diving was nice, but not anywhere near as good as we had expected. Unfortunately, we had a nightmarish experience with the dive company. We’ll start by telling you about the good stuff, the dive sites, first, then go into the saga about the dive company.
Visibility was fairly good, and we were told today is a bad day and it is usually clearer. It was gloomy and raining hard, so there wasn’t a lot of sunlight getting down into water, and there may have been runoff from the shore. The dive sites were Continue reading
Diving and Exploring Tunis & the Coast
Today we started the day by going diving. The dive center is near the marina office. We met at 0800 and piled into a large speedboat. The boat took us out about 15 minutes away from the marina to a site called Rochio Venus. It is a nice dive site, with excellent visibility and warm water.
Like in Greece, there isn’t a whole lot of color in the water here. There is a plant we believe is called Posidonia that dominates the area. Posidonia looks like thick, long grass. It is green near the roots, but turns white higher up on the grass blades. We saw it in Crete, as well, but there is not very much of it there. Eric said he felt like we were flying above grain fields.
In and amongst the Posidonia is a round, green, delicate plant about the size of the top of a soda can that looks like a green flower. There is also a Continue reading
SCUBA Diving in Crete, Greece
Today we went diving. SCUBA diving is a relatively new recreational activity for Greece. There are lots of old wrecks in the water, and they didn’t want salvage divers taking off with historic national treasures, so diving was banned altogether. Diving has only been allowed in the last few years, and strict rules still apply. You can only go with a local dive company. You may not go on your own at all. The dive company can only take you to approved places.
We walked over to a small dive center located on the water just northeast of the commercial harbor. We got our stuff ready, then piled into a small speedboat and headed east to the site. The site was Continue reading
Diving Marsa Shoni Kebir and A Crazy Coincidence
Today we were assigned to a smaller boat than the one we had gone out on the other day. It is also a very nice boat with a similar layout, and with only half as many people on board, it felt even more spacious than the first one. We went to a spot called Marsa Shoni Kebir, in the ocean just south of the Port Ghalib entrance, close to the shore. The site consists of two walls close to one another.
For the first dive, we went to the east wall. Once again, we lounged for quite a while before suiting up and jumping in. It is another nice spot, though once again, not spectacular. We saw more variety of coral, though there is still a lot of the fire and geranium looking soft corals. In one spot we saw some yellow waver coral. We also saw more fish, more variety of fish, and some new fish. Better still, we borrowed a “Red Sea” fish book and wrote down what we saw right away, while it was still fresh in our minds. The specific variety of unicorn fish that we mentioned the other day are called short nosed unicorn fish. The parrotfish with different colors we mentioned is called a rusty parrotfish. We saw both the rusty parrotfish and the short nosed unicorn fish on this dive, too.
One of the new fish is called a bird wrasse, a fish with a bird like beak. Another one is called a sailfin tang, a brown, cream and orange striped fish with a yellow tail shaped kind of like a batfish. We also saw a yellow tang, which is a similar shape but yellow color. Other new ones include hogfish and Arabian boxfish. We also saw Arabian Picasso triggerfish, which have the same markings as a regular Picasso triggerfish, but different colors.
In more familiar fish, we saw Continue reading