This is a collection of my blog entries and experiences with diving.
You can find all the pictures I've taken here, and read below for recountings of my more recent trips:
Seeing Manatees had been on my bucket list for many years and I finally got to be in Florida at the right time, smack middle of winter, when the water is cold and Manatees migrate to Crystal River which is warmer. Going for the 06:00 trip was a bit too extreme with a 2H drive from Orlando and a 3h time difference (that would have made getting up at midnight California time), so the 11:00 tour was more reasonable and that turned out to be a good choice as the early morning weather had thunderstorms and lightening, which definitely impacted the experience for those who went early (especially as boats are not allowed out while lightening is happening).
Since we arrived a bit early, went to check out the national park:
thankfully the water was pretty clear
baby getting milk from mommy
There are many companies that offer tours, and they are not all as good. Having the right guide and a company that gets you there hopefully when all the other boats are not there, does matter.
In my case I was also interested in diving while I was there, so that steered me towards Bird's Underwater and that was a great choice: they were professional, definitely did the best to optimize our experience and in my case, I was lucky enough to be put on a 3rd boat with no one else since the other boats were full. Kudos to Bird's underwater for caring about our experience and not just shoving us onto another full boat to save themselves a bit.
pre-trip briefing
out expert guide
everyone was thrown in the water in groups, it was crowded when we arrived
Time to get in the water. I was a bit worried that the water would be too cold (21C), especially as they only offered a 3mm wetsuit, which I knew was way insufficient for diving, but turns out when swimming a lot back and forth at the surface, I didn't get cold and did not need to put the 2nd wetsuit I had requested just in case (and for the dive, later):
let's go :)
water was not clear unfortunately
The few I saw early were quick and not very clear water:
Most of the time in the water was ok but not great. The manatees were not that interested in interacting (which is normal, they are not here for our amusement :) ), and the water was so murky in places, that if one was by my feet, I could hardly see it. But around the end, the other groups had left, and I got super lucky with a baby that was curious and playful:
While in Crystal River with Bird's Underwater Manatee Dive Center, they were able to set me up for a dive at Blue Grotto, around 45mn away, in a fresh water cave, which they nicely did. I went there after playing with some friendly and curious manatees:
All the fish and very friendly and curious fresh water turtle were all seeded as there was no life there originally. It does make for a cool dive site. The bottom is a dark cave with pretty much nothing except being 30m deep in a dark cave, so my guide took me there, but we didn't stay at the bottom very long:
cute nose :)
Heading to the bottom:
honestly the bottom would only be dangerous if you lost all your lights or totally ran out of air
After a bit of time down there, heading back to where there is more light and more fish:
nice to see fresh water fish I had never seen before
And after just about 1h, it was time to get out as the site was closing at 17:00 and we had to get out :)
Looks like I didn't plan the diving part of the Kauai trip enough, and trusted the first result I found on Google, when in fact I had notes from 15 years ago of not so good experience with the company that seems to have been the same back then. This time around, without telling a very long story again, I'm putting those clear notes for myself and others to make sure I never mistakenly go diving with them again:
the boat was way too small and had no room for gear
the crew was not geared towards advanced divers and were perfectly fine ending a 45 to 60mn dive after 15mn because one beginner diver was running out of air, penalizing everyone else (they didn't care)
Nick, the passive aggressive lying boat driver I got the first day, ended up behaving like a complete ass, and when I had to leave and go to another company, Fathom Five, that "wonderful gentleman" felt it was his duty to call them and badmouth me (thankfully they took my word for it that he was full of shit, and my diving with them was oh so much better)
Dive Kauai, continued their poor performance by giving 3mm wetsuits in 24C water when clearly 5mm plus is needed for most people unless they have a good amount of body fat. I had to get 2 wetsuits from them and put them together, which was uncomfortable
Multiple dives were ruined because of the complete beginners they mixed with me, including those 2 who were so unprepared that their mask didn't work, and then they were unable to go to the bottom (10m) and cancelled the dive for everyone. What a mess!
I mean beginners should be allowed to dive, but Dive Kauai sucks at handing them along with non beginners, which makes them a very poor choice for advanced divers. Of course they failed to admit that when I called and explicitely enquired about it, being happier to take my money at the expensive of a near guaranteed bad experience, but just for harboring Nick, the passive aggressive lying boat driver, that's a definitely a reason not to go with them as long as he works there.
Day1: 2 Boat Dives and 4 shore gives (downgraded to 2) with Dive Kauai
Yeah, so with that unfortunate intro aside, the diving in Kauai was what I remembered, not bad compared to many places, but probably not the best in Hawaii, Maui still remaining the best. But Kauai wins for the many many turtles, that part is definitely amazing:
cleaning station for turtles, there were 6 or 7 sleeping there
Afternoon was supposed to have 2 shore dives and 2 night dives, but the complete beginners I was paired with ruined the first dive, and then the guide said he didn't think night dives would be so good due to silt (that, he may have been correct on). Diving from the jetty was not super easy, kind of rocky and not easy to navigate, but the turtles were happy to come up for a rest:
Day2: 2 Boat Dives with Dive Kauai
Day 2, I went back on the Dive Kauai Boat, thankfully the other divers were more experienced, but Nick still found new reasons to be unhappy with me, and made sure to tell me on the way out that I could not bring my camera bag on the boat the next day because it would be full, lovely... That said he fixed the issue a few hours later by saying got knows what about me so that he would not be allowed on "his" boat the next day (not his boat of course). The 2 morning dives were decent:
Oh yeah, now I remember that the dive guide seemed a bit green and got anxious when I got just a bit ahead of him or went to check a small hole within easy reach of him, when he only had 2 divers to keep track of. Sigh... But that confirms what I was saying that Dive Kauai is definitely not for advanced divers.
Day3: 2 DPV Shore Dives
Day 3 was supposed to be 2 boat dives, but by then Nick managed to ruin my previous afternoon with hours on the phone to undo the mess he created on purpose, and ultimately failing. I ended up doing 2 DPV dives which were actually a lot of fun and, Jimi, the guide who came to meet me was awesome.
yes, it's pretty awesome
Despite all the crap and bad feelings from Nick, the DPV dives were lots of fun, even if the DPVs themselves had worrisome failure modes, including no maser shutoff of wrist deadman switch. I was even told that sometimes they get stuck on, that's not good... Thankfully they did not for me and they were definitely fun.
Before the dives, a dive Kauai manager/coordinator also came to meet me that morning to apologize about the mess created the previous day, which was nice of him and honestly I was ok enough walking away after that and burrying the hatchet, except passive agressive backstabbing Nick felt it would be good to call the next company I was going with to badmouth me and try to convince them not to dive with me, oh nice... So yeah, after that Nick made sure I let everyone know on every medium available to avoid him and Dive Kauai. I hope he gets fired....
Day4: 6 Dives with Fathom Five
Fathom Five was able to accommodate me for 6 dives in a day, 4 boat dives and 2 shore dusk/night dives, which was impressive. I got lucky with the boat dives that day, they were good:
the guide was good and gave us a good briefing on what we could see
not hard to find turtles, they are literally everywhere
I finally found where the lobsters were hiding in Sheraton Caves, took me a while to find the spot again
For the dusk/night dives, we were 4 divers, plus the guide:
Then, I found this beautiful Stary Night Octopus, but that also ended the dive as it got a bit too friendly with us:
While in Malta, I had heard and read that there was interesting diving to be done there, so I contacted a lot of dive shops until I found one that was able to make as many dives a day as was possible. Dawn Diving were the ones to answer and help and provided competent staff and equipment.
I didn't get very lucky with the weather and it severely limited the available dive sites, as well as cancelled some afternoon dives, but I stil got to see some cool wrecks (Malta is more about wrecks than the fish life which is ok, at best)
Day #2, we went to Gonzo via ferry, cool trip:
I was supposed to get more dives in Gonzo but conditions were not good, so it was 2 dives only.
Video:
Day #3 was on the west side and thankfully allowed 4 dives:
Videos:
Day #4 was south of the island for the first 2 dives:
Finding a location for the 3rd dive was tricky, eventually did muck shipwreck diving at X127:
When Arturo and I planned our next diving trip we had heard about T&C, and decided to give it a shot. Unlike Roatan, the island has close to nothing to do outside of beach stuff, but when going for diving, that didn't matter :)
it was a nice boat, bigger than Aggressor
nice welcome :)
One of our dive guides liked costumes, she was well equipped :)
Here is our trip:
The diving was ok but didn't quite compare with the Pacific. Still got to see some nice things:
great slipper lobster
plenty of big lobsters
some amount of sharks too
found one octopus
my dive buddy, Arturo
this fish doesn't fly but it extends it wings to look bigger
baby puffer was very cute :)
night dives were often better than day dives, and found one squid
a good amount of crabs at night
of all kinds
Outside of a few sharks and one dive site that was a nurse shark nursery, we had one dophin visit us and I was also able to see one eagle ray. Neither were interested in divers and went away quickly
I was the only one who spotted it, it came and went quickly
G-Spot had plenty of nurse sharks, I love them, they look cute and cuddly to me :)
the texture on them, is wonderful
the baby nurse shark was even cuter, learning to hunt from its mother
they like to sleep under rocks
and they don't seem to care if they don't entirely fit and stick out a lot ;)
And that was it for diving, 6 days, 27 dives, did every dive except one that I had to abort early due to a bad cold that blocked my ear pretty badly. Diving at the end was non trivial as I was barely able to equalize. Thankfully I had enough drugs to open things up barely enough to equalize.
The boat was nice, TCE was bigger than aggressor, and the room was spacious enough. There was a shread of cell service during the last 4.5 days, but enough to sent an urgent Email or text, nothing more than that. We got lucky and got multiple nice sunsets:
Thanks to the crew for taking care of us during the week and helping us find the local critters.
Finding a boat for Thailand was actually tricky, as they are many, and it was a little last minute for other reasons, but thankfully most boats were cheap and doing very short or short trips (2 to 5 days), which I avoid since they are not worth the time. In the process, I thankfully avoided a bunch of bad boats, some were overcrowded, some had untrained diving crew. Thankfully the boat I found that did 2 back to back trips, for a total of 10 days, was the Phinisi, and along with the Junk, one of the best boats in the area.
Sure enough, the crew was attentive, well trained, and cheerful. The diving groups were 4 to 5 people per divemaster, which is the best case scenario for the guides to be able to keep track of their divers and avoid a train of divers following a single guide. They also did a good job in making sure the different groups did not end up in the same place very often. All in all, outside of the boat being a bit smaller and less luxurious than the Waow, which was probably the best boat in the business by far, most everything else was more or less on the same level, which was awesome. For the addicts and people who did have to keep track of things back home during the 10 days, the boat didn't have satellite internet, but was within cell phone range once every 1.5 days at most, so that part wasn't too bad either.
Nice boat:
Here is our trip:
The views from the boat, from islands to sunsets, were spectacular, of course:
We went to land a couple of times, and one was unscheduled. Unfortunately Thailand has some amount of restrictions on when we were able to dive or which beaches we could set foot, on. The first stop was going back to port after an electrical problem prevented the compressors from working, making diving hard if you can't refill tanks. We missed one dive that day, but to the boat's credit, they got people lined up at night to come on the boat and fix the issue within hours of our arrival. During that time, we went to celebrate halloween in local bars on land, so it wasn't so bad :)
by random luck, I had my LED outfit with me, I don't normally bring it on dive boats :)
The second stop was Similan National Park, a nice 1.5H stop:
yeah, it was hard to carry that rock up there and balance it just right :)
Nice wildlife:
rare colorful pigeon
probably a water monitor
Anyway, we were there for divng :) Unfortunately this season was a bit unusual, and the amount of bigger critters was much lower than normal. We didn't get to see a single manta, shark, or more elusive whaleshark unfortunately. That said, there were still things to see:
plenty of small fishes
nice banded sea snake
nice manta shrimp, so colorful as always
cool fish :)
clown triggerfish are always fun :)
what a beautie
another unusual fish
the only sharks I saw, but they were cute and sleeping in a hole
fantastic camouflage
several cool caves
One really weird thing I saw on a safety stop, was this thing, with a small fish still alive, swimming inside its stomach:
The soft corals were pretty:
More pictures:
We had a 4 dives a day, including a daily dusk or night dive. I was able to use my new video light which had a cool blue/ultraviolet mode:
My favorite videos;
Dive Log:
Thanks to the crew for their hard work, and I hope to be able to come back in the future (apparently April would have higher odds of nice critters):
Since I was asked why Roatan, the real answer was that I had a trip planned to Turks and Caicos as my first diving trip to the Carribeans, but the boat cancelled the charter on us less than a month from departure, and by then Arturo and my calendar didn't have a lot of room left, so we had to find a liveaboad during the same week, figured we'd keep the same general area, and ended with Roatan.
I'll start with a quick review first, Roatan had interesting soft coral, even if not to Fiji standards, but the fish life was on the lower side compared to most other places I've dived at. It wasn't bad, but ont a top destination I'd say. The boat itself was reasonably big, but ended up with the smallest cabin on the boat and the smallest cabin I had ever had on any liveaboard: there was no room to put belongings anywhere, so I left them in my luggage on the same bed I slept on, not the best but oh well.
Apart from that, the weather was warm, actually kind of too warm and hummid on land, but thankfully more bearable on the boat once at sea. The weather was nice, and viz was good to very good on most dives. Water was between 28C, up to 30C, very comfortable (albeit not ideal for corals that don't like it that warm).
Here is our trip:
not a lot of rays during this trip, but found a few
we did find huge crabs
crashed plane
and prince albert wreck
almost no hard coral, but some nice enough soft colar
Our safety stop between the first 2 dives was very nice, big french key:
After those 3 dives, Arturo and I went to board the Aggressor, big enough looking boat, but the dive deck was bigger than it needed to be and in turn some cabins like the one we got, were super small
dive deck was spacious
dolphins came to race us a few times, but never saw or heard any during the dives
The next day, we started our 5.5 days of diving, 5 dives a day every day but one. Night dives were worth it overall, but it was unfortunate that the boat's schedule put the night dives after dinner: never had the chance to properly clean up/dress up for dinner, and it was hard to eat when you were going right back to the water (of course, also no wine with dinner).
Day #1:
Day #2 started with a shark feeding, didn't see any of those sharks during any dive except that feeding:
big groupers also came to join
multiple kinds, even
saw a few small turtles
We got lucky to see squids at night, they were curious:
Day #3:
Without our guides, we'd have missed a lot of things, like this burrowing fish:
Thanks to the guides who found us some sea horses I would have missed:
interesting starfish like animal that moved quickly
On the 4th day, we went by Cannery Bank, which had very friendly nurse sharks since they get fed:
during the next dive, the nurse sharks came to see us many times
I mentioned earlier that I didn't think there were lots of fish in Roatan compared to many places I've been to, but we did get schools on 3 dives, including this school of barracudas:
Roatan did have some amount of Manta shrimps, they were fun to play with:
And I even found a squid in daylight, which we followed for a while. It as not thrilled, we got it out of breath :)
it tried to turn into a weed :)
Day #5 started with a wreck:
found a nurse shark sleeping in the rocks
Even found a somewhat rare slipper lobster:
Day #6 was only 2 dives left at the same 40ft point dive site we had done the first day:
Let's end with a turtle eating:
And that was it. Did all the dives from the trip, 29 out of 26 :)
While the boat offered plenty of dives (26), the last day we could have done at least 2 more, but we went back to port and were invited to get off the boat and do land activities. This was fine, but I wish they had made it more clear since we would have used that time to do land activities we had done on previous days by arriving a day earlier. Oh well, so, we did a brewery tour which was ok-ish and a way to kill a few hours until the evening celebrations and dinner (at our cost at the yacht club):
I had a few days before Xmas and Hawaii's big island sounded like an
easy trip, and fun with the recent lava flows, so I went there a few
days and did 8 dives over 3 days.
On the first day, I did a couple of dives with Big Island Divers in the
afternoon/evening to see the Manta Rays. The Manta Ray Night Dive is
spectacular as always:
Short Video:
Long Video:
Water hovered between 27C and 25C even at night, which was borderline
cold for my 3mm wetsuit, but thankfully I didn't get cold (I added a hood when not moving
much).
The next days, I did 2 more dives with Big Island Divers in the morning:
Kona Shore Divers was super nice to take me last minute for 2 more dives in the afternoon just
before the Luau I had that night:
The 3rd morning, for my last hours in Kona before driving to Hilo, 2 more dives with Big Island Divers:
Dubai was on my way back from diving in Maldives, and since it's full of fun things to do, I figured I'd go diving in one of the 2 Aquariums. The Lost Chambers Aquarium by palm beach, also offered aquarium diving. It felt more appealing, especially as they use ocean water, so there is no restriction in bringing your own gear (including camera) unlike other aquariums that try to prevent contamination, but it turns out their diving aquarium is actually smaller, and they charge an even more ridiculous amount of money for a dive ($330 for 30mn), while the bigger Dubai aquarium was a bit less than half, although you had to pay extra for the guide to film you (since I couldn't bring my own camera).
So, I went with the Dubai aquarium, which I think was a good choice, it's still not cheap, but no aquarium is, 30mn felt short, but it was probably long enough given that I didn't have to go anywhere, and the extra I paid for video, gave me some good shots, when I'm usually never in diving shots :)
The dive center had all the gear you needed (but make sure to get the 5mm wetsuit, 3mm is too cold for 24C):
Like all aquariums, they have a small platform you go from:
And then I got a bunch of shots even if the quality was lesser than my own diving camera:
And interestingly, while the lost chambers aquarium might not be the best choice to dive (more limited hours for diving and a lot more expensive), that other aquarium is in my opinion the nicer one of the two to visit from the dry side :)
video summary:
This was my first time going to Maldives, for a combination of reasons like it's just about as far as you can make something be from where I live in California (more convenient for people in Europe), I'm also troubled by the country's politics and laws, and the place is pretty crowded but most of the boats seem to offer similar dive sites on similar schedules, causing more crowding. Still, it was time to go and try, so I picked one of the higher end boats, Carpe Novo.
I first did some land based diving with Ocean Junkies as soon as I arrived (2 dives in the afternoon after arriving and 2 more dives the next morning before going on the liveaboard). Those dives were actually surprisingly good:
so many eels in a hole
The next morning, I went back with Ocean Junkies for 2 more dives, and they were quite good too:
got lucky to see a tiger shark so close to town
I then went to Carpe Novo, we were supposed to get a checkout dive that day, but it never happened, so in the end we started diving the next day:
We did a couple of dusk/night dives:
we got to see a whale shark in passing
rally realy small octopus
this was really special, we saw 2 octopus having sex
poor shark went for a tasty lure
beautiful jelly fish
We definitely got to see a lot of eagle rays:
We also got to see a fair amount of nurse sharks, they are so cute. I found this one:
One of the highlights was this dive where we saw 8 or 9 mantas that stayed with us for the whole dive:
It's a good thing that I had two cameras (RX100M3 and RX100M7), as the M3 I normally used, ended up fogging up from how many pictures I took, and I was able to continue with the other one:
We got lucky with octopuses, plenty to see, one even went feeding for us
And that was it for the dives, 9 days, unfortunately not a lot of dives for that amount of time (only 25 dives), but apparently in Maldives, it's hard to get more for a variety of reasons (3 dives/day seems standard, and it's not allowed to boat at night if the weather isn't good, and it wasn't).
We had a fair amount of rain, and bad visibilty and low light most days, but all in all, we still had a good time and saw things.
We saw some nice islands from the boat:
The day before last, we got a covid test so that we could fly out:
'till next time:
If I come back, they recommended a south trip the 10 day trip coming back in April-May, or a north only trip (which they don't currently offer).
