26/02/2020
A tad late – again – but, a pity not to share a few photos from our last trip North to Terry’s! After the Holibobs, illnesses, family commitments and a fairly hectic work schedule, it was great to have most of the ‘Gang’ back on board! With a great start to the day, we were greeted by a huge pod of dolphins (12-15), before we even arrived at the Coastguard Barge…unbelievable, I have never seen them that close to shore, before. The conditions both above and below, were in stark contrast to our previous trip: flat calm, 10m + vis, no BIG fish (apart from a few friendly hamour), and humongous tides and strong current. Hardly surprising with the Wolf Moon making its annual appearance the previous night! Nonetheless, my group of 3 rebreather-divers, managed to soldier on down, even if it did take us about 10 minutes to reach the bottom.☹ Although there weren’t many fish, the highlight was a huge shoal of Queenfish bombarding me and Robert at the Cleaning station☺ Photos by Danny (testing his new lens), so really looking forward to some of his work this season, and Karim…see if you can spot the extremely 'rare to Qatar’ nudibranch, which he has only seen, once before! Obviously, as a highly accomplished ‘nudi-spotter’, I obviously did☺ Weather not looking good, yet again, for the weekend, so Advanced Wreck training it is☺
16/12/2019
Forgot, we had 4 different rebreathers on board, perhaps a Qatar record? With 2 more joining, it will perhaps be a 'world record':-) For sure, someone will enlighten us! Hands off your hips sailor!
16/12/2019
Good dive, bad dive, SQ always says it as it is: no ifs or buts or, indeed, even a maybe (sorry, if you’ve suffered 3 years of Brexit and the recent UK general election like me), but the dives on Saturday were CRAP! Possibly, exacerbated by the previous two dives being so good – this was Qatar diving at its absolute worst; however, it is what we must always be prepared for! Topside, conditions were ok, but I did warn, before the dive that, after almost a week of rain and windy weather, not to mention spring-tides from hell - the conditions underwater, probably wouldn’t be the best! And so it proved: as soon as the first group hit the bottom at Terry’s, they could hardly see the anchor, let alone the wreck…Big John wasn’t diving, so they couldn’t even blame him☹ Off to Huwaila it was then - one of the reasons we went to Terry’s, Huwaila is always decent vis, even when conditions elsewhere are CRAP! Thank Heavens, the vis was better (only just), but with the strong tides, the current was absolutely horrendous! Anyway, enough said, other than a bad dive is better than no dive: highlight, Dave spotted an Eagle Ray, but a combination of the strength of the current and speed it was travelling, meant he couldn’t get a photo. As ever, the photographers managed to make the best of some awful conditions, and got some really nice shots of those small thingees.☺
12/12/2019
After the understandable excitement over the past 2 weeks, with both Zebra sharks and the Whale shark, at Terry’s and Marjan, we neglected to mention those small critters, which I never seem to spot! It would be remiss of us not to share, and probably why both, Amy - Queen nudi-spotter and Dave, responsible for the photos - never seem to see the “Sharks”☺ Wonder what we'll encounter this weekend(?) BIG or small - well, Dave is with us, so it definitely won't be sharks!🦈🙃
16/12/2019
16/12/2019
12/12/2019