Saturday, 28 May 2011

Dives 13 and 14 – Kandooma Thila - South Male

The plan was to repeat dive the site from earlier in the week but to approach it from the other direction so that we

Kandooma Thila Dive Plan

were creeping up on the Shark Cleaning Station from the channel rather than the blue. Negative descent down to 15m, reef on right shoulder, go with the current, hook on at overhangs to watch fish, proceed down to cleaning station to see the sharks at 25m then up over the Thila for safety stops, pickup out in the blue. However….

We were dropped off too far from the reef and the current was so strong and the viz so poor we could not find it. So after 15 minutes of trying, it was back onto the Dhoni to reposition and try again.

Attempt two got us closer to the reef

Reef Hooking

and we managed to hook on but the viz at 25m was 10m at best and we could not see the sharks and they could not see us so we gave up and ascended to look at reef life (and where coincidently the current was not as strong).

Two Jacks going away

Lots of fish not particularly interested in us.

Turtle in cave

A turtle hiding under a ledge

Turtle leaving cave

which came out when it realised we were watching

Asparagus Coral and Fishing Line 

Asparagus Coral entangled with a fishing line

Nice Coral Nice Coral 2 Nice Coral 3  

Three rather nice bits of coral life showing the variety and colours.

This single dive turned into two dives and still did not achieve the original dive plan. After four attempts on this reef, we decided to move on – the shark cleaning station would have to wait for a return visit.

No comments:

Post a Comment