South Egypt dive safari

Some pictures from a diving safari to the extreme south of Egypt, partially even extreme north of Sudan:)

Coral lit by a strobe

Sleeping masked pufferfish

This pictures were taken with our dumb Olympus u1030 camera, though this time it had help from the Fantasea Remora strobe I bought especially for this trip. I must say it rocks. I still need to check how things look in the murky Polish waters, but from what I've seen in Egypt it seems that the strobe will be useful here as well.

Red soft coral, again thanks to my new strobe

Giant moray eel

As for the trip itself it was pleasant. The reef in the south are pristine, though not much bigger fish there:( We were expecting loads of sharks and mantas but just seen two white tips. Other groups have seen a thresher, but 4 sharks for a week of diving is a rather disappointing result. Water temperature was as nice surprise. Prior to departure I did a little bit of research and I was expecting water to be somewhere around 27 degrees Celsius. This is why I bought a 7mm wetsuit especially for this safari, however it turned out that the water was 31 degrees Celsius all the time so we were diving in shorts and T-shirts:)

Corsica trip

Some pictures from the trip to Corsica.

B-17 Flying Fortress wreck near Calvi

Freediving near Calvi

Calvi citadel

Groupers on Merouville divesite, Lavezzi Islands near Bonifacio

We toured the western coast of the island doing some dives including the B-17 wreck near Calvi. This was one of the places I always wanted to dive, even before I started diving:) Generaly good food, nice weather and clear water:)

Nova Scotia dive

Been in Canada for the last two weeks on a business travel and just had to dive:) It turned out that the most convenient spot was near Halifax and so I rented gear from the Torpedo Rays dive shop and went diving in the Sandy Cove in Terence Bay.

Sandy Cove

Lighthouse near Sandy Cove

Drying gear after the dive

The water was colder than I expected (3 degrees) but the visibility surprised me in a positive way - it was around 10 meters when I was expecting 3. Didn't get to see much except for a huge lobster and hordes of hermit crabs.

Back to Samui

We planned just to pass through Samui on our way to Malaysia, but we got stuck:) It's high season here, and due to unpredictable factors Easy Divers (the center we worked for) is temporarily short staffed so we got some work (diving:D) to do. It's also great to see all our friends, and the places we used to go to:) Even people on the Big Buddha market recognize us:D

Egyptians know how to care for their reefs

Recently I stumbled upon regulations by the Egyptian Chamber of Diving and Water Sports. It is nice to know that some nations know how important it is to protect their reefs and know how to enforce that. These regulations also seem to try to improve diving operations safety. At the moment I'm not sure how many diving injuries where reported in Egypt and how many of them happened during deep recreational dives, but requiring operators to limit maximum depth to 30 meters seems to be reasonable, especially with all East European divers going to Egypt. I wrote that because, unfortunately, these divers are know to notoriously exceed depth limits set by their certifications. Of course other nationalities also do that, but not as often.

What I like the most about aforementioned regulations, is the ban on Discover Scuba Diving dives on the most spectacular reefs in the Sharm el Sheikh region, including Ras Mohammad and Tiran Strait. As for other dive courses - the possible dive sites have also been limited. Any instructor or divemaster knows what a diver who is still developing his buoyancy control can do to a reef...

Diving the wrecks of Coron Bay

For the last three days we've been diving the wrecks of Coron. Located just to the north of Palawan, on the island of Busuanga it is one of the most spectacular wreck diving sites. Amongst the scenic bays and narrow passages between islets surrounding Busuanga lie Japanese navy's auxiliary transport vessels. They were sunk during two air strikes on September 24th and October 9th 1944.

Altogether there are 7 wrecks around Busuanga, but we dove only 6 of them:

• Okikawa Maru
• Akitsushima
• Taiei Maru
• Olympia Maru
• Tangat Wreck
• Irako

More on history of Coron wrecks.

All the diving was done from the spiderlike bancas, traditional filipino boats now used for everything from transport to fishing to diving. The wrecks are rather deep for recreatioal diving, ranging from 25 to 45 meters, and all the dives we did were penetration dives. It is very easy to exceed your No Decompression Limits under such circumstances, especially if the divemaster minds only his computer which is less conservative than yours. After spending 17 minutes on decompression stop on the first days second dive we decided to use nitrox for second dives on the last two days.

The wrecks were just amazing, especially the auxiliary oiler Okikawa Maru. With her spacious tanks. Although the visibility outside was just 10 meters, inside the wrecks the water was much clearer (until someone made a false move and stirred up the silt...).



All of the dives were penetretion dives, though for less experienced divers it is also possible to stay outside the wrecks and still have a lovely dive. We were ofcourse led by a divemaster, otherwise we would have probably gotten lost and I wouldn't be writnig this. Inside the wrecks are rather comfortable, though we had to watch our heads most of the time and there were a few tight squeezes - we once exited a wreck through a propeller shaft.

Diving the Malapascua Island

20+ dive sites around the island, most of them only 10 minutes away. I haven't seen any sharks, but thats probably just my luck. I have, however, seen lots of small stuff: nudibranchs, different shrimp, crabs, pipefish, sea moths and some other weird things that I'm not able to name..

Sea moths

Ornate ghost pipefish

The sad thing about this island is that during diving you can hear underwater blasts all the time. Yes, people are fishing with dynamite around here, and lots of corals are broken:/

Magda going to Egypt for a wreck safari

Magda has been invited to go for Egyptian wreck safari as a divemaster. During a week on a liveaboard boat she's going to guide dives to: Salem Express, Giannis D, Carnatic, Chrisula K, Kimon M, Thistlegorm, Rosalie Moller and El Mina. This is going to be a great trip for her. And it's good beacause she's been put on 'fasttrack to DM' in our dive center, meaning that she'll have priority to do all the interships needed for the Divemaster course she hasn't done yet.

And in the meantime I'll be finishing my master's thesis. Great ... :/

Rescue Diver training on Piłakno Lake

Wow, Rescue Diver training seems to be as hard for the Divemasters as it is for the trainees.. especially when the divemasters are also helping during Deep Diver speciality... This is basically what me and Magda were doing last weekend.

The RD open water training focuses mainly on different ways of getting a diver having a problem to the shore or other safe place. That is why the future RDs where practicing different methods of towing a tired or unconscious diver (sometimes with rescue breathing). A lot attention is also put on searching for a missing diver. During the training trainees were first practicing, under DM supervision, different search patterns (U-shape, square etc.) and then applying these skills in a simulated rescue action.

Viz in the lake was rather poor (less than 5m) and so we had to keep really close to "our" trainee during this supervision. It was then when I got kicked in the face with to-be-rescue-diver's fin and bit off the mouthpiece of my regulator:/ I had to finish that dive on my octo.

Tropical destination chosen :D

We have chosen our tropical travel destination: it's going to be Phuket in Thailand. We're planning to do PADI Assistant Instructor course with Asian Divers a Polish diving center there, and then start working. Lot's of work ahead of us: finishing our masters thesis, finishing DM course, finding accomodation, visas, flights etc. But I can't wait to get there:D

Open Water course on Piłakno lake

Last weekend we did the OWD course internship. This was kind of hard despite that there was four of us divemaster trainees (DMTs for short), because there were 9 people doing this course and the visibility in Piłakno is at most 5m (that is before the OWDs get in the water:) ). Because of the visibility our instructor split the course into two groups so that each DMT had his own diver to supervise. So we had to do 8 dives during two days (of which one was my birthday:/). The weather was not so good either.

During the dives we supervised the OWD trainees so that they would not get lost or jump to the surface at high speed. One of my divers tried to do that so I had to catch him and bring him down. This was harder than I thought as I didn't have enough weights on me to pull him with a full BCD down... My bad..

We also helped new divers in practicing their skills, don their gear, answered A LOT of questions on different topics... all in all great fun and a very rewarding experience.

Piłakno lake diving

Our dive center, Nautica, finally has it's own diving base in Poland. It is located in Mazury, polish lake district, at lake Piłakno.


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Last weekend was longer than usual because of Corpus Christi holiday, so we went to this new diving place. Although it was raining cats and dogs during the first three (of four) days of our stay there and visibility underwater was poor, we've spent a great time there partying:) We did some diving too, preparing the place for the summer. We laid out some guide lines to the most interesting spots in the water. These spots are: a sailing boat wreck, something called "The Mower", which is supposed to be a wreck of reed mowing machine, and, ofcourse, an underwater platform used for excercises. There are lots of fish in the lake (pikes are the most interesting) and also some crayfish.

As usual, we were hoping to do a little bit of the divemaster course, unfortunately no one (except for one OWD Trainee) came because of the weather...

Diving Hvar, Croatia

A day after the "basic skills demonstration" exam we were on our way to Croatia for 7 days of diving. We hoped to do at least a part of our Divemaster practical training as this diving trip was organized by our diving center, Nautica Warszawa, and there were about 50 people. The practical training is a part of the divemaster training, it is a kind of internship - you participate, under your instructors supervision, in different courses: OWD, AOWD, Rescue one chosen speciality and you must also practice leading certified divers. This is one of the possible ways of passing the practical part of the divemaster course. The other one is so called Practical Training Excercises which basically is just simulation of the aforementioned courses. I think that the internship is a better way of learning because you deal with real divers and their problems and take part in real courses. This way you gather more experience.

It is important for us to get the Practical Training done as soon as possible because this is the most unpredictable part of the course. Our friend that was doing the previous divemaster course got stuck because nobody wanted to do the AOWD course in winter in Poland...

Unfortunately it turned out that nobody wanted to do any courses, they just wanted to dive... As there were no courses we did some diving ourselves.

Nautica Croatia is located in Stari Grad on the island of Hvar in Croataia.

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Sealife in waters around Hvar is not as rich as in Egypt (the water is much colder, around 15 degrees Celsius), but still you can find some interesting fish, like the angler fish below



Apart from that you can find lots of nudibranchs, urchins and other fish typical of the Mediterranean.



Almost all of our dives were boat dives, we did however 4 dives from the shore during the Map Making assignment of the DM course (we had to do something to push things forward!).




Additionaly we did the PADI Deep Diver course, so I'm expecting a new card to my C-Card collection :)

Hańcza lake diving

This weekend we were diving in the Hańcza lake - Poland's deepest lake (108 m).


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The weather was fair which was very nice as we were diving in wetsuits and the water had temperature of 4 degrees Celsius (39 F). We used 7+7mm wetsuits and still it was pretty damn cold down there. This dive was also a test dive for our new jackets, and a flashlight I bought the day before the trip (Princeton Tec Rage). The BCD's (Magda's Cressi Aquapro and mine Tusa Liberator) turned out to have a bit too small buoyancy for fresh water, apart from that they did good. The flashlight turned out to be total crap, even for a backup light I intended it to be. It didn't give enough light, was hard to turn on in 5mm gloves and died very fast:(

We did 5 dives during two days to a maximum depth of 30 meters. At this depth it was pretty dark, fortunately we borrowed a bigger flashlight from our friends. Nitrogen narcosis kicked in at 30 meters (probably because of the darkness and water temperature), we started feeling a bit anxious so we turned back and started our ascent. Despite that dive dive was great and we took some interesting photos :