Archive for the ‘Scuba Diving’ Category

Living not far from the south coast of France we regularly stare out across the azur Mediterranean and wonder where, in this idyllic looking environment, is the best place to scuba dive. There is scuba diving where we live, offshore of the Bay of St.Tropez, but the island, Porquerolles and Port Cros, are much more interesting.

Port-Cros has been a National Park since 1963 and the entire island is strictly protected (no cars or bikes) including the sea where there is a magnificent variety of marine life including seaweeds, sea urchins, sponges and grasses, and fish including damsel fish, octopus,moray eels, cardinal fish and rascasse. Swimmers and divers can follow a planned route to see the underwater spectacle.

However, when the east wind blows (which is not often) the sea is dirty and not an inviting environment to don your fins, mask, regulator and bottle. So where else can you go?

Now the Med is quite a big sea -

With no fewer than 21 countries sharing the Med as part of their coastline and many thousands of islands there must be some good places but don’t forget those 21 countries empty into the Med and there is only the 9 mile gap between Morocco and Spain where the sea can drain in and out of the Atlantic. The Med is in effect landlocked and therefore a good flush of clean water is not going to happen. It has an average depth of 1,500 metres and at its deepest point in the Ionian sea (which is between southern Italy and Greece)  it is 5,267 metres.

Where to go – we are researching the subject because our daughter is returning from Boracay where she has been learning to dive and wants to continue her diving education in the Mediterranean this summer. Now Boracay is in the Philippines – warm waters, coral and plentiful marine life. We think the Mediterranean may prove somewhat disappointing after Boracay…….time will tell. Due to the salinity and water temperatures the Med cannot support coral and therefore the marine life is limited.

Our research has come up with some of the better dive sites to visit in the Med – over the next few days we shall try to give you the best – often rated number 1 is the Zenobia , a huge wreck just off the coast of Cyprus at Larnaca.

The Zenobia

The pristine wreck of a huge roll on, roll off ferry which lies in 40 m of water just outside Larnaca harbour in Cyprus.  You reach the wreck at about 15 m which then goes all the way down to 42 m. Fabulous, fabulous dive. Probably the best shipwreck dive in the world at recreational depths. There are some great swim-throughs and you need many dives to see anything like all of it.

The Zenobia is a 178 metre long ferry that went down in 1980 with over 100 large vehicles onboard, giving this dive plenty of exploration.  The ship lies on its port side.  Visibility is usually quite good; some days it stretches to 35m.  Experienced divers can penetrate the wreck to see the interior, including two trucks still hanging upside down from their chains, but visibility can drop drastically in the confined spaces.

The ships engine room is also spectacular but it is difficult to find and you need to be a competent diver to reach this destination

Though the wreck is the main attraction, triggerfish, barracuda and enormous grouper can also be spotted here.

The video from sirelak gives a good representation of what the dive is about.

We shall continue with this series over the next few days.

This is Cut Across Shorty a VS 4c climb, courtesy of The Jersey Rock Climbing Club:

I was going to tackle the British Isles as a group, but Jersey has so much to offer – great climbing, surfing and scuba diving to name just a few of the recommended activities, that I am going to go no further than this jewel of an island where a weekend full of action is waiting for anyone looking for a variety of extreme sports in one small area.

Climbing is a great way to get a body workout, while at the same time challenging your mind, and Jersey has a wide selection for you. The island has some of the best climbing areas in Europe and the variety of rock and unspoilt scenery make it a spectacular experience for beginners and experienced climbers alike.

It’s an ideal place to visit: perfect days, un-crowded cliffs and great climbing, regular dips in the sea to cool off and great pubs to retire to at the end of the day.

From the impressive 50m tower of The Pinnacle to the extensive and confusing buttresses of Grosnes, through the delightful ‘mini-cliffs’ at Corbiere and out to the north coast, there really is plenty here to keep you busy.  Homesick Angle on The Pinnacle is one the the best HVS (hard very severe) routes you could possibly hope for.

All the routes on the island (there are 1100 listed in the book) are trad and most of them are on high quality granite. The island has long been a bolt-free zone – the local climbing club originally had just two rules for the members – abide by the Country Code, and no fixed protection!

If you want to arm yourself in advance with some useful information, ‘Jersey Climbs’ is the first guidebook to be produced for Jersey in twelve years. It has 188 pages with lists, grades, advice and details of the 1100 routes  to be found there.

And then there’s the surfing…

Jersey’s shores are bombarded by waves and not only are they some of the best waves in the British Isles but they are also some of the warmest… always worth bearing in mind.

And there are great scuba diving opportunities here too, whether you want to investigate an old wreck or float amongst black faced pennies, corals and luminous jewel anemones in pinks, blues, greens and oranges. The summer months are even more interesting when the warm waters bring in  exotic marine wildlife  such as sea horses, dolphins and basking sharks. Jersey’s coastal seawater is of award-winning cleanliness and this is reflected in the abundance of sea life to be found there.

Other things you can do in Jersey besides rock climbing, abseiling and surfing are BloKarting on the beach, Sea Kayaking, Caving, Coasteering, Clay Pigeon Shooting, Cycling, Golf, Powerboat Trips, Fishing Excursions, Horse Riding and Zorbing. I’ve probably missed some out.

Not just a banking paradise then…

I don’t know why, but I never think of China and The Tropics in the same sentence. It doesn’t sound right does it, but one of our readers alerted us to the fantastic scuba diving in the warm tropical waters of Sanya and we decided it was well worth investigating.

To give you an idea of location and what it relates to, you might be interested to know that the island of Hainan is approximately the same latitude (20 Degrees North) as Punta Cana in the  Dominican Republic and its beaches are similar to those in Mexico.

Sanya is an important political, economic, cultural and foreign trade port in the southern part of Hainan, China. It is also a well-known coastal tourist city filled with tropical landscapes and local customs. It is situated in the southernmost part of China and has been called “the remotest cape of the earth” since ancient times.

It has a tropical coastal monsoon climate with very warm weather all year around. Its daily average temperature is 25.4C and annual rainfall is 1,279mm. It is famed for its clear fresh air and abundant sunshine.

Baifu Bay & Sun Bay are the best diving sites. You have to reach both with a speedboat from Yalong Bay. It takes about 10 min. The visibilitiy of the water is up to 8-16 meters with a lot of red coral and beautiful tropical fish.

They say that scuba diving at Yalong Bay and Dadonghai is as good as the diving in Bali, Indonesia or Thailand… although some reports say that Yalong is very expensive and all reports mention that language is a barrier.

Almost the entire peninsula is surrounded by coral reefs which come under the Hainan Sanya Natural Coral Reef Nature Reserve. The reserve also includes two other coral reef areas: Yalong Bay, a few miles East of Sanya; and, directly West of Sanya, Xi Mao and Dong Mao Islands, in Sanya Bay.

About 30kms due west of Sanya is the island of  Wuzhizhou. The west and north side of this island is relatively flat with soft white sandy beaches. The sea water there is extremely clear with a maximum visible depth of 27 meters (90 ft)and is rich in nightlight snails, sea cucumber, lobsters, sierra fish, urchins, pomfret and colorful tropical fish. The coral reefs, which are fantastic and of different shapes in the seabed of the southern sea area, are well-preserved. This is a great place for diving.

Wuzhizhou Island

There’s a bit of a surf culture growing too in this area…

Readers of our site will also be happy to know that you can skydive, whitewater raft and scuba dive on the Great Barrier Reef  from this town…

It is one of only two areas in Australia where the Wet Tropics rainforest and the Great Barrier Reef meet and is a culmination of the best that Far North Queensland has to offer. Not only does the golden beach stretch for over 14 kilometres with tropical islands scattered close by, but the water is calm, crystal clear, and brimming with fish.

What’re you waiting for?!

I don’t think you will find anything more unique, unusual and extreme as diving in the Dead Sea. Sure, you can dive under ice – pretty extreme and very beautiful… but oh so cold. Whereas diving in the Dead Sea… well, read on.

For starters, the Dead Sea is 420m below sea level. This is the lowest point on the face of the earth. This vast stretch of water receives a number of inflowing rivers, amongst them the River Jordan. Once the waters reach the Dead Sea they are land-locked, so they evaporate, leaving behind a dense, rich, cocktail of salts and minerals that supply industry, agriculture and medicine with some of its finest products.

This land-locked sea is 80 kilometres (50 miles) long, approximately 14 kilometres (9 miles) wide. The northern and larger part is very deep, reaching at one point a depth of 430m (1320 feet). The southern bay is, on the contrary, very shallow, hardly averaging a depth of 4m (13 feet).

The water is warm and soothing and ten times saltier than a normal sea.  It is rich in chloride salts of magnesium, sodium, potassium, bromine and several others. It is also unusually buoyant. Because of the extremely high salt content it is devoid of all plant and animal life, or almost: they now know for a fact that Halophilic bacterium and algae lives in this tough environment

However, it’s the glitteringly beautiful salt consolidation that makes diving here such an extreme experience.

Water temperatures vary between 18° C in January to 28°-35° C in August. Visibility ranges from 1 up to 20 meters. The Diving season is all year around.

It’s a challenge though. With that sort of buoyancy you need to take on a lot of lead to go down. With a salt concentration of 32%, it is so saline that it practically precludes swimming. You can dive in, though hermetically-sealed goggles are highly adviseable, but the density of the water will pop you back to the surface like a cork. Remaining underwater for any period of time requires a Herculean effort – hence the need for a lot of lead.

I’m sorry I can’t bring you a video where the sun is shining as they say the sea glitters with millions of diamonds, but thanks anyway to Deadseadivers for this video.

If you are thinking of going diving in the Dead Sea, we suggest you get hold of the professionals out there, dive with them, and do what they say. The environment is incredibly challenging, not to say dangerous and each diver must prepare himself very carefully in advance. www.deadseadivers.com use  full face mask and plenty of weights as part of their specially maintained equipment.

If you’re a real adrenaline junkie there are several more things you can do besides scuba diving in the Dead Sea. You can hike out of the area trekking up the Wadi Mujib, up the narrow, 50 metre high, walls of the Wadi. Your guide will take you through a series of cascading waterfalls, each more challenging than the one before.

And then of course, if you go out there in April, you can always take part in the Dead Sea Marathon – 42 kms starting in Amman and going down to the Dead Sea – note the ‘down’… fortunately it is downhill almost all the way! This is an international ‘fun run’ that takes place every April and raises money for The Society for the Care of Neurological Patients.

The DSUM  has become increasingly more popular ever since its conception in 1986. Several world record runners and champions have participated and the 2009 run broke all records with more than 4100 runners representing 48 nationalities. It marked a turning point in the future of the event as a national and international athletic, touristic and above all charitable event with the continuous support of Jordanian organizations.

The 17^th Dead Sea Ultra Marathon will take place on April 9^th 2010, more than 5000 participants are expected to participate.

And if afterwards you want to sit back and relax – well there’s nowhere more suitable than doing that in the healing waters of the Sea itself (JacobYosha):

Yesterday we blogged about a place called Boracay, located in the Philippine archipelago, as being one of the best and most beautiful places to go if you wanted to really taste the exotic side of the extreme sport of kite surfing.

We noticed that the kite surfing beach is called Bulabog Beach and that this beach is reef protected…..tick tock, tick tock….white sand beaches…..hello there must be some excellent scuba diving and so we started doing some research.

Wow – one huge can of worms has been opened – we cannot only mention Boracay when it comes to scuba diving for around the 7,107 islands that make up the Republic of the Philippines ther are many, many other places to dive.

There are some 15 sites around Boracay alone  and there is a well established infrastructure for beginers and the more experienced alike. The island is one of the best places in the Phillipines on which to learn the sport and you will find courses that will suit the novice to the Divemaster.

Yapak is at the north of Boracay and offers some excellent opportunities to see large marine life. The two walls of Yapak are the most exciting sites around the island, but due to rough waters and strong currents, they are for the experienced only.

Descending from 30-60m, the walls have a vast array of soft corals and gorgonians. You’re sure to run across snappers, surgeonfish, groupers and sweetlips as well as having the chance to see whitetip and gray reef sharks. Hammerheads and manta rays are spotted occasionally.

On the eastern side of the north point lies Bat Cave which also offers some challenging diving. The site is made up of a series of caves that eventually end with the main one itself. Marine life includes lobsters, sea snakes and a multitude of smaller tropical fish. Diving here should only be undertaken in the best of conditions as seas can be rough and currents strong.

Situated on the west coast of Boracay, this area offers some superb diving. Probably the most famous site is Friday’s Rock. Close to the shore and at a depth of 18m, this boulder houses a wide variety of fish life including wrasses, tangs, damselfishes, emperors, stingrays and scorpionfish. There is a well-known fish feeding station here which allows close contact with the marine life and excellent opportunities for photography.

Slightly to the north are two walls named Punta Bonga 1&2. The shallower of these drops to 24m and you can expect to see a good variety of soft coral as well as triggerfish, groupers, moray eels and lionfish. The deeper wall starts at 30m and descends to 50m. Gorgonians are prolific and you have every chance of encountering stingrays, tuna, barracuda and sharks.

Other sites in this area include Angol Point which is particularly suitable for beginners, snorkelling and photography and Camia which is a 30m long cargo boat, sunk in 2001 and now developing into a good artificial reef.

Crocodile Island is situated on the southern tip of Boracay. Currents can be strong in the channel between Boracay and Panay Islands, so care should be taken and the area is not for novices. The diving, however, is spectacular and you are likely to come across pretty much anything.

The wall at Crocodile Island slopes gently from 5-24m and the currents allow a wide variety corals to survive. Fish life is diverse and includes wrasses, sweetlips, groupers, snappers and banded sea snakes.

There are two other sites worthy of mention in the vicinity. Laurel Islands 1&2, which offer gently sloping walls with a good variety of coral and diverse fish life. The larger of the islands has an 8m swim-through that is worth exploring. Again, currents can be very strong here. Channel Drift, as its name suggests, offers some great drift dives through canyons and crevices where you can encounter whitetip sharks and trevallies.

In the video below from Mxp1980 you will get an excellent idea of why Boracay is such a great place to dive – enjoy!

We also thought a map might be quite useful – should you now decide that Boracay is your destination – should it be to scuba dive or kite surf! A good website for dive locations is www.asiadivesite.com

Map courtesy of www.boracaybeaches.info o

tine life. The two walls of Yapak are the most MMxciting sites around the island, but due to rough waters and strong currents, they are for the experienced on

strong in this channel between Boracay and Panay Islands, so care should be taken and the area is not for novices. The diving, however, is spectacular and you are likely to come across pretty much anything.array of soft corals and gorgonians. You’re sure to run across snappers, surgeonfish, groupers and sweetlips as well as hav

BatSituated on the southern tip of Boracay, this island resembles the above reptile when viewed from a distance, hence the name. Currents can be strong in this channel between Boracay and Panay Islands, so care should be taken and the area is not for novices. The diving, however, is spectacular and you are likely to come across pretty much anything.Cave

On the eastern side of the north point also offers some challenging diving. The site is made up of a series of caves that eventually end with the main one itself. Marine life includes lobsters, sea snakes and a multitude of smaller tropical fish. Diving here should only be undertaken in the best of conditions as seas can be rough and currents strong.