United Arab Emirates

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19th April 2013

Bit of a summary of 2013 dives this year, all of which bar two have been over on the east coast of UAE, the other two were at the Damaniyat Islands in Oman.

Normally I am up at 05:30 on Friday morning, and on the road before 06:30 with the car packed from the previous night and usually over at Scuba 2000 or Divers Down within two hours.

Of the 20 dives I have done so far this year 14 have been solo, a couple with my mate Terry, three with Vanjie and one with my daughter Yanni.

I am also very close to doing my 100th solo dive, who do I celebrate that with? Do I dive naked? ... well at last the water is warming up :)

Seven dives on Inchcape 2, which is proving to be great for nudibranchs this year as well as other stuff such as crocodile fish and coral gobies, but my favourite find has been Dendrodoris denisoni

Of course it is not all nudibranchs, and I have also been playing around more with my 85mm lens and the +10 wet diopter, which gives me a reasonable flexibility to photograph tiny critters up to 10cm in length with the poor visibility here. There is some nice green whip coral on the port side of Inchcape 2 that has a population of gobies that appear to enjoy being photographed.

My mate Terry will be over again on a business trip and we are hoping to dive the Damaniyats together in May as well as a few dives here in UAE.

Hopefully the water will warm up soon, it is still 23C at the bottom with 24C at the safety stop, and I am still diving in my old 5mm semi dry, which is probably not 5mm any more, but I also use a hooded vest. I managed to pick up a 7mm semi dry in Spain when I was in Barcelona on a business trip and used that for several dives and I was very cozy, but now that air temperatures are increasing, a bit warm on the surface, plus I need more weight to get under.

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