Up at the usual time, partly to say cheerio to Tomer [I got his name right just before he left! -- sorry, Tomer] who was off to catch his flight. I think Tomer has had a good holiday. I think his only moment of sadness will be because he didn't get to see any manta rays.
Timing is everything as the first dive of the day to Lankan Finolhu was the "backup" manta ray site if Sunlight Thila on day one was unsuccessful. And sure enough we saw a couple of mantas gracefully turning on sixpences over a small part of the reef whilst being stripped of parasites by "cleaner" fish, a so called cleaning station. One had a 2.5m wingspan and the other a 3m wingspan. Quite magnificent greatures as graceful and sublime in the water as the whale shark. Tomer, if you're reading this, next time leave on the Saturday!
As it happens this dive was a qualifying dive for the deep dive and underwater naturalist sections of the Advanced Open Water. One of the questions at 30m (the deep dive) was to write your name backwards. The idea being to see the effects, if any, of nitrogen narcosis -- like being drunk. So I started T-E-H-C-T-I-F. At the F, I paused as I was about to write it as though seen in a mirror. Foolish, I thought, and wrote it normally. It was only on the surface I noticed I'd writen a mirrored C.
The underwater naturalist was a bit more intimidating. [Underwater naturist, as I just typed Freudianly, would have been even more intimidating. Fancy trying to get out of a wetsuit underwater, it's hard enough on the surface.] We had to identify five vertibrates (fish) and five invertibrates (not fish). The fish we were confident about as we knew the names of a dozen regulars. The invertibrates, not so. However, despite Imthi identifying a couple we'd not seen before we struggled through to eight or nine vaguely identified things. They need an invertibrates book aboard the Blue Shark Two, the Photo Guide to Fishes of the Maldives is not enough!
Another couple of easy dives and we're done [for the safari]. Perhaps not so strangely, taking Imthi's slate and pencil and writing down the names of the fishes when we saw them greatly improved our log book reports.
Dinner was preceded by a procession of Japanese log books with a demand for a message. For some reason you feel obliged to give them each a different trite comment which becomes surprisingly difficult, after the first. Tonight's dinner was possibly the least appetising (though it didn't stop me having seconds) for which were were accompanied by the two guides from the Soleil: a Japanese woman and a Swiss guy. The Swiss guy appeared to speak as much Japanese as we do and communicated to the Japanese woman in French. He got quite bored and went off to read magazines quite quickly.
Then we were presented with the ship's guest book. The Japanese, erm, youthful psyche shines through again. Not only is the ship laden with cartoon books [anime?] but the guestbook has small whale or shark etc. cartoons in amongst comments plus half the Japanese appear to have brought small cartoon stickers with them, some with their picture in, some just diving cartoons. These stickers litter the book like a primary schoolkid's exercise book.
We finish off the Knowledge Reviews, more a formality than an exercise, in time to sort out the bill for extras, all those things that nobody mentions that will cost you extra. For example, the torches on the night dive were US$ 5 each on top of the US$ 35 for the dive itself. Ah well, it was all worth it, surely.
After some discussion and a phone call we are to go back to the airport where our transfer to Embudhu will be arranged. An African pole pole approach to things. A promise of a discount if we come back here, too!
There are a few flashes of lightning, very blue in colour, and some thunder and it starts to rain.
Blue Shark Two, anchored at N4.21628 E73.53331 Elev. 60m! Stolen from yesterday as we're back in the new island harbour.
Copyright 2002 Ian Fitchet. All rights reserved.