Our first dive was at Lankan Finolhu during which I had an awful lot of difficulty equalising my right ear resulting in a descent to 30 metres which took me 10 minutes! It brought back memories of Fort Bovisand. When I did manage to reach the bottom I successfully answered Imthi's questions which were testing us for signs of nitrogen narcosis. This was our compulsory deep dive which counted towards our advanced open water diver certification. We saw marble stingray, fusiliers, parrotfish, surgeonfish, a purple fire goby, dogtooth tuna, white tipped shark, a manta ray which was 3 metres wide, indian triggerfish, moorish idols, a giant moray eel, a giant clam, sea cucumbers, sponges and anemones and regal angelfish...it was excellent!
Our second dive at Small Maagiri introduced us to natural navigation. We saw spotted garden eels, sea cucumbers, starfish, an octopus, a honeycomb moray eel, a red fire goby, picasso triggerfish, saddled pufferfish, regal angelfish, scribbled pufferfish, indian triggerfish, clown triggerfish, arrow gobies, blue striped snappers, oriental sweetlips, lionfish and a christmas tree worm...also an excellent dive!
Our final dive from the Blue Shark Two was at Banana Reef. It too was fantastic and we saw napoleonfish, a red fire goby, dogtooth tuna, barracudas, shrimps, a honeycomb moray eel and a giant moray eel, also together in coral, a hawksbill turtle, squirrelfish, indian coral groupers, basslets, oriental sweetlips, blue striped snappers, black pyramid butterflyfish, very long nose butterflyfish, reef bannerfish, regal angelfish, a female speckled wrasse (also known as the yellow tail wrasse), a triple tail maori wrasse, a tube worm blenny, clown triggerfish and indian triggerfish. It too was an amazing dive.
I have now logged twenty three dives!
Our diving safari has come to its end and I have had some amazing experiences. Ian and I leave the boat as certified PADI advanced open water divers and very proud of ourselves! We have completed fifteen dives in just six days and all of them have been extremely abundant in aquatic life. We have been very lucky to see so many considerably rare creatures and it has certainly wet my appetite for more!
Copyright 2002 Helen Fuller. All rights reserved.