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Published: June 28th 2014
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Like a plane coming in for a landing
Lucky me to be in the right place at the right time. The diving in Maldives was fabulous. I loved taking underwater photos. After the third day of diving I gave up trying to use my strobes and just used the camera and available light. My photos were pretty good. Some of the reefs look good, lots of different corals with interesting shapes and colors. But there is a lot of rubble on many reefs, which is good substrate for growth of new corals, but not so pretty in photos. Fish abounded on all dives, except the first dive today. We went to a beautiful reef with overhangs, current and deep water, perfect conditions but we were skunked for the first time…no sharks, rays, or schools of large fish.
Every day we did two dives a day, in the morning except for Friday which is the Muslim holy day. On Friday we did a morning dive and an afternoon dive working around prayer time. We had the rest of the day to relax. I did fourteen dives in all. I wasn’t interested in a night dive and no one else asked for one either. The first day I dropped my Apollo fin over the side at the beginning of the
second dive. What a disappointment. I did the dive with only one fin, not particularly hard to do, but I was a bit worried about how I could replace them. Then the owner, Alex, told me they had fins for sale at their shop in the capital city, Male, and he would have a small and a medium pair sent out later that day. I purchased the smaller ones…it was way easier than going shopping for them. Now I am very careful to put them on and shuffle to the side of the boat where we stage our giant stride entries.
On day one and day two we snorkeled with the manta rays during our surface interval (the time we must wait to off gas nitrogen that builds up in our system while diving). There were a lot of mantas on the reef. I tried unsuccessfully to get photos the first day so on the second go round I didn’t even take the camera in the water, and as luck would have it, I had a perfect photo opportunity down the gullet of a manta ray just feet away from me. I have a marvelous guardian angel,
though, because on the dive following the snorkeling I was the last diver in line swimming along an underwater cliff. I happened to look to my left into deep water and saw a huge manta coming straight for me like an airliner coming in for a landing. I was able to quickly take three photos. What an amazing opportunity.
It is sad to hang up my fins and dry out my dive gear. I will get up at 4 a.m. Tuesday and eat a small breakfast before the two hour speedboat ride to the Male airport. My plane leaves at 9 a.m. for Colombo, Sri Lanka where I transfer to a flight to Myanmar (Burma).
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