Another article

I was really happy to see my published article in the Serbian diving magazine Ronilacki Svet. Sadly I can't understand as I sent the English version and they translated it to Serbian but the attached photos are definitely my ones. (By the way I used Google Translate to read my article somehow and it worked fine.) I hope the readers liked the article about the Eastern Canary Islands. What should I write about next time if they ask me?

Nemo reloaded

Last weekend we went to Bruxelles (Brussels) again and dived in the huge pool of Nemo 33. As we chose the Friday noon diving session there were only 8 divers. So we had the chance to spend more time with the new attraction: the underwater car. A nice Smart waits the divers now, it was fun to swim around and go inside. The deep part and the "caverns" are still the same. And as usual, we enjoyed the nice, warm, clear water...

The first dolphin

I'm not too lucky with the dolphins. I saw them many times on the surface but I wanted to dive with them. After a dozen Red Sea trips I went to the Dolphin Reef in Eilat and at least I had 30-40 minutes long dolphin experience. It's wonderful but my goal was to see some free wild dolphins under water.

We went to a Safaga liveaboard trip a year ago. We dived the Tobya Arbaa while another group headed a reef 300 meters away. They came back and said a lone dolphin joined them on the dive. We didn't believe. We felt it wouldn't be realistic to expect the dolphin on a second dive but we gave a try. In the first ten minutes we dived above a quite unhealthy coral garden and saw nothing. But then the dolphin came... And it really swam with us during the whole dive. Exciting, beautiful dive jut because a friendly marine mammal. I made some photos but mostly I enjoyed being there.

Later a third group is went back to the same place but they didn't encounter the dolphin. So this time I was the one of the lucky divers. Everything can happen if you don't give up the hope...

Stats

I watched all NFL games last weekend. When I saw how the Giants defeated the Packers I had to think about statistics. The 15-1 was nice, but on the field not two bunch of statistics played against each other but teams of human beings. Whatever the numbers predicted I saw the struggling of some great sportsmen.

You can say this blog is about diving, why I do I write (again) about the football? Well, I remember when I read a question in the forum about Red Sea conditions. I've been there for a dozen times and I saw many nice things but sadly I can't say what will you see exactly. Usually the winter is windy. But I had trips in February when the sea was incredibly calm. Usually there are more sharks in specific seasons at the Brothers. But I talked to disappointed friends who saw only one small shark in the blue for a few seconds during a whole week.

So you can ask about conditions and possible encounters and I try to answer honestly but hopefully nobody will attack me after a rough week in the Red Sea... Forget the statistics and predictions. Surprisingly not the boat or the sea matters but you. You are the one who can enjoy shallow reefs with a lot of tiny fish and crabs instead of challenging offshore reefs if the weather doesn't allow long sails. You have to go for the touchdown in protected bays: go to dive and try to have fun. Maybe you won't get the sharks but will meet turtles, dolphins or a seahorse. The most important stat is your measure of enjoyment, and the major factor is you...

The sea is not a museum

A friend use to say the sea is not a museum, you can't be sure what will you see down there. Sometimes you expect a specific animal but it's not there, sometimes you encounter a really surprising one.

We traveled to Tenerife for the third time and stayed in Playa Paraiso again. Tenerife can be really crowded all year but we didn't think they can build some huge hotels to this small town in two years. Sadly they did. When we looked around from our balcony we saw they were hiding much of the seashore. But, anyway, we were in this wonderful island again and the same old Barakuda dive center was just a few steps away. So we thought anything could happen on the surface but we'd see exciting things under water.

We greeted Petra, Michael, Marko and prepared for our first dive. We nearly forgot the uncomfortable long walk to the Atlantic from the dive center. With our heavy equipment we slowly reached the sea and started our dive. I confess our first dives wasn't that good. We used a bit more air, while our guide, Michael wanted to do a long dive. So sometimes he shared his air with a diver who had less air. The end of a dive was a little bit chaotic. The dive leader suggested to choose a larger tank. We were a little bit disappointed, somehow the dive center's approach changed. Or we visited too much nice places since our last visit and the small problems became more annoying?

So we hesitated about our dives. In Tenerife it's easy to do many other things, to do more or less dives can be a good option as well. But we love the Atlantic so joined Michael's group again. This time I had the large tank and the relatively deep dive lasted for an hour. We were about to finish near the seashore when our leader simply left us alone. He started to swim like crazy and we didn't understand. We hoped he saw something special and tried to follow. The visibility was only 10-15 meters but in a few seconds I saw a well-known silhouette. It was a huge, black animal, its swimming looked more like flying. A devil ray! I was too nervous to turn on my camera fast enough so I didn't make any shots. Michael showed the sign of disappointment. But the devil ray came back and this time I made a few seconds long video.

After we surfaced all of usexcitedly discussed what we saw. We told about our encounter in the dive center and all the divers started to kit up fast. They wanted to see the devil ray too. Later Michael told me it was the first devil ray in the bay for ten years! And we were in the lucky group who saw it. Everybody asked for my video although a day earlier they told me they didn't like underwater photographers that much. In spite of their opinion about photographers I became the most popular man of Playa Paraiso for that day. My bad quality video was the only proof of the encounter... Whenever I watch I remember my friends wise words.

Fishing Under Ice

I think nowadays every diver talks about this stunning short movie made by some crazy Finnish divers. Great work, if you haven't seen it yet, watch it! It's funny, entertaining and brilliant. (And I recommend to share the original video uploaded by the creators.)

The Canary Islands, Ocean observatory

A fantastic movie again from Rafa Herrero Massieu. Awesome shots, wonderful moments- it made me want to travel to the Canaries again...

Vintage

I always felt I had to try this. I collected some vintage scuba diving equipment, certainly most of them are in the bottom of my equipment closet. Luckily some items are in mint condition and I gave a try. The old Spiro 8 regulator has a special Yoke connector so I can't use it with modern tanks. But the backpack is new and the horse collar style BCD worked well, so I dived with them. I confess, it wasn't that special as it worked as the new, modern BCDs. I was able to maintain neutral buoyancy. OK, when I was was a bit overweighted it was less comfortable, that's all. I even made a very short video of my vintage freshwater dive.

I envy a bit the vintage diving clubs in the world where they regularly use those still reliable old stuff. Whenever I see their pics I realize how many way are there to enjoy scuba diving...

2012