For the beginner diver this is one of the most discomfiting times of a dive, the safety stop, 3 minutes at 5 meters with the aim of eliminating microbubbles which are the cause of the dreaded decompression sickness or the ‘bends’. This can be an embarrassing time and as a beginner I used to flail around sometimes and I’ve even ...
I could almost feel the fish’s pain as it flailed along sideways, jerking spasmodically above the Medhafaru’s deck. The fusilier had perhaps been the victim of a tuna or seerfish strike into a shoal and mortally injured but still alive had drifted down to the ship. To add insult to injury the poor fish was being pursued mercilessly by two ...
To be fair it is not only natural landscapes that are breathtaking as there are a number of man made vistas that to the beholder are quite beautiful. What you don't see however is the urban blight, the concrete, the emissions and the gridlock that makes some cities, in this case Los Angeles a nightmare to live in and for ...
I rarely enter photo competitions (i.e. I'm quite lazy) but this one I did and it was quite gratifying to get published and win the 'Best Shot' competition over at Popular Photography with my Baitball on the Cargo image!
A visit to the Negombo fish market is eye opening, if somewhat of an assault on the olfactory senses. For those who want a taste (figuratively speaking of course) of where their seafood comes from, a walk through the market is a must. It is not a pretty sight, especially for those who like rays and sharks (more to come ...
At night the Cargo wreck glows. What looks like slightly boring, if colourful, stubs of coral during the daytime come alive at night. Known as Tubastrea coral, these are non-reef building coral which do not host photosynthetic algae within them like the coral we are most familiar with.These are usually found in deeper waters and in areas where they are ...
It could mean the difference between life and death.No, I’m not talking about the breakfast accessory but what we divers call a Safety Sausage or more technically a Surface Marker Buoy (SMB). Basically a brightly coloured, balloon made of a thick canvas to withstand some punishment which is clipped to your BCD or in a BCD pocket. This is an ...
Something overland for a change, the green bee-eater is a common bird in our national parks.. From Wilpattu to Uda Walawe and sometimes even in Colombo you will see these green gems flitting back and forth. Keep a close eye on them and you can see them snapping butterflies and dragonflies out of the air. They do have a habit ...
The thing with diving your backyard most of the time and diving independently is that I sometimes forget the value of a good spotter and guide. It was such a person, the enigmatic Shaf formerly of Colombo Divers and now loose somewhere in the Maldives, who showed me the jeweled wonders of nudibranchs. Since getting a wideangle lens however, I ...
No dive on the Medhafaru wreck is complete without the Batfish. These large, spade shaped fish come in shoals of about 10 and are a delight. Some of the friendliest fish around its not uncommon to be given an escort by them and they love playing with bubbles, chasing them down and engulfing them. True clowns of the sea and guaranteed to make your surface interval amusing.
It had been a great trip so far. Admittedly the 3am drive down left a bit to be desired but the two dives on the mystery wreck were mind blowing. An eagle ray soared past us as we hovered over the wreck and huge trevalley moved in the shadows as we swam into the ghostly ship lying scatted on the ...
Another common site on the Cargo wreck, especially during the start and end of the west coast seasons (October-November and March-April) when the bait balls are in full force. The tuna come in and hit the shoals, small hunting packs of 3-5. You can see them flex their fins and gear up before in a flash of silver coming in ...
It still seems strange but at the time I dived the huge wreck in Vakarai, it never occurred to me to question what the wreck was, what ship had gone down when to create this paradise? I guess at the time, I was still a relative neophyte, more concerned with fish and photographs. This wreck was the first that really ...
Every time I see one of these fellows, I hear a tinkling sound in my head. It seems so cartoonish, bobbing back and forth with no visible signs of propulsion. This is a juvenile Yellow boxfish, blessed with the lovely latin name of Ostracion cubicus. Later on in life, they get darker and more serious looking but the babies are ...
The seas of Batticaloa. The mysterious East. After so many years of war and restrictions these seas were the great unknown and rumours of shipwrecks and reefs hounded my dreams. It was with some excitement to say the least that we collected on the beach in Thennadi Bay, Mankerni in August where a flat sea met white sand in preparation ...
Since I alluded to the feeding action on my last Photo of the Week post about the stoned octopus, I figured I would post an image of the action. The Wall, a dive site which was ridiculously convenient to get to from Vinnie’s dive center in the Andamans was full of life and amazing action. The top was home to ...
It was a typically hot surface interval in mid April. The water had been a beautiful blue on the Degalmeda reef and we were getting rid of our excess nitrogen in preparation for heading back down in a bit. Nilanga and I were at the bow while Daniel and Nishan were at the stern having our respective conversations.Our fearless boatman, ...
A long, long overdue photo of the week. Octopi in Sri Lanka are generally quite skittish so I did a double take when I saw this octopus sitting serenely on a rock a few feet away from me at the Wall while diving in the Andamans. Getting closer to the fellow, I realized why it was so oblivious to me ...
Big fish are rare nowadays. Even in the times of Arthur C. Clarke’s early ocean explorations, the big groupers were getting hit with unsporting (not to mention illegal) spear fishermen donning tanks and hunting these gentle giants out of existence. Every now and then I see a grouper that’s a couple of feet long and I get inordinately excited. It ...
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