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 ...
You tend to associate blue water and crystal clear waters with the outer reefs in Colombo. The bone crunching hour plus long boat rides in the tiny boats and the surface intervals in the blistering sun. All for a few brief snatched moments of bliss in the big blue. You anticipate those days with the seemingly unending miles of visibility ...
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, ...
20 meters underwater a boat ride from Colombo, lies a huge bed of soft coral. Unfortunately these corals are under threat from ships anchoring and destroying them.
Shards of living glassDive any reef or wreck in Colombo and you will see them.Small shoals of shining glass fish, shining that is when the light hits them. They blink in and out of existence as the light hits them for a kaleidoscopic experience that is sometimes unreal, especially when they congregate in a huge shoal that engulfs you and ...
It’s 2012 and I’m looking back on a 100 dives in 2011 and 200 since I started diving way back in 2009. Since this was my first full year of diving with somewhat reasonable dive skills and a camera, I figured I would put down some of the most memorable dives/events that I have had the privilege of experiencing during ...
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 ...
DJ and I had seen the net stretched taut on the crane like structure on the Medhafaru the last time we had dived and we knew it meant trouble. Sure enough on the next dive at the wreck, as Nish, Keerths, Daniel and I started our dive; the first thing I saw was an outline of a large fish, seemingly ...
Our first dive at Havelock, at Channel 62 left a bit to be desired, a boring rock without much life. Yet in such barreness there were still some opportunities for photographs, like this Crinoid on a purple coral.
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 ...
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 is a bit shocking to me that I've let this slide so much. My sidebar indicates that for the whole of 2011 I've had one post. I guess in the end that is an indication of how busy a year it has been, personal stuff and a new job with the usual steep learning curve on top of a ...
Did you do it!Everybody who has spent time in the rural parts of Sri Lanka is accustomed to the Red-Wattled Lapwing’s accusatory call which you can hear at all times of the day and even night.Of course the rather bewildered juvenile Brahminy Kite still looked a bit taken aback as the screaming Lapwing couple thundered ...
It was obviously breeding season for the buffalo as all over Bundala and Yala there were grappling males and females with newly minted young, fresh and gleaming. The Sri Lankan water buffalo, though not as formidable as the African version is still quite a large and bulky beast. Having stood a few meters away from a pissed off looking wild ...
The jeep screeched to a halt as she materialized as if from nowhere. It had been a fruitless, dusty day in the park exacerbated by the fact that our only leopard sighting had been in the midst of a traffic jam that would have put Colombo to shame. As dusk descended over the dry wilderness we headed out of the ...
As announcing sightings goes, Suren’s was a bit of a mix of anticlimax and irony, as a he turned towards us with a thoughtful expression on his face and announced he could have sworn he had just seen a tusker approaching through the bush as we whizzed past. Sumudhu and the tracker seemed a bit nonplussed by this casual announcement ...
Craaack!It was a disconcerting sound that echoed like a gunshot as the Defender 110 went over the pothole. The old jeep rattled to a stop, seemingly fatally wounded. Sumudhu turned to us and rather nonchalantly announced that the axle had broken. This seemed the worst possible news as our run of the park had just started and a broken axle ...
