Scuba Diving in Carriacou, Caribbean

Dive Site: Sharky’s Hideaway
Location: Mabouya Island, Carriacou
Description: Reef / wall
Depth: 8 – 23 metres (23 – 75 feet)
Visibility: 30 metres (100 feet)

This dive begins on a wall with a maximum depth of 23 metres. The dive becomes shallower towards the end (about 12 metres) as you reach a rock garden home to canyons, caves and overhangs. During the dive you should see lots of purple vase sponges, porcupinefish, grey angelfish, nurse sharks and occasionally giant green moray eels as well as hundreds of copper sweepers. It is a great place for underwater photography, particularly macro shots, and is suited to both beginners and advanced divers. There can sometimes be a slight current.

Scuba Diving in the Red Sea

Dive Site: Sha’ab Sabina
Location: Hurghada
Description: Lagoon reef
Depth: 14 metres (46 feet)
Visibility: 20 metres (65 feet)

Sha’ab Sabina is a beautiful dive, and is especially good for the novice diver and photographer as the site and surrounding area is fairly shallow giving good light. It consists of several coral lagoons with swim-overs, smaller reef walls/pinnacles and some sandy bottom areas. Diverse marine life inc. moray eels, yellow mouth eels, lionfish, stonefish and so on. Dolphins are known to visit in the afternoon.

Scuba Diving in Malta, Europe

Dive Site: Paradise Bay
Location: Cirkewwa
Description: Reef
Depth: 30 metres max (100 feet)
Visibility: 30 metres (100 feet)

The site is dived from the shore and has lots of interesting rock shapes that look fantastic against the rich blue water. It is a limestone reef with a steep drop off to about 30 metres. Sea life includes moray eels and scorpionfish as well as lots of shoals of chromis. Look out into the blue for larger fish such as tuna and barracuda.

Scuba Diving at Mabul Island, Borneo

Dive Site: Paradise 1
Location: Mabul Island
Description: Reef / night dive
Depth: 15 metres (50 feet)
Visibility: 10 metres (30 feet)

Into the calm water, in the late afternoon, just off the end of the main jetty on Mabul Island and followed an old rope along the seabed to a small section of reef. Concentrating on macro life were met by small anemones housing groups of clownfish and small clusters of raspberry stone coral where black and white damselfish find protection. Over the seabed there were huge groups of starfish and the skeleton of a turtle. Along the reef base the odd crocodile fish and a medium-sized giant moray surrounded by cleaning shrimps.A cleaner shrimp scuttled over its nose and went about its business. Towards the end of our dive I felt the tell-tell jolt on my fins and turned to find a pair of titan triggerfish who had taken offence to our presence.

The triggerfish had long since gone to bed somewhere in the protective reef. These fish which can grow very large in the Malaysian waters get their name from their dorsal fins. At night they burrow deep into the reef coral and lock their dorsal fins in place, like a trigger mechanism, keeping them firmly and safely in place from any nocturnal predators.During a night dive a free-swimming banded moray eel and one of the largest red Spanish dancers can be seen.

Scuba Diving in Marsa Alam, the Red Sea

Dive Site: The Nursery
Location: St John’s Reef Description: Cavern / night dive
Depth: 20 metres (65 feet)
Visibility: 30 metres (100 feet)

Down to a sandy bottom at around 20m. There was a lot of reef fish cleaning action going on.The reef round until you came to a school of around 30 Red Sea bannerfish and they clearly marked the cavern entrance just above at around 12m. This is a really exciting swim through to explore, it cuts through a large part of the reef in many directions where inside it leads to a number of larger caverns. It is reasonably safe during the day as light pretty much shines through in all places and you’d find it hard to get lost in or not to be able to find a means of exit. On the bottom look for blue spotted stingrays, as well as baby whitetip reef shark in small crevices and moray eels. The sheer mass of anemones and anemone fish that occupy, Nemo would love it here! The viz was amazing which enhanced their orange bodies as they stood out in all beauty against the blue sea.

The atmosphere to the cavern was really different to that of the day, it was really tranquil and a little spooky. Around and everywhere, you can see a sleeping bumphead parrotfish. He was so still and calm hanging at the top of the cavern. These fish are becoming increasing rare and along with their uniqueness, makes me find them more then beautiful. They are perceived by some to be ugly; they can grow up to 1.5m, dark green with pinky red cheeks, they have a big protruding bump on their head and a massive beak for crushing up coral.

You have to be really careful not to shine your torches at them as this could give them a shock and suddenly wake them up.

Scuba Diving in Malta, Europe

Dive Site: HMS Maori
Location: Marsamxett Harbour, Valletta, Malta. 30 degrees from entry point
Description: Destroyer
Length: 35 metres (115 feet) still intact
Depth: 8 – 16 metres (26 – 52 feet)
Visibility: 10 metres (30 feet)

The Maori was bombed on February 14th 1942 whilst in Valletta Harbour, receiving a direct hit to the engine room which killed one person. Fortunately the rest of the crew were not on board. It is of historical importance as it helped crack the code to sink the Bismark. Originally it blocked a major shipping lane so was towed out of the way, but it broke into two. Only one section is now dive able, which is heavily broken up. The guns were removed, but the rings they were mounted on can still be seen, as can some torpedoes. It is buried deeply by sand and the bridge is the only part still to remain intact. The sand is easily stirred up, but the swim through is never the less straightforward. Despite the lack of visibility for Maltese waters this still makes a good dive. There are lots of fireworms, a John Dory, eels and perhaps octopus on and around the wreck and in the sand nearby sea horses are found. As with most Maltese dives, entry is from the shore.

The Maori lies at a 210 degree bearing from the archway on land. It’s a beautiful wreck with lots of swim throughs and holes to investigate; a flat fish, and on the way back an octopus that shot his ink at me.

Excellent dive! I completed my holiday task of finding an octopus: he was brilliant and squirted ink at me as he was being photographed, then scurried along the rocks and into a hole! As for the wreck, it is reached after a short swim across a sandy bay, just the bow and midships are left. The wreck is open making it easy to enter and fun to explore and go in and out of various holes and passages. A little nudibranch and a flatfish hiding in the sand.

Lovely dive in the habour. The wreck itself is very impressive, very rusty and surrounded by lots of fish.

On a holiday to Malta I did 10 dives of which the HMS Maori was one. It was fantastic and returned to do my first night dive on it. The octopus was there and so were dozens of scorpionfish and moray eels. During the first day dive I chanced upon what looked like a dynamo or other electrical part but on closer examination the nodes looked too recent. Thus my caution to divers that people are dumping things near the wreck to add to the intrigue of the dive.

Scuba Diving in Rarotonga, the Cook Islands

Site: Maritime Reefer
Location: Rarotonga
Description: Wreck
Depth: 20 metres to wreck (65 feet), 51 metres + to seafloor (165 feet)
Visibility: 20 – 40 metres (65 – 130 feet)

The Maritime Reefer is a steel-hulled inter-island cargo ship that was sunk in the 1970’s specifically to make a dive site. It is quite smashed up, but you can still make out what aspects of the wreckage are. The visibility was not so good in the shallows, but improved once you got some depth. It made theway over the coral and down onto the wreck where a lionfish was hiding. It lies at about 20 metres, but It had been given permission to do a deep bounce. On the way back up to the surface there are stonefish, triggerfish and a moray eel.

Scuba Diving at Mabul Island, Borneo

Dive Site: Mandarin
Location: Mabul Island
Description: Reef / drift
Depth: 9 metres (30 feet)
Visibility: 20 metres (65 feet)

Mandarin, located in the shallow waters in from of the main jetty on Mabul, is near the dive sites Paradise 1 and Paradise 2. This dive is a dusk dive and experience the transition between night and day which occurs on the reef. A shallow sloping reef descends to a seabed at around 10 metres. We found ourselves the victims of another titan triggerfish attack. The current was running from north to south so we effortlessly drifted along, coming across a snowflake moray eel and a large group of shrimpfish hanging vertically in the water.

Scuba Diving in Fiji

Dive Site: Makamaka Point
Location: North Yadua
Description: Reef
Depth: 18 metres (59 feet)
Visibility: 30 – 40 metres (100 – 130 feet)

The underwater landscape of this site is very beautiful. The coral was more impressive then the fish life though. I saw an irate long-fin spadefish, twinspot snappers and a moray eel. On the way out to this site we saw a group of around twenty spinner dolphins along with a couple of trevallies jumping out of the water.

Scuba diving in Malta – Um El Faroud, Ship wreck, Wied Iz Zurieq

Dive Site: Um El Faroud
Location: Wied Iz Zurrieq, near Qrendi (location of the Blue Grotto). 240 degrees from entry point Description: 10,000 ton container ship Length: 110 metres (361 feet)

Depth: 12 metres (40 feet) to top of the funnel, 25 metres (82 feet) to lowest deck, 36 metres (118 feet) to sea floor Visibility: 30 metres (100 feet)

The Faroud is a Libyan wreck that was being worked on in a Maltese dry dock when a gas explosion on board killed 9 Maltese dockworkers. In 1998, 3 years after the accident, it was moved to its current position where it was scuttled for use as a dive site. There is a brass plaque on the wreck as a memorial to those who died. The Faroud is huge at 10,000 tons which looms out of the blue after a lengthy swim from the shore. Unfortunately because of the swim to and from the wreck, this reduces the time on the wreck to about 10 to 15 minutes if you are diving on a single cylinder, especially if there is a slight current to fight to or from the wreck. There are some swim throughs around the bridge and decks and the wheel house can be entered, which leads to the lower decks. The wreck is covered in sea life including scorpion fish, silver fish, jacks, barracuda, sea bream and tuna. There is also a resident Moray in a pipe on the starboard side. If dived with a boat, this dive site would be significantly improved.