Scuba Diving in the Atlantic Ocean and Beyond?
Where to Dive? How about the Atlantic and Beyond?
North Carolina
I have touched on this diving spot in a past blog about wreck diving, however I think it deserves a little more attention on what there is to experience while diving the wrecks.
Located on the coast of North Carolina, Morehead City is one of the main departure locations for divers to visit the number of wrecks that lay off the coast. Some met their fate by weather while a number of them were torpedoed during WWII by German Submarines.
Diving off this coast is what I would call a step up from beginner. Open water certification is necessary but an advanced one is probably better for this area.
There are a number of charter operations working up and down the coast and most of them frequent the same popular dive locations.
Along with the wrecks are the inhabitants that frequent the area and most of them are sharks. Of course there are thousands of bait fish which is the reason sharks are not interested in divers visiting their wrecks.
Bait Fish
In addition to the bait fish there are some of the common sightings because the wrecks are as close to a reef as you can get.
Lion Fish Angels
Seeing there are a lot of sharks around the wrecks, we learned that they tend to lose their teeth while dining around the wrecks or just as a natural replacement as they grow older. Be it one or the other we were able to pick up a quantity laying right on the deck of the wrecks.
Fanning for Sharks Teeth
Finally we can't ignore the elephant in the room or the shark in the room. By that I mean the shark that I was filming in one of the rooms of a wreck. Seeing I was in the doorway the shark didn't know what to do because the same doorway was the exit for him, or her. If you look closely toward the end of the movie you will be able to see my hand on the door edge at the left.
Well, as you can imagine, I eventually allowed the shark to leave without an incident and that's proven by me being able to write this blog.
The Red Sea
Traveling a lot further East, I signed up for a trip hosted by the nationally known photographer, Stephen Frink. It took place in the Red Sea and mainly concentrated on the use of Nikon’s Cameras that were popular at the time of this trip in 1995.
A pretty long plane ride, almost the same distance as to Australia. We arrived at the North end of the sea at the city of Sharm El Sheikh where we were transported through the city toward our liveaboard for the trip.
It was a very interesting trip through town to see some of the sights that most of us were totally unfamiliar with.
Various Town Sites
Once we arrived at the dock, we began boarding our liveaboard for the next week of diving.
It was a substantial boat with plenty of room along with a number of divers mostly from the United States due to it being a photographic charter which originated there.
As I had mentioned earlier, this was primarily a photo trip for owners of the Nikon’s Camera. It was a beautiful camera but as most film cameras it has since fallen by the wayside with the introduction of digital models.
Stephen Frink with The Nikon Cameras
Steve would assist the photographers with setting up their cameras, lighting positioning and tips on how to shoot the various situations we would run into under water.
Before each dive at a new location, like most liveaboard boats, the master diver would draw a white board sketch of the area to dive, along with comments on what critters we may encounter.
Now this was the first time I had see a woman master diver. She was very capable and efficient, something she may have learned during her time with the Israeli army.
Clown Fish Banded Coral Shrimp
All in all we traveled a total of 230 miles south on the Red Sea which is a total of 1,200 miles long. Most diving was done in the day time, with a few night dives along the way. The boat would travel at night so we would wake up to a new location the next day. We even visited a couple of islands in the middle of the sea.
On the way back someone mentioned there was a possibility that we could dive the SS Thistlegorm, a British supply ship that was sunk by a German airplane during WWII. There was a cool reception by most of the people on board, either because they had seen it on a previous trip or were not interested.
Front and center was yours truly, being an avid wreck diver, who very vocally expressed his desire to see the wreck having come the distance to dive here. Well, I won out and we stopped to view one of the more complete wrecks I have seen with a cargo of Bedford Trucks, BSA Motorcycles, Enfield Rifles and even a train.
Bedford Truck BSA Motor Cycle
When we surfaced, one of the women divers commented on the lack of growth on the wreck, such as sponges and crinoids. I countered with "did you see the wreck?"
All in all we had the opportunity to dive 29 times and I took advantage of every one of them. We had an overnight layover before we boarded our plane which gave us some time to purchase some items to take home. A good trip for all!
The Maldives
I really wasn't satisfied with a trip as far East as the Red Sea, I had to go it one better with a trip to the Maldives.
Located off the southern tip of India, the Republic of Maldives are a chain of 26 islands with the primary one named Male which is the capital.
Satellite Photo of the Maldives
Our flight landed at the airport located on an island near the capital. We were then transferred, by shuttle boat, to the main liveaboard.
This was the most luxurious liveaboard I have been on. I made the reservations with Explorer Ventures out of Ft. Lauderdale and was initially awestruck first seeing it. In the Red Sea we were frequently transported by inflatable boats to some of the dive sites whereas this boat had a little more sophisticated shuttle.
Red Sea Maldives
Not to belabor the point but this boat was really set up neat for diver comfort. There was the usual air supply umbilical hoses right over the benches on the main boat to refill tanks between dives. If we were not diving from the main boat we transferred to the shuttle where other tanks were waiting for us ready to go. There was plenty of space in our rooms and meals were served buffet style, A large dining table was set out at the rear of the boat near the bar.
Speaking of the bar, beer, wine and whisky were available as part of our fee but as soon as you took your first drink of alcohol you could not dive for the rest of the day. Seeing I opted for all the night dives it didn't leave much time for drinking.
We did a lot of drift diving due to the many sea currents that flowed through those islands. This however, is why larger animals frequent these waters.
We had the opportunity to view and swim with Whale Sharks as they visited certain areas. Seeing there were a number of dive operations throughout the islands when one would spot the whale sharks they would radio to the others to come and play.
Whale Shark
If you have never seen one of these animals you can't believe the thrill of swimming next to one and experience the size of this really docile creature. Being a plankton eater they are not as unpredictable as some of the sharks you may encounter.
In addition to the drift dives we did have the ability to seek out and film a lot of smaller inhabitants of the colorful reefs surrounding each of the islands.
One of the more fascinating are the Clown Fish who use a Sea Anemone to hide in from predators. They are immune from the sting of the Anemone’s tentacles while other fish are not. For this reason they keep a very close association with the Anemone and will only venture a short distance from its protection. The Anemone benefits from the Clown Fish cleaning it, providing nutrients and scaring away predatory fish.
Clown Fish with Anenome
Here are a few additional creatures we encountered in the Maldives.
Crown of Thorns Leaf or Frog Fish
Fried Egg Nudibranch Soldier Fish
In addition to the smaller wonders we encountered there were trips to the deeper areas of the Maldives in search of the other larger animals that inhabited their own domain.
Headed for Deeper Water
When we reached deeper water they suggested we space ourselves along a major drop off and wait for whatever happened to come by. You can imagine our surprise when a number of Manta Rays treated us with a fly-by one after another.
They are one of the most graceful creatures just sailing along effortless by slowly moving their large wing like flippers. It was not to be our only encounter with Mantas for one night the main boat was parked in about 30 feet of water and we were told to drop down and place our dive lights out in the sand and come back under the boat and wait.
The boat had also shown a couple of large floodlights off the stern which also helped to attract the Mantas. After about 10 minutes the Mantas began coming into our lights one after another. It was unreal, they would come right toward us and then either do a somersault up and away or swim behind us and disappear into the darkness. This continued for about a half hour or until they became tired of the show.
Mantas viewed from the back of the boat coming toward the light and flipping over to return
Toward the end of the week the crew treated us to a fresh fish dinner on one of the nearby islands. I say fresh because they caught the fish the night before.
When we arrived they had a long table set up and a barbecue going with the fish and side items. No one missed not having a night dive because there was great food and drink.
I'll have to admit that this was one of the hardest locations to say goodbye to as it came to an end. We were able to spend our last night back in port exploring the local activities around town, which mostly consisted of fish markets that supplied the food for a lot of the other islands and the many high class resorts that were only reachable by boat or sea plane.
This wasn't an inexpensive trip and I had to save a very long time to accomplish it. I had seen ads in the dive magazines for this location and wanted to experience it. It was well worth it and I'm glad I had the opportunity to share some of my experience with you along with the Red Sea and North Carolina.
George