So I Managed to Squeeze in Another Dive

Yes, I managed to get in another day's diving before I stop for Christmas.

Yesterday, I was on the boat, teaching what we call the Ultimate Discover Scuba Diving. This is the same as a discover scuba diver course, except instead of diving on the beach, we spend a whole day on the boat, dive from the boat, and have the opportunity for either a snorkel or another dive in the afternoon.

In the morning, we went over the flip chart, explaining how the course was going to run, the safety aspects of diving underwater, the skills we would be doing and a quick run through of how the kit works. I had two keen students, and it wasn't long before we were kitting up and getting ready to jump in the water. We had already taken a peek over the edge of the boat, and checked out our beautiful, bright turquoise sea, with little dots of reef below us "Wow! It is like a swimming pool!" was the response from my now reassured lady.

In we hopped, and I checked that both students had enough weight on to get under the surface before taking them one by one just below the surface to go through the skills. After an initial hiccup, and pop to the surface to reassure herself, my girlie did brilliantly, followed by her other half, so off we swam towards the shallows where we would go down the rope and start with a little practice swimming around.

We were at the Temple dive site, where there is a particularly pretty lagoon in the shallows, full of really very healthy corals, especially when you consider the amount of snorkelers constantly swimming around this area, and the fact that there has been a hotel here for many years. Although, maybe that is why... the corals have had time to fully recover from the building period, who knows?

Well it has been a couple of years since I have used this area for teaching, and I had forgotten just how lovely the lagoon is.

My original plan had been to simply stay within the lagoon area, and under five metres, just for comfort, and to be honest, we would have still had a glorious dive with all the reef found here. However after swimming around this area brilliantly for a good ten minutes, my two complete novices turned out to be complete naturals, and I was completely impressed. I barely had to give them any tips at all as we swam around in the shallows. They were in fact, better in the water than some certified divers I have encountered in the past.

So, seeing as all was well, and their skills had been good earlier, I opted to take them a little further out on the sandy plateau to take in some of the beautiful corals in this area. Even without heading out to the main pinnacles there are some smaller little coral towers, fully furnished with their own mini shoal of anthias dotted around them. So my guys got to see even more fish, and most importantly... we found Nemo... in the form of two lovely large clown fish defending their rather sumptuous anenome.

On returning to the surface, my two newbie divers were blown away, having totally loved their little taste of the Red Sea.

I must admit I was a little surprised when they opted not to jump in for a second dive in the afternoon (well... I guess everyone is having to tighten their belts these days), so for me I stuck to boat logistics while the rest of the guys went diving. We had an Advanced course running on board, and a whole bunch of guided divers, so Ras Um Sid was chosen for the afternoon's dive.

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