Julie's Boggle

As a somewhat unusual diversion for a liveaboard holiday, we had a brief excursion onto Small Gubal island mid-afternoon on Tuesday. There had been a fair amount of interest when it was proposed before lunch, but when the time came around, most of the sleepy bodies soaking up the sun on the comfy sunbeds thought better of it.

So it was a party of 7 that made the Zodiac trip over to the island, all kitted up with diving boots as foot protection. This was a genuine desert island, in that there was practically nothing growing on it at all, just sand in all directions. And litter! That was a bit of a mystery – we pondered on the possibilities of fishermen or stuff brought in by the tides, but either way there was an awful lot of it, quite grim really, and the diving boots were very necessary protection against the broken glass as well as the hot sand.

After 30 minutes of looking around in the heat (aside from a lighthouse and a large osprey’s nest, there wasn’t much) it was a pleasure to get back into our damp wetsuits and drop in off the back of the boat. The dive was another wreck-cum-reef. It hadn’t been a terribly big wreck to start with – the general consensus was that it had been an Egyptian patrol boat but no one knew for sure. Now everyone calls it The Barge.

The remains of the wreck, lying on a sandy bottom studded with corals, turned out to be a fantastic fish village! It was just swarming with life in every colour, size and shape.

At one point I was hovering over a familiar scene of a goatfish ferreting in the sand, using one hand on the sand for stability, when a tiny green eel darted out from under a rock and butted my finger with his head. I guess I wasn’t wanted that close to his home so I took the hint and floated off.

Aside from all the diverse fish-life, we discovered not one but three giant moray eels. Their long bodies, mostly hidden under overhangs, were about 2m long! They didn’t seem to mind us too much, just stayed under their rocks with mouths slightly open to reveal little white teeth sloping back, gills moving gently as water passed through them.

With several boats moored directly above us, the noises from engines and outboard motors was more noticeable than ever when they started up – cutting through the underwater calm with their jarring clatter of sound. I wonder if the fish mind?

Several hours later, after another tasty supper (chicken curry this time followed by a yummy Egyptian coconut pudding), we jumped back into the water for a night dive on the same spot. It’s funny, but with all the floodlights from the dive boats we actually had better visibility than when we dived in Anglesey last year during the day!

Dropping through the dark water we found ourselves surrounded by an army of lunar fusilliers (pretty blue and white fish about 15cm long). Thousands and thousands of them, all gliding slowly through the darkness in their protective school – it was a little eerie.

Down on the wreck the fish had mostly vanished. The spiky, black urchins had all crept out from under their rocks, and there were a few lionfish hunting, and the ubiquitous goatfish foraging, but aside from that there was a distinct feeling that the fish had all gone to bed! We found two of our three eels, now out of their hiding places, probably annoyed them with our torches, and then decided to make a strategic retreat ourselves.

This entry was posted on Sunday, May 21st, 2006 at 5:20 pm and is filed under Diving, Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.