Category: SCUBA

Lies all lies. They Photoshopped the photo below to show off his abs. The waist belt on the Halcyon BCD is supposed to be high over the waist, not low on the hips.

I’m not big on other BCDs with their extra materials and also the cummerbund. Plus they don’t inspire too much confidence with nylon buckles etc.

BCDs are important. If you don’t have good buoyancy control diving is difficult. I posted previously them it here at the end of the post.
I am considering buying a Halcyon BCD and have found Halcyon to be very responsive to Emails with my many questions. I’ll put the questions and responses below in a day or two.

Update: Check out some new ways to create reefs.

The Kuwait Dive Team which varies in membership and activity level has done many things particularly they have previously installed many mooring buoys. This is very important for the reefs. The placing of anchors from boats absolutely destroys the delicate coral which would take hundreds of years to regrow if ever. There are also companies that do reef balls like the Kuwait Reef Ball Company which I’ve not heard of until seeing their web site.

From this page on reef ball deployments:

“Scuba divers are the only group of humans on the planet that see, from day to day, the amount of destruction going on in our world’s oceans.”

In fact, I honestly now eat fish, particularly local fish with a different perspective. Now that I’ve been swimming with them and know that they are overfished, it seems different. Last month seeing an actual cuttlefish in the ocean for the first time changes my perspective of it in the Chinese restaurants. Wow, so many years eating cuttlefish and not knowing what it looks like.

Aside:
Tide is important while diving. Very important as it makes the currents and changes the water depth here by up to two meters. You can go to EasyTide to get free tide predictions.

Not too impressive a profile. There were four of us on the boat. Instructor with a student and I was to dive with another person. But he didn’t check his gear assuming the dive center would pack his wet suit. Well, no wet suit for him so he didn’t dive.

So I went diving near the anchor line to just hang out near where they were doing their class. The visibility was very poor. More than a meter from the anchor line and you lose sight of it and there was also a current. So I practiced my frog kick at the bottom near the line, hovering at fixed depth, but lost sight of it at one point and then couldn’t find the line and came up. No problem not far from the boat and then back to the anchor line and down again for a bit.

One observation is how finning into the current just to stay stationary sucks down the tank of air at least twice as fast as normal!

Good thing I’ve been going to the gym! All that finning gives the legs a good workout. Lately I’ve been working out on the rowing machine and that seems to be more specific to the muscles used for finning.

This dive was more interesting. Actually fun! Though many people wouldn’t say it was fun. Three of us went around the reef to the wreck which is an old cement barge on the bottom about 7 meters down. Very strong current and 1 meter visibility but floating around, practicing my improved buoyancy control gained from time in the pool. All in all I enjoyed it and so did the others.

Uraifjan or Qit’at Uraifjan is Kuwait’s largest nearshore platform reef only 10 km southeast (20 minutes by boat) from the port.

Well this wasn’t much of a dive in fact. We tooled along a bit for about 15 minutes then decided to surface as the visibility was so poor it wasn’t a lot of fun. And another thing, it was the first time diving with this guy for me so it takes a few dives to get used to each other. Also, I had 2 kg more weights on for this dive. Ten not eight. So, it was a good experiment and probably a kilogram overweight. You have to add weight to dive, the amount depends on the density of the water, if salty it is denser and you need more weight, plus on what you are wearing. The thing when diving is you want to be neutrally buoyant but:

• the tank buoyancy changes during the dive as it gets more empty. At the start it will sink at the end it will float. You need to compensate for this.
• a wetsuit as it gets deeper compresses becoming less buoyant

To compensate for this you have a buoyancy compensator (BCD), which is inflated so you float on the surface and then you deflate it to submerge. And while you descend you might at a bit of air to it. Ideally you don’t add much as too much air is hard to handle as when you change depths in the water the BCD air bladder will also expand and contract with different pressure changing therefore in it’s buoyancy. Confused yet?Here’s an article on it.

Deep Dive at the Qaruh Wreck
Down to 35.5 meters on 30% Nitrox.

This was my second dive of the SDI Deep Diver course. So now I’m a certified Deep Diver, to go to a maximum of 40 meters (130 feet). Of course the bottom time at this depth is only a few minutes though.

This sketch from the Kuwait Mantas site. Click here for their overview of dive sites in Kuwait. I went to one of their socials and decided that it wasn’t the group that I want to dive with now.

Reef Dive

Night Dive
First ever