I know, it has been ages since we had a blog up here. I know some of you will snicker disbelievingly when I say I have every intention of being more regular.

But until then, here is a change of pace. This article was inspired by a couple of recent Instructor Training Courses I have done, and some of the struggles faced by the new instructors in terms of adapting their teaching when faced with situations that the regular instructor training curriculum doesn’t cover.

This article is geared mainly towards instructors and focused on how to teach water awareness, or kinesthetic awareness in the water, to students:

http://www.diveindia.com/articles/k-factor.html

Hopefully, the structured approach to solving student difficulties and the tips contained therein, will be useful.

Due to spam, I have disabled comments to blogs, but I’d love to hear your thoughts on the Diveindia Facebook group.

It is a cliche and a truism that all good things come to an end – but that doesn’t make Ev’s departure from the DiveIndia nest any easier.

Ev aka “McNamanta” first came to our resort when she was just a wee bonnie lass and we had just opened our resort. That season and the next few, she became a repeat customer and did a bunch of dives with us. Then one day, she was leading dives and before we knew what had happened, she adroitly went from customer to employee and had all of us wrapped around her finger. Not that we were complaining, mind you

Those of you who have dived with her know her as a very patient and empathetic instructor, always cheerful and smiling, and always excited to see her students develop into qualified divers. Those of us who have worked with her know her a genuinely nice, warm and caring person – the sort of person we were – and are – privileged to have as a friend.

After almost half a decade of good times, drunk times, hungover times, “Wtf was THAT?” times, occasionally grumpy times and epic times (ending the year with a staff sunset dive at Johnny’s Gorge, for one) she’s now off, starting a new chapter in her life back in Ireland.

We are very happy for her and wish her all the best, but we will also miss her here (plus, neither Vikas nor Sayeed can carry off a dress with as much panache as her!).

Hope to see you back here sooner rather than later, Evie – else we will have to consider kidnapping you and bringing you back here. Consider yourself warned!

It’s been a wet December and early Feb. Hell, it’s been wet and windy since September, come to think of it. The usual lull in rainfall and wind between Sep-Nov did not happen.

That was good for Frodo and Sam, who enjoyed the cooler weather. Personally, I enjoyed this weather as well. Those of you who live in North European climes, or even northern US, may find this hard to believe, but there really can be such a thing as “too much sun.”

Still, we exist to keep you, dear diver, happy and this weather was not conducive to the best diving. Rough seas meant that many days, we were limited to nearer sites. When the seas calmed down, the rains persisted – and this meant bedraggled and cold divers coming back from the dive. Afternoon booze sales were through the roof, though.

Well, it has been dry for a while now and the sun is out, and looks like it is here to stay. And so is the manta that has been hanging around Broken Ledge the past few days.

And the metaphorical sun has started to shine as well: our spares and new gear for the season has finally arrived – only 2.5 months late due to a collection of screw-ups that even I have a hard time believing. And I was informed that our new boat, custom made for us in Dubai, has arrived in Chennai and the process of clearing customs has started.

Tuesday, we go looking for a new site whose existence we have suspected for some time. Let’s see if the sun continues to shine

This season, we plan to put up a bunch of training articles and videos for our divers.  This will cover a wide range of topics.

Starting off, here is an article on a few things you can do to improve your dive skills and safety:  Ten Tips To Improve Your Dive Skills and Safety

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It took a recent visit to the website and a look at the Neil section to realize how amazingly behind schedule we are.

The page still read “we expect to launch in October 2009.”  I sure hope none of my former clients are reading this – in a past life, I used to make a living as a consultant managing large projects (eg mobile start-ups) and was not completely incompetent at it either.   So how did we go so badly wrong?

The answer to that last question is a sordid tale of unexpected capital expenses caused by new local regulations, various delays (including my favorite – a 2 month delay caused by shortage of sand.  Really.  I couldn’t make this stuff up, even I want to do so) and the usual cash flow management issues that independent SMEs like us – without a big, fat-cat list of investors – face as part of their growth.

But I think we are close to exhausting pretty much every excuse and potential cause of delay (and oh lord, I think i just jinxed myself into 2012 with this statement).

What is left is to complete the wiring (as soon as the contractor sends me a plan), the plumbing (all our commodes, loving hand-picked by yours truly based on long-term seating comfort for those days when you really can’t put down the book or magazine, had arrived broken and so we had to order new ones) and the dive equipment (which should arrive in a couple of weeks time).

Hmmm.   Now that I think of it, 2012 may yet be a possibility.  But there is a light at the end of the tunnel, and provided it doesn’t turn out to be the incoming train, we should be… (excuse me if you’ve heard this before) OPENING SOON.   Believe me, we are just as eager to get it started as anyone else.

They say something about the best laid plans of men and mice.  All I can do is quote the unmatchable Pinky, from Pinky and The Brain:  Narf!

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Recently, I cut the mooring line we had installed at Johnny’s Gorge.  We are going back to dropping anchor on that site.

Ironic, really, if you know the background:  3-4 years ago, a diver roasted us on the Interwebz for not following sound environmental practices because we once dropped anchor on Minerva.  Never mind that the anchor line – which *we* had installed on that site, and all the other sites, for that matter) – had been cut by fishermen, never mind that the fact that we’ve been pestering and badgering the various local officials to take action against shark finning and bottom trawling, never mind the fact that we’ve trained various members of the Zoology and Forest departments in diving and marine conservation and that we are even now conducting studies on the recovery after the El Nino effect of May 2010.

Fair’s fair to a point – the new crewman on the boat should not have dropped anchor but should have dived down and hooked it (and had we been told of this immediately instead of reading about it a lot later, we could have done remedial training a lot earlier).

Still, the roasting did rankle a bit, especially when someone who dived with us recently brought it up out of the blue.

Since then, some things have changed.  Fishermen have gotten used to the idea of bottles floating in the water (and there are enough waste plastic bottles on the island now that they no longer feel the need to liberate our floats.  How’s that for a silver lining?).   So our lines are getting cut less often.   And with a few more dive centers around who have the coordinates to our sites, maintaining the lines is getting easier.

However, we’ve always debated whether or not to put up an anchor line at sites like Johnny’s Gorge.  I’ve seen some anchor lines (ours as well as that of other dive boats) rubbing against barrel sponges and it was gut-wrenching.  We have always had a bit of a proprietary/maternal instinct about Johnny’s Gorge, given that Johnny, our senior dive guide, discovered it a few years ago and it is pretty much THE top dive site of the Andamans.  So naturally, we want to preserve it the best we can.   But we also wanted to make sure that the fishermen didn’t discover the site and start fishing there.  Johnny’s Gorge is one of the few sites which still has regular shark sightings and if the shark fishermen get wind of it, we run the risk of losing the  sharks that still remain around Havelock.

After much discussion with other dive centers, we decided to put up a mooring line – although I still had my misgivings.

So it was with a mix of alarm and anger that I came up from a second dive on Minerva Ledge a few weeks ago to see a fishing boat not just fishing on Johnny’s Gorge, but actually tied to our anchor line!  We went up to them and gave them grief for fishing on our dive sites (mostly bluffs, which thankfully they bought) and in the end, decided to cut the anchor line while they were still tied to it.

And we have a new edict at Diveindia – we are not only going to not set up a mooring line at JG, but we are actively going to cut any other lines that are put up there.

This will probably not win us friends with other dive centers, as Johnny’s Gorge requires experienced boat crew to actually hook into the site and a mooring line makes it a lot easier for DMs and boat crew alike.   This also means that I will probably have a few more gut-wrenching incidents of seeing anchors and mooring lines where they don’t belong (although we are taking steps to reduce that risk by choosing GPS coordinates which put us a little bit off the reef).   And it likely means a few more incidents of us being roasted on the internet forums by well-meaning divers with a very simple view on how conservation should happen.

So be it.    These are all risks and costs that I consider justified.

I remember what happened to Junction after we put up a line there – the fishermen from Neil wiped out the reef in about 2 months.  It has been 2+ years and there are still very few fish left on that site.   And I have also seen about an 80% reduction in shark population in the Andamans in the past 10 years.

And I have made a promise to myself to NEVER let that happen to Johnny’s Gorge – not under my watch.

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I just realized it has been a really long time since I blogged anything…. well, that’s the off-season for you.

But this is the sort of blog post that is a lot of fun to write about, as we discovered yet another great site a few days ago.      The site is as-yet un-named, but runs from 17-25m.  It has the same type of craggy gorge-like features as Johnny’s Gorge (the top dive site of the Andamans, discovered by Johnny, our senior DM a few years ago) and is also packed with fish.

Today was our first dive there, and we found 2 turtles, large schools of reef fish, a massive giant grouper, jacks, etc. etc.  The works.  No sharks and surprisingly, no barracudas either, but given the location, we expect it to be fairly productive when it comes to teeth-per-fin ratio of the resident fish.

This site should compare to Johnny’s Gorge, Jackson’s Bar and Dixon’s Pinnacle in terms of topography and fishlife.

Discovered by Vikas and Dixon.

Back when I first came and dived the Andamans in 2000-2001, there were a lot more sharks here. For example, Minerva Ledge used to be full of sharks – the question wasn’t whether you see any, but how many and how many species.

Compared to back then, the number of sharks have decreased significantly. In fact, finding Johnny’s Gorge and Jackson’s Bar was a big morale booster for our team, as it showed that there still were some sharks left.

However, some positive shark news – this season, we have started seeing a lot more leopard sharks. I dont think I saw *any* leopard sharks in my first 4-5 years in the Andamans… and for the next few years, I think it was only a few sightings every season.

But this season, they are regulars – we’ve been spotting them at Parr Ridge a lot, and also on Pilot Reef and South Pilot Reef.  These are all sites that are accessible to divers of all certification levels and experience, as an added bonus!

Vinnie

Mating leopard sharks at 51m

Back in 2002, I was teaching a class at Minerva Ledge with 3 Open Water students.

Back then, there used to be a lot more sharks on this reef and the question wasnt whether we’d see any sharks, but how many and which species. As with most beginners, my students had some concerns about being in the water with sharks, and I gave them my usual spiel: sharks arent dangerous, we are not normal prey, we are too big for most sharks, etc. etc.

We get in the water, and sure enough, we see a white tip cruise by. And then a black tip some time later. By now, my students are converted – they are very excited about the sharks and no longer scared. Towards the end of the dive, yet another white tip goes by – and a few seconds later, one of my students points to the right into the blue and signals “shark.”

I look, expecting to see a white tip and sure enough, there is one swimming towards us. I nod and return to scanning the front, as I am hoping to get a manta today.

Then a small voice pipes in my head, saying “wait a minute – wrong proportions…” I look again, and the shark is coming toward us. Directly towards us. Fins down. Which is an aggressive territorial display.

“Wait a minute,” I remember thinking, “where does a white tip get off being aggressive to three divers”?

Then the initial voice in my head pipes up again “hey… WRONG proportions. Hellooo!”

Right – when looked more closely, this shark just seemed to be a lot bulkier. And not only that, it was a lot bigger. And at that moment, it turned and showed us its size – it was a 4m+ bullshark! Yes, I know bullsharks don’t get bigger than 3m or so – but this was 4m+ and I will stake my diving reputation on it (heck, most people who’ve seen it put it at 5m+, but that is a bit exaggerated). And my divers and I had just been told off in no uncertain terms by Big Guy that we were in his territory.  Rather than upset him, we turned around and head back in towards the reef, and that was all we saw of him on this dive.

Over the next few years, Bob the Bullshark would make a reappearance a couple of times each season. Each time, it was at the same site and the same deal: comes straight in, fins down, in a territorial display, turning away a good 10m or so away.  We always appreciated the polite warning and would make sure we didn’t hang around for a second pass (and certainly not the third pass, which might involve a “smile”).

And each sighting was absolutely, gloriously epic – there are few things in this world as graceful as an enormous, powerful shark with rippling muscles and gliding by faster than anyone can swim with the merest flick of its tail. It was humbling and it was moving – we were witnessing one of nature’s 2 perfect creations in its element (the other being the crocodile) – and I mean “perfect creation” literally: the shark has not changed or evolved over 350 million years. It is perfect and cannot be improved upon.

The last 3+ seasons, Bob has been AWOL. We put it down to him falling a victim to the local shark fishermen (thanks to the demand for turning this amazingly beautiful animal into soup).

However, a couple of days ago, two of our divers and one of our DMs saw a big shark at a site that is about 250m away from Bob’s old stomping grounds. Initially, we were not sure whether it was a grey reef shark (which has been sighted here occasionally) or a bullshark (which has never been sighted here). Speaking to the divers and comparing notes on size, shape, etc., I am pretty confident it was a big bullshark.

Could Bob be back? I for one certainly hope so – if there ever was a Christmas present that would thrill me beyond belief, this would be it. And at the risk of anthropomorphizing too much, I do wonder if somewhere in that predator mind of his, Bob remembers us?

Welcome back, Bob – we missed you!

So Vikas and I spent 3 days, sitting at the Port Blair port, waiting to get everything sorted so that we could lower our boat into the water (a process which, if one removes the waiting time, took an actual 20 minutes of effort).     Yesterday morning, we woke up at 4:00am and headed over to the pier, departing Port Blair by 5, just at the crack of dawn.

Flat calm seas, beautiful lighting, a few sleepy gulls and Mako, purring along with her engines at mid-revs.  A couple of bursts of speed got the speed up to well over 40knots and put big smiles on our face.

Today, Gregorio and his friends from Spain, who’ve been diving with us for the past 8-9 days, became the first divers to go on a dive trip on Mako – a sunrise dive at Johnny’s Gorge.  Departing at 5am, we were there by 5:20am and had an amazing dive.    A couple of the divers claimed this was their best dive ever (and these are people who have dived Galapagos and Sipadan, mind you), for the sheer wealth of fish life on the site.

So, this is what the future holds for DiveIndia this season — dawn dives, expedition trips to Barren Island, Invisible Banks, Campbell Shoal;  extended range of day trip from Havelock to include North Button, Port Blair and Neil Island (including the drop-offs around Neil, where supposedly big sharks hang).   These will be exclusive trips – 4-6 divers, 1 guide and 2 or 3 tanks, depending on where we go.

At the risk of sounding like we are tooting our own horn (we are, I admit, but I think we’ve earned it ), we can safely say this represents another evolution in what diving in the Andamans has to offer.  The first was the new sites discovered by Johnny, Dixon and Jackson;  the next was the North Safaris and now this.

As of now, we will be running day trips to virtually all sites visited by liveaboards, and a lot of other sites that they don’t know about (there’s that local expertise coming into play again).  And you get to experience the magic of the Andamans as well…

Yep, it’s been a while since our last blog, but I think this one was worth it.  We’ll be posting videos and clips online very soon as well.

Safe diving,

Vinnie