Diving Group 7 – Yoosuf, Hijan and Edhan.                                                

After a few weeks of taking students who had some kind of diving experience, today was the turn of a new batch of students to log their first dive and experience not only the Discover Scuba Diving course, but even a second dive in a beautiful and well preserved location called Banana reef.

Hijan (Grade 11), Yoosuf (Grade 11), Edhan (Grade 9) and I met early this morning to take the speedboat to Hulhumale. Once we arrived to Into Scuba, things were ready for the Billabong students to join a group of Chinese tourists in watching the introductory video that explains, among other things, why it is very important never to hold your breath while diving.

Once the students had filled all the necessary forms and tried their fins on, we took the boat to MaaGiri, where they managed to complete the shallow water exercises surprisingly fast. This allowed us to spend a little more than half an hour in deeper waters.

To carry on with the surprises, not only the three of them didn´t struggle while equalizing, but Edhan turned out to be a very good eel-finder. During both of our dives, we saw around seven eels and more than half were found by him.

Once our first dive was over, all of us went to Banana reef and, since we had to wait for some more minutes before starting our second dive, we had the opportunity to snorkel in the area. While snorkeling, we had a brief glimpse of a turtle; however, just like one week ago, the best was reserved for the end. During our second dive we saw a huge amount of fish such as clown (anemone) fish, blue stripe snappers, lion fish, tiny shrimps and more eels.

For the last minutes of our dive, Divemaster Yassen, who did a great job in guiding us and finding many different kinds of fish, allowed us to go and dive above the table corals while we could see and hear a heavy rain falling on the water above us.

The Chinese tourists that came on the same boat as us might have had enough after just one dive as they looked exhausted, however on our way back to Hulhumale it was clear that for Yoosuf, Edhan and Hijan, this was just the first of many more diving trips to come.

On our way to MaaGiri

Yoosuf jumping into the water.

Hijan jumping in.

Most of Edhan was already in the water when I took the pic.

All three of them during the shallow water exercises.

Hijan

Going deeper.

Some fish.

Looks like they´re flying.

A honeycomb eel.

A powder-blue surgeonfish

Hijan waving at the camera.

Close up on Edhan.

Yoosuf diving in Banana reef.

Clark´s anemone fish.

Two Maldives anemone fish.

Another anemone fish.

Yassen surrounded by a bank of blue stripe snappers.

Edhan looking at the fish.

Hijan and a lot of colorful fish.

Table corals.