Diving-Club@Billabong

Diving Group 11 – Ithaf, Jaish, Ayham and Maiz.

On Saturday, July 6^th, Ithaf (Grade 11), Jaish (Grade 11), Ayham (Grade 10), Maiz (the first Grade 8 student to take part in one of our diving trips) and I met at Hulhumale´s terminal for what would become their first two dives and Discover Scuba Diving certification.

After going through the basics of diving and watching the introductory video, the students joined two European tourists on a trip to MaaGiri where the shallow water exercises were successfully conducted in around 10 to 15 minutes, after which we went to deeper water and saw a huge amount of fish banks, a lobster, many anemone fish and eels.

Watching the introductory video.

Listening to the instructions.

Maiz, Ayham and Jaish with their Divemasters.

Maiz´s first dive.

Ayham´s first dive.

Jaish´s first dive.

Ayham and Ithaf.

Ayham equalizing.

One of the many banks of fish we saw.

A hidden lobster.

A honeycomb eel.

Some Maldives anemone fish.

All four of them and their Divemasters.

After the first dive.

During that first trip along MaaGiri´s reef, I noticed two unusual events, the first one occurred during the first minutes of the dive and was Ayham´s talent for underwater sneezing; the second happened during the last ten minutes and was something I have never experienced before while diving: dolphins singing. Although I have heard rain while diving, the sound of dolphins around, even when we couldn´t see them, was a very nice experience which I hope will happen soon again. Later on I was told by the Divemasters that they were most likely swimming around Banana reef.

Our second dive took place along Kurumba´s reef. There, we saw two black-tip sharks, a lot of spade fish and bleaching coral which I decided to photograph along with some bubbles which tend to be a lot of fun to play with when someone´s experiencing his or her first dives.