One of the reasons for our recent trip to Oman was to go scuba diving, as we'd heard good things about the the
diving there. We dived at two locations: the
Damaniyat Islands and at Qantab.
The former are about 18 km/an hour's boat ride north of Muscat, the capital, and we did two dives each day on two consecutive days there. The area is a protected nature reserve composed of 9 islands and covering about 100 hectares.
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| sea star |
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| me, surrounded by teeming fish |
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| crown-of-thorns - deadly for the coral reef |
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| flatfish |
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| honeycomb moray eel |
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| large nudibranch |
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| a zebra shark |
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| cuttlefish |
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| large mating cuttlefish |
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| cuttlefish |
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| anemone |
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| swimming moray eel |
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| another nudibranch |
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| turtle |
After leaving Muscat we headed to
Qantab on the north-east coast, where we did another day's diving, this time with
Extra Divers. The diving was pleasant, but the visibility was not as good, and we saw fewer things.
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| pipe-fish |
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| unidentified? |
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| snake eel |
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| moray eel |
What was most surprising about the diving in Oman was the tremendous temperature difference between the air/land temperature and the sea. Air temperatures were low to mid 30s°C, but the water temperature was up to 10° or 12°C cooler!
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