The Bangalore Dive Club recently celebrated a year in existence!
2009 saw lots of fun and initiatives to preserve the environment, which include:
- Lobbying against the government which resulted in Nethrani being reopened for diving
- Spreading awareness about the effects of pollution on corals
- Beach clean ups
- The Maldives and Tioman trips especially for club members and numerous club meets constitute the fun quotient.
We are celebrating the first anniversary at IVY-Unwind Island this Sunday.,July4, so join us for a day of fun-full of lots of activities for divers and enthusiasts.
Contact us for details: Shirley/ Rashmi #08025213366
FEAR STREET
The most common fear that my first -time divers have, is that they will be attacked by sharks underwater. It’s absolutely no surprise that this fear stems from Steven Spielberg’s blockbuster “Jaws”! On the 35th anniversary of the film, the award winning film maker apologized to viewers for misrepresenting the intent of sharks, as beach-goers round the world are still paranoid about being attacked!
Gianrico Mureddu, Course Director at the Andaman Diving Academy clarified that sharks are quite peaceful and only attack when provoked, which is why they never attack peaceful divers.
Most divers explore the ocean in the hope of getting a glimpse of these beautiful creatures!
DIVE BUDDY
Always wondered why you can’t dive alone?
Buddy diving is the use of the buddy system by scuba divers and is a set of safety procedures that improve divers’ chances of avoiding or surviving accidents in or underwater by diving in a group of two or three divers. When using the buddy system, the group dives together and co-operate with each other, so that they can help or rescue each other in the event of an emergency.
In recreational diving, a pair of divers is the best combination in buddy diving; with threesomes, one of the divers can easily lose the attention of the other two. Groups with more than three divers are not using the buddy system. The system is likely to be effective in mitigating out-of-air emergencies, non-diving medical emergencies and entrapment in ropes or nets. When used with the buddy check it can help avoid the omission, misuse and failure of diving equipment.
As JJ, a dive instructor for ten years puts it, having a buddy offers not only security but also a partner in crime. He fondly recounts, “Sometimes, you and your buddy are together and the rest of the group is at some distance and we see a shark zip by together and the others miss it and we get to tell the rest when they catch up-We just saw a Shark!” Your buddy is the only other person who will truly understand what you feel in that moment when you see that shark or manta together.
Have any such stories with your buddy?
Send them right in!
SIPADAN
This “untouched piece of art”, as it was named by the late Jacques-Yves Cousteau, is amongst the top 3 dive destinations in the world.
Sipadan is most famous for diving, thanks to the abundance of marine life in the area. Normally, rare diving scenes are frequently seen in the waters around Sipadan: schools of green and hawksbill turtles nesting and mating, schools of barracuda and big-eye trevally in tornado-like formations, pelagic species such as manta rays, eagle rays, scalloped hammerhead sharks and whale sharks.
With nearby islands of Mabul and Kapalai Islands there are hundreds of dive sites to choose from. Nothing beats scuba diving in Sipadan. If you can name it, then there’s a dive site in the area that has it; from macro life to pelagic, wrecks to wall dives, coral gardens teeming with a rich diversity of corals and fish, underwater caves where sleepy sharks go to chill out, and caverns where turtles go for eternal rest… Sipadan diving has it all and then some.
Sipadan is also famous for macro. If your eyes are good enough, you are likely to spot some of the most beautiful nudibranchs and shrimps on every single dive. But it is not the only incredible world; you will also see turtles, barracudas, stingrays, cuttlefish, reef sharks, bump head parrot fish, moray eels, jack fish, napoleon wrasses and lion fishes, just to mention a few.
Besides all that there is to explore in the parallel world underwater, the island itself seems like the kind of place Shakespeare was at when he wrote The Tempest. It’s the kind of place that makes you want to be stranded there!
We urge you to join us as we explore this magical island in July.
Planet Scuba India promises you the experience of a lifetime!
Check the gallery ….let the pictures give you an idea of what we’re talking about.
NETHRANI
The first time i heard about this place was a year ago, stating that it had one of the coolest beaches and was one of the best dive sites in India. So when i heard that the folks from Planet Scuba awere organizing a dive trip to Murudeshwar I was eager to go for I had wanted to visit this place since I first heard about it.
So we ( Saj, the instructor and I, his wife) headed toward the office of Planet Scuba by 5PM. There we saw all of the crew busy with packing, filling forms which contained emergency contact nos and other details of the team headed toward Murudeshwar. After duly filling out our forms each, we handed it to Rashmi and went along with the others to board our mini van.
There were 8 students- Siddharth, Manoj, Prithvi, Nischith, Ravi, Sreenivas, Nanda & Rithesh with two instructors- Saj and Madhu & a fun diver Kamal. We left the place at about 5:45 and started our journey and stopped at about 9 for dinner in the outskirts of Bangalore. After that, it was time for everyone to sleep.
We reached Murudeshwar at 7am the next day-thats where the adventures started!!! As soon as we reached there, the driver parked our mini van right onto the beach where its wheels got stuck in the sand. It took a lot of team effort and dried coconut leaves and sticks to finally haul it out of the sand. That took almost half an hour. All of us then rushed into our hotel. It was called the RNS Residency and one of the best in Murudeshwar.
But the best thing in Murudeshwar apart from diving is the Shiva statue & some other similar ones which can be seen from very far away that contain the puranic stories of Raavana acquiring the Shiva linga. We could get a clear view of it from our hotel room too. After freshening up the guys all headed toward the beach for their dive sessions while i decided to stay back. Some of them took more time than required, to get ready. Also they had to go to the local Police station to acquire permission for diving, for security reasons due to terrorism& other security reasons. Anyway they finally took off toward the sea only after 11.
The boat ride toward the dive spot was a little more than one hour from the shore. The instructors, Madhu and Saj each took four students under their supervision and off they went underwater for the first day of two open water dives. They enjoyed a lot and spent 3 days boasting about the fishes that they saw. The lobster that was over a metre long, the giant giant grouper which had a face the size of a football, the moray eel that kept poking its head out of the rocks, and the trigger fish, the fusiliers and the snappers that always kept them company.
The course was completed in two days time. But the best part of their dives was on the third day when they went out for their fun dives.. Also by the third day all of us were better acquainted and began to really enjoy the trip.They had planned before itself to take a can & bottle of Pepsi, some eggs in order to check some things they had seen in some dive videos. So after diving in they opened the Pepsi and as seen in the video some pressure kept the Pepsi from coming out of the bottle. They in turn took out a straw and had a sip each from the bottle which delighted everyone especially the youngest member of our dive group, Rithesh. They also wanted to break the egg under water which would keep the white and yellow of the egg seperate due to pressure. But the egg which was tied to the BCD of one of the students’s turned loose and went underwater before anyone realised it.
After that we quickly packed again and was on our Mini van back to Bangalore.On the way back after watching a movie in the bus we had a long dinner. We took off from there only after 10. We finally reached back at 9 am on Monday morning thus ending a very joyous and memorable underwater experience.
Submitted by Preethy Warrier