{"id":334,"date":"2016-09-24T21:45:22","date_gmt":"2016-09-24T20:45:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.josephcaruana.co.uk\/diving\/?p=334"},"modified":"2016-09-24T21:51:09","modified_gmt":"2016-09-24T20:51:09","slug":"morning-rec-dive-at-reqqa-point","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.josephcaruana.co.uk\/diving\/2016\/09\/24\/morning-rec-dive-at-reqqa-point\/","title":{"rendered":"Morning rec dive at Reqqa Point"},"content":{"rendered":"

So after three months and a half since the last single-cylinder recreational dive (yes, I actually checked the logbook), today I did just that!\u00a0 No twinset, no deco stages.\u00a0 Just one 12L steel cylinder on my back.\u00a0 And did it feel amazing!\u00a0 One fin-kick with the Seawing Novas<\/a> and I was whizzing through the water.\u00a0 It was a reminder of how much more drag one has to put up with if they’re willing to explore deeper and stay longer.\u00a0 I rediscovered the sensation of turning upside down and deliberately switching to whatever angle I wanted, all with a simple twist and an ever slight fin kick.\u00a0 What freedom!<\/p>\n

Now, if you’re thinking that this suggests in any way that I’m going back to doing just rec dives from now on – well, no, that’s not the case.\u00a0 Technical diving is where my heart lies.\u00a0 But what I certainly took from this morning’s dive is that every now and then I will definitely still want to do a single-cylinder recreational dive where I can chase after fish with my camera and soar (fly?) over the stunning underwater landscape to my heart’s content.\u00a0 Anyway, the bottom line is that despite knowing all along that I should expect to feel lighter, I was still really surprised.<\/p>\n

Right, with that pressing information blurted out, let me now walk through the morning’s events in chronological order.\u00a0 As we kitted up, we were surrounded by the beautiful, muted colours of a cloudy Summer day.\u00a0 It was calm and peaceful, as Gozo can be on certain Saturday mornings.\u00a0 A few divers were already getting in the water (would they scare away all the fish before we got in?).<\/p>\n

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\nI would be diving with Denis Marin, the guy you have to talk to if nudibranchs<\/a> are your thing.\u00a0 (He has a remarkably trained eye for them and is truly passionate about the myriad species!) We jumped in the water around 09:10 and, slowly, down we went.\u00a0 On our way we encountered a few hiding scorpionfish, brilliantly camouflaged as ever.<\/p>\n

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Spot the Scorpionfish<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

At a depth of around 30 metres, our hearts got beating as dusky groupers appeared from behind boulders, causing both of us to spend the next few minutes exchanging enthusiastic thumbs up and OK signals, signifying our satisfaction at being this lucky.\u00a0 We stayed for as long as we could, admiring these creatures as they came closer to us, before finally retreating to the depths.<\/p>\n

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A solitary dusky grouper; not the best one we saw – but my camera’s SD card acted up while filming a larger specimen we encountered.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

As Denis would say later on, one would almost want to take a chair down with them and just stay there, but alas, our bottom time was up, and we had to start making our way to shallower waters unless we wanted to incur obligatory decompression stops, not something I’m keen on when diving on a single cylinder.<\/p>\n

On our way back we encountered a variety of marine life, from Octopus and crabs to “baby” scorpionfish and cow bream.<\/p>\n

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A shoal of Cow bream<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

One of the young scorpionfish was incredibly well hidden in a small hole in a rock, but keen-eyed Denis duly noticed it.<\/p>\n

A well hidden young scorpionfish; the dark black spot is its eye.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

There were, of course, nudibranchs.\u00a0 Many nudibranchs.\u00a0 But I did not manage to take a half-decent shot of any of them.\u00a0 So that’s for another day.\u00a0 The cherry on the cake was some hunting Amberjack in the shallows.\u00a0 That kind of fast, powerful chase is best presented in a video rather than a picture.\u00a0 So here goes a very short clip of the hunting action:<\/p>\n