Seychelles_Dive_Log

Introduction
The diving in the Seychelles is some of the best scenic diving I have ever done to the extent that sea life that would have been worthy of comment on some of the dives I have done in the Red Sea could be forgotten about when writing up log books. All of the dives described below had their fair share of parrot fish, lion fish, trigger fish etc. As the week progressed these rapidly became little more than a backdrop to the stuff that really caught our attention. As with most warm water diving our profiles were generally initially deep and then a long time spent far shallower on a reef. Only once in the week did I enter mandatory decompression after our first visit to Shark Bank.

Equipment
A short note on equipment. The group I was with was basically self equipped and several had 3 litre pony cylinders (for the record 100 cu.ft is equivalent to 12 litres at 232 bar) attached to 12 or 15 litre cylinders (from Seychelles Underwater Centre [SUC]). At the SUC (nitrox not available) air fills seemed to be to around 200 bar and we were initially offered 12 litre aluminium cylinders. Initially I tried to twin these but the buoyancy changes from 200 to 50 bar proved uncomfortable so I switched to twin 8 litre cylinders which provided more than enough air for a single dive and an acceptable degree of redundancy. The dive shop was a little mystified by the request and it rapidly proved simpler to put the kit in the boat ourselves as the boatees found it heavy. It should be noted that the dive centre was very definitely orientated around PADI no-stop diving which is not meant as a criticism but meant that the guides dive plans reflected Buhlmann rather than BS-AC ’88 table limits.

The Twin Barges
This dive site lies close to Beau Valon Bay on Mahé a short run by boat to the west. It consists of two small, basically identical open, steel barges intentionally sunk for diving purposes. With a maximum depth of 22m it provides local dive centres with a check out dive site and a good introduction for visiting divers.

The two barges lie essentially intact and upright on an inclined sea-bed of white sand and are no more than 10m apart with the shallower of the two pointing straight out from the nearby reef at right angles. The deeper of the two lies at an angle to the first and is linked by a line.

The deeper of the two has in side it a small mobile crane and a moray lives in the top of it by where the driver would have sat. There is also a large metal block leaning against one side which gives divers an open swim through and the chance to see a couple of large trumpet/pipe fish.

The shallower of the two barges has a large mesh box in it which is fairly heavily encrusted with soft corals. It is possible to swim around and inside this box. Access to the bow and stern regions of the barges doesn’t look possible as the hatches are quite small and there is little extra to see anyway.

On our first visit to the barges they were also being visited by a turtle, which was examining one of the holds. The other regular inhabitants of this site are two large bat fish in the shallower barge and stone fish and lion fish on the various ledges on the outside of the hull. Morays also seem to enjoy living in the line between the hull and the seabed especially under the overhang of the stern. Here also may be found prawns with reddish colouring and long antenna. Around the two barges may also be found some quite reasonable shoals of fish, especially at the bow and stern.

Swimming away from the shallower barge and up on to the reef brings you to the second part of this dive, effectively a place for an extended deco’ stop. The reef is mainly soft corals and, if you look hard, colourful nudibranchs. Evidence of the destructive effect of the last El Nino event is everywhere with lots of smashed hard coral but the reef is all about soft corals and the way the reef is recovering from El Nino. There are some nice shoals of fish here and the odd bright yellow trumpet fish. Scattered over it are some very large versions of what I know as sea-cucumber some over a metre long all furiously making sand. The reef is at its best when you are shallower than about 14m.