Derech HaMeshi

The original plan was to go for an early morning dive at 7am. I woke around 6am, and since now I had a room mate, I got my stuff and went out. Outside it was serenely quiet and so I decided to go watch the sea until everyone wakes up.

On the beach there was a row of tents, with most of their inhabitants sleeping. There were two guys snorkling in the water, but otherwise all was empty. I sat on the deck of Bar Beach and enjoyed the sun.

Around 6:30 matan calls my cell to say good morning. Maya woke all of them up, and they came to join me on the deck. We could see that all the "pencil" boueis where tilted south indicating that there is southward current. We decided to use this opportunity and go on "Derech Hameshi" from the north part of the reserve to south of the university area. On our way to set up the equipment we run into Avi O who decided to join us. Since we had two cars, Matan and Avi jumped Avi's van to the south exit point and returned, which saved us a long walk back.

We got into the water and peddled on our back toward the southern "bridge" of the coral reserve beach. There we went down and started our dive. The current at this point was noticable and so we had to do limited movements to get moving.

Matan enjoyed the freedom of the open water. We went down to 20+m and saw the usuall array of many corals and fishes. I wasn't in a photo-mood, and instead enjoyed the feeling.

After a while we came back up to the shelf at 8m and continued south. I spotted a school of baracudas.

They swam around us in various patterns, which lead to marvalous sites of patterns and shapes. Alas, its hard to capture that on camera :-(

After the baracudas I noticed this little guy hiding and spent some time taking its photo.

When I finished with him I turned to search for Avi and Matan, and found them waiting patiently while meditating about the meaning of life...

We arrived at the underwater observatory. The place was of course empty so there wasn't the drill of seeing people inside looking at us as the most interesting thing in the water...

We did find some intersting fishes around the observatory, including this shy baleny.

After 100 min of diving (and two hours since we got into the water) we got out. To my surprise I even had some air to spare.