Diving in Nha Trang

Yesterday I went out for 2 dives off Monh island with a company called Angel Dive.

I was a little dubious of the quality of the dive after discussions with dive operators the previous evening. Their descriptions didn't include any large fish, sharks, turtles or any of the high end marine life. It seems the local area has been largely over fished and not managed effectively..

So I set off at 7:30 yesterday with beautiful weather conditions. The first dive started at 8:30 and I was partnered up with a French Canadian fellow by the name of Robert.

The first dive went well, the water temp was a lovely 28 degrees and the visibility was good at around 15m. The dive started on a soft coral garden with a mix of dead coral inter mixed and a few small tropical fish darting around.

We descended to around 15m and worked our way through a series of boulders on the hunt for a cave. Our dive guide was a local fellow who had been diving the area for the past 10 years. We soon found the cave which had formed from a few large boulders collapsing on top of each other. The dive instructor entered first and we followed. The cave was a tunnel which lasted about 7m with openings at both ends. Large schools of fish were inside the cave, which quickly shuffled to the side as we moved towards them.

We found another similar cave shortly after and went through that one too.

The first dive lasted around
1 hour, and we then had a 1 hour surface interval.

We moved around the island to a new dive spot and jumped back into the water at 10:30.

The second dive started out well until the dive guides tank popped an o ring and started leaking air when we had descended to around 10m. So Robert and the guide went back to the boat to get some new gear. After 5 minutes the two rejoined me and we started exploring.

The second dive mainly consisted of partially healthy coral gardens at 6-8m, and at deeper depths faded into a sandy desert. We saw a few lion fish and a grouper but the dive was definately showing signs of previous mis treatment. Hopefully in time the area improves given its been made into a marine park.

The second dive lasted around 55 minutes and we got to 20m. The water temp below 17m dropped noticably with the thermocline to around 14 degrees.

I was back in Nha Trang at 1p and had lunch with the group of 7 at a local restaurant. All in all the dives were enjoyable but they were no where near as good as areas such as the great barrier reef, north east coast of Fiji, Galapagos, or even rottnest island.

Erin and I are off to Danang today, so I better start getting sorted, we fly out in 4 hrs.