My 2nd Trip to “3 Sisters” Divesite at the Damaniyat Islands

  Some of us decided to us our 3-day weekend last week to do some diving.  We left Global Scuba (located at Civil Aviation Club between the Wave and the Chedi) at 8:30am last Saturday and we were geared up and in the water for our 1st dive at “3 Sisters” at 9:44am.  This was my 21st dive in total and my 2nd time at this divesite; the first time was last September – just a month after getting my PADI Open Waters certification.         This was my first dive with my new Canon D20 UW camera.Technically, it’s only supposed to go down to 10 meters but I had it down to 16.6 meters on this dive.  I picked it up at the main Canon shop in Areimi Complex for 160 OR (or about $416 US).  My friend used the previous model (Canon D10) and had it down to almost 30 meters so I knew I’d be good to go.  The color comes out much better with the Canon D20 than the Intova IC 14 with UW housing.  In addition, the D20 was much easier to use as they have a clear “underwater” function and even an option for “underwater macro” while the Intova required setting the white balance which I didn’t have a clue how to do.  Several moral eels on this dive!  The Canon D20 has its own built in flash so you don’t need any attached flash set-ups.  The trick is to get close enough to the subject.  The skill of knowing the optimal distance and choosing the right timing to shoot is something that I’m going to have to improve on!  Here’s a 7 minute video from the 1st half of our dive taken from 13 short clips and combined with youtube editor:   Not all the fish are cute tiny colorful tropical fish.  This monster sailed right past me and didn’t seem worried about my presence in the slightest.  One of my diving buddies, Denise, looking for her next photo op.  Looks like a scene right out of “Finding Nemo”!  Some of the coral is so colorful that they seem like small bouquets of flowers to me.  This turtle swam right past us!  You can find this cute fella in the 2nd video located at the end of this post.  We’ll end this post with clips from the 2nd half of our dive.  14 different clips (between 3 to 71 seconds) were put together for this more colorful video: Diving in Oman – what a life!