This past weekend, a diving buddy and I decided to go diving out of the Millenium Hotel in Mussanah. It was an 80 km drive (45 minutes) from City Centre Seeb. I arrived at 8:15am and the boat departed at a little after 9am.
The dive center is in the building to the right of the Millennium Hotel as you’re facing the marina.
It was quite a large group of us that went out on the boat. No problem with a large boat like this one! This was the largest boat I have been out diving on so far. Because the boat was so large, it was also the smoothest ride I’ve had!
Al Sawadi (pictured here) was about a 30-minute boatride from the Millennium and it was another 30 minutes to our divesite. You can see the Sawadi Tower in the left corner of the photo.
We finally arrived at Sira Island divesite just after 10am. This was dive #25 for me!
The map of Sira Island that the Oman Sail’s dive centre in Mussanah used for the divemaster’s orientation for divers. The divemaster of the dive centre is Thani Mohammed Al Hamdani.
This is my dive partner moments after the descent. Our maximum depth on this dive was 18.5 meters with a bottom time of 45 minutes.
This was the 1st of 2 turtles we saw on this dive!
There were several moments of very poor visibility which made everything seem greenish. There were also moments of good visibility. Overall, it was a great dive!
What made this dive even more exciting was seeing my first shark! I was told that this is called a Leopard shark. My partner says we saw this shark twice but I’m not convinced that we didn’t in fact see 2 Leopard sharks on this dive. I also saw 2 moray eels, plenty of clown fish, parrot fish and schools of yellow fish.
Plenty of sailing and watersports activities available at the Millennium Resort.
It cost 51 OR for 2 dives including the environmental permit to head to the Damaniyats. That included renting their equipment. My diving partner who owns all her own equipment paid something like 33 OR.
If you’ve never been to Mussanah, I recommend a trip out for boating activities or diving if you ever get the chance. The best way to do it would be to stay the night at the Millennium Resort!
Here’s a 5 minute video of some of the highlights from the dive, including the 2 turtles and 2 Leopard sharks:
Andy in Oman 
Looks like an interesting option as the long boat rides from Muscat to Dimaniyat are quite boring and not too comfortable 🙂
Jarno,
Exactly! And it’s always nice to have more options, isn’t it?! The boat ride out to the Dimaniyats (from Global Scuba) is usually alright but the boat ride back in the afternoon can be very rough indeed!
Cool pictures!
Glad you enjoyed them! 🙂
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