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After 15 minutes of encountering seemingly endless shoals of divers, our dive guide took us a bit deeper to explore the top of the walls (20-22 meters), and things turned for the better: less divers there, and we were gobsmacked with how beautiful and pristine the reef was. Soft corals everywhere! And some hard corals too. Although I was frustrated that I couldn’t use strobes to properly photograph this beautiful sceneries.
Indeed: strobes (and video lights) are forbidden at Kimud Shoal, on the rationale that too much of them might deter the sharks.
I don’t know if there is scientific evidence to back this up, but the consequence is that the walls are little visited, and I bet this explains how healthy they are.
Pardon the washed out photos, they don’t do justice to the coral life on location, but that’s as much colours you can salvage at that sort of depth, without artificial lights.
All this was very nice, but what about the sharks? We did see one passing out of the blue off the wall, but nothing we could photograph. Then at the end of the dive we finally saw one (last photo on this message)! But can you see the layer of murky water just on the plateau? This was about 5m viz coldish water (26 Celsius) right there, with 15m viz and 28C water a couple of meters above.
Back on the boat Lena and I debriefed: between the herds of bubble-makers and the viz, are we going to get one decent shark shot or what?
