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Diving
The diving in the Seychelles is some of the best scenic diving I have ever done to the extent that sea life that would have been worthy of comment on some dives in the Red Sea was forgotten about when writing up log books. All of the dives described below had their fair share of parrot fish, lion fish, trigger fish etc. As the week progressed these rapidly became little more than a backdrop to the stuff that really caught our attention. As with most warm water diving our profiles were generally initially deep with a long time spent far shallower on a reef. Only once in the week did I enter mandatory decompression after our first visit to Shark Bank.
 
Equipment
A short note on equipment. The group brought its own kit and several had 3 litre pony cylinders attached to 12 or 15 litre cylinders (from Seychelles Underwater Centre [SUC]). At the SUC (no nitrox) air fills were to only 200 bar. Initially I tried to twin 12s but the buoyancy changes from 200 to 50 bar proved uncomfortable so I switched to twin 8 litres which provided more than enough air for a single dive and a degree of redundancy. The dive shop was a little mystified by the request and it proved simpler to put the kit in the boat ourselves as the boatees found it too heavy. The dive centre was very definitely orientated around PADI no-stop diving which is not meant as a criticism but meant that the guides dive plans reflected Buhlmann rather than BS-AC ’88 table limits.
 
The Twin Barges
This dive site lies close to Beau Valon Bay on Mahé a short run by boat to the west. It consists of two small, basically identical open, steel barges intentionally sunk for diving purposes. With a maximum depth of 22m it provides local dive centres with a check out dive site and a good introduction for visiting divers.
 
The two barges lie essentially intact and upright on an inclined sea-bed of white sand and are no more than 10m apart with the shallower of the two pointing straight out from the nearby reef at right angles. The deeper of the two lies at an angle to the first and is linked by a line.
 
The deeper of the two has in side it a small mobile crane and a moray lives in the top of it by where the driver would have sat. There is also a large metal block leaning against one side which gives divers an open swim through and the chance to see a couple of large trumpet/pipe fish.
 
The shallower of the two barges has a large mesh box in it which is fairly heavily encrusted with soft corals. It is possible to swim around and inside this box. Access to the bow and stern regions of the barges doesn’t look possible as the hatches are quite small and there is little extra to see anyway.
 
On our first visit to the barges they were also being visited by a turtle, which was examining one of the holds. The other regular inhabitants of this site are two large bat fish in the shallower barge and stone fish and lion fish on the various ledges on the outside of the hull. Morays also seem to enjoy living in the line between the hull and the seabed especially under the overhang of the stern alongside prawns with reddish colouring and long antenna. Around the two barges are some quite reasonable shoals of fish, especially at the bow and stern.
 
Swimming away from the shallower barge and up on to the reef brings you to the second part of this dive, a good place for an extended deco’ stop. The reef is mainly soft corals and, if you look hard, colourful nudibranchs. Evidence of the destructive effect of the last El Nino event is everywhere with lots of smashed hard coral but the reef is all about soft corals and the way the reef is recovering from it. There are some nice shoals of fish here and the odd bright yellow trumpet fish. Scattered over it are some very large versions of what I know as sea-cucumber some over a metre long all furiously making sand. The reef is at its best when you are shallower than about 14m.
 
Willy’s Bay
A longer run to the west of Beau Valon Bay brings you to a sheltered bay with all the indicators of a tropical paradise with the coconut palms overhanging a few small, sandy beaches. The boat moored in quite close with a small headland to the west. Descending to around 8m brings you to a sandy seabed but it is worth looking into the small rock outcrops that are found there as morays live in them. Swimming to the base of the headland brings you to a reef made up of rocky boulders with nice soft corals and shoals of fish. You can then turn out into slightly deeper water or cross over the reef via a small saddle at around 6m. Swimming the long way round takes you to a maximum depth of 12m at the tip. The western side of the headland is made up of large boulders and it is here that the highlight of this dive site is found, very large rays. The ones we saw appeared to be resting in small “caves” under the boulders.
 
The Dredger
This is another intentionally sunken feature but is somewhat larger than the barges. The dredger lies almost upside down with the deck in contact with the sea-bed on its starboard side and the port side a few metres elevated by the bow and the stern post which was originally raised and lowered to fix the vessel to the sea-bed. This allows you access to the inside of the vessel if you so wish. Along the centre line of the hull towards the bow is the dredging equipment which elevates the bow.
 
The wreck is pretty much intact but provides little more than a backdrop for a huge shoal of yellow snapper which cloak the wreck almost entirely. The snapper generally move slowly except for when the yellow fin tuna flash through them at an incredible speed. The darker interior areas of the wreck provide hiding space for the local variety of spiny lobster and large shoals of a catfish/ling like fish which group closely together on the bottom. Some large morays can be found in the various pipes and crevices around the wreck.
 
Once again this wreck lies off a reef and swimming straight out from the stern brings you to it after about 25m. The highlights of this part of the dive included a small ray and a very relaxed turtle feeding on either soft corals or sponges. It is well worth a visit and it ends up quite shallow at around 6m and so is ideal for decompression.
 
L’Ilot
This small island is the last visible outcrop of land looking east from Beau Valon and lies a few hundred metres from the mainland. The island is made up of large boulders which are quite light in colour and is topped by several coconut palms. The dive we did started to the west of the island, on the Beau Valon side, and took us mostly clockwise around it. The initial descent took us to a collection of large granite boulders and ledges. This was the place were I first saw real sharks in the wild. They may only have been 1.5m long white tipped reef sharks and they were resting in a small cave between two of the ledges but it was quite an astonishing sight. A little later we came across a large turtle just at the northern end of the island where the current was supporting a large variety of soft corals and small fish. Continuing further on brought us to a large boulder, which provides a very colourful swim through. Beyond this point the current picked up so we chose to swim through a saddle and back the way we came. We then ambled along behind two more turtles and several large puffer fish. The southern end of the island seems typified by more vertical surfaces with once more a good variety of corals (this area is referred to as the Coral Garden).
 
Conception Island
This is a good run west of Beau Valon at the point were the western coast of Mahe meets the northern coast. The dive began at the southern end of the island and ran up the eastern side. The highlight of our dive there was a pair of big red octopus and a white tipped reef shark. Overall though this wasn’t the greatest dive of the week although I think we were getting a bit spoilt by then. Surfacing at the end in a small bay close to a tropical island with blue sky and sea and the green of the vegetation was quite spectacular though.
 
Rays Point
This dive lies a reasonable distance west of Beau Valon and didn’t at first seem that promising. The instructions were to descend the anchor line and to turn east and stay shallow. At the point where the anchor line hit the seabed we could see two huge boulders ahead which we took a good look around. Following the instructions we swam east and found two small “caves” made where large boulders lay very close together. These were filled with small fish and corals and well worth the effort swimming into if you can do so without causing any damage. There was nothing “big” on this dive except for a lone lump head cuckoo wrasse. The key thing with this dive is that you DO have to stay shallow and there are the most incredible shoals of smaller fish. The figures for the dive tell the story 66 minutes and 15m, but in truth the main part of this dive is probably at 6m or less.
 
Shark Bank
This dive lies about 8km north of Beau Valon bay en-route to Silhouette Island. It consists of an outcrop of granite rocks and boulders standing up from a sandy bottom at about 30m and rising to around 23m. Shark Bank is said to be prone to currents but we didn’t experience them. The incredible visibility here though gives some impression of this with the bottom clearly visible from the surface and the boat visible from the bottom. Once on the bottom this dive covers quite a small area the one thing of note is that none of us saw sharks. However the dive provided us with turtles, morays of all sizes and colours, rays of all sizes; some quite huge; and eagle rays in large numbers. If you add to this the huge shoals of snapper and other fish then its often a question of where to look next. One thing to bear in mind is that it is well worthwhile taking a small torch on this dive so that you can take a good look under the small overhangs. At the end of the dive a stop at 6m may put you in a large shoal of bat fish and give you the chance to see large and solitary barracuda.
 
Brissaire Rocks
Lying east of Mahé and a few kms beyond L’Ilot these rocks are subject to the swell of the open ocean. The dive is no deeper than 16m and a typical route is either clockwise or anti-clockwise around one or the other. The bottom is mainly bare rock between 11 and 7m with lots of large shoals of fish, morays and white tipped reef sharks, the latter once again resting in an alcove. The best region for soft coral appears to be on the “offshore” side of the rocks where they are exposed to the currents of the Indian Ocean.