Seychelles (Dive Sites)

...if you intend to visit Seychelles that this isn't unusual. There is a lot of general unrest, both social and political - it's not all sunshine and coconuts like the tourist board would have us believe. SUBIOS has a website www.subios.sc

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This was one of my early Ciao efforts, and I thought I could vastly improve ... more

For most visitors to Seychelles, Mahe is just the location of the international airport, where they change planes to head straight to the more popular and tourist savvy Praslin or one of the outer islands. It may be the largest and most populated island, but Mahe has a lot going for it, with a strong Kreol culture, beautiful mountains and beaches and some excellent dive sites. I worked there for three months as a scientific diver, and I found the range and diversity of dive sites very impressive.

The coral reefs around Mahe are by no means the most colourful or diverse in the world, and have been damaged not only by the tsunami, and coral bleaching events, but also by construction work on the island, for example when the airport was upgraded, which has resulted in a lot of debris being washed onto the reefs and smothering them. However, they are recovering, and there is still many coral varieties to be seen, along with thousands of species of tropical fish and invertebrates. The gems of the fish include bumphead parrots, humphead wrasse, white tip reef sharks, eagle rays, frogfish, stonefish, scorpion fish, pufferfish, lion fish, whale sharks and loads of colourful angels and butterflies.

Most of my work was based in the Port Launay to Beau Vallon area, and the best of these sights are regularly visited by the local dive centres. My favourites include:

L'ilot: 18-20m
A great site. The dive involves circumnavigating L'Ilot, a tiny granitic islet on the North edge of Beau Vallon Bay, for one half you are swimming with the current and one half against. I never failed to see great stuff each time I dived here. There is a beautiful garden of soft corals and giant clams, and loads of fish, including parrotfish, tunas, potato groupers, butterflyfish, angels, surgeons, eagle rays and huge shoals of snappers which will come round a corner and envelop you. There are often hawksbill turtles to be seen, octopus, lobster, and eels. The mystical whale sharks also like to hang around here when they're in town.

Shark Bank: down to about 35m, gets good from about 18m.
In between Mahe and Silhouette, massive granite boulders are surrounded by huge schools of fish including emperors, snappers and barracudas. Also plenty of large bumpheads, eagle rays and marbled sting rays. A great easy deep dive, with a real feel of the big blue about it, always with plenty to see.

Ennerdale Wreck: 30m.
This large wreck of a 74,000 ton British oil tanker which hit unchartered rocks between Mahe and Praslin and sank in 1970s is not complete, but still very interesting to explore. There are fewer fish here than at other sites, but if you find challenging dives fun, you will like battling your way around in the killer current that is often present.

Twin Barges & Corsair Reef: 25m
Surprisingly close to shore, near Bel Ombre harbour, this is a good dive for less experienced divers, and those who want to combine wreck and reef. The two small barges, purposely sunk in 1986, are joined by a rope. Both are complete wrecks with plenty of nooks to explore, and a good diversity of corals and fish, including lots of lionfish, sweet lips and eels. Corsair is a large fringing reef has a lot of dead coral and some nice healthy ones, which the dive boats unfortunately often drop anchor onto.

Baie Ternay: shallow, but depending on tide down to 18m.
A beautiful sheltered bay, which is part of a marine park, so has one of the best levels of fish and coral abundance and diversity. I regularly saw hawksbill turtles here, and the closer you move to shore (easier to snorkel) you can find fish juveniles and sub-adults hiding in the sea grass. On the way out of the bay, diving the reef drop-off was one of my favourites, as the vertical face of the reef drops steeply down and is home to many small reef fish, groups of coral pipefish, turtles, great invertebrates, given rise to plenty of exploration.

Aquarium: 12m
Another great site, and the name doesn't lie. Two large coral bombies in Beau Vallon Bay, which are covered in an enormous number of fish, especially little damsels, angels, anenomefish and butterflies, and also puffers and surgeons. I have also seen green turtles here. Very colourful, and another great one for inexperienced divers.

Grouper Point: 30m
On the north west corner of Mahe this very steep granite cliff face, leads straight down to a tumble of boulders, and gravely sand sheltering numerous slender, honeycomb, black tip and other species of groupers, hence the name. There is also a high number of powder blue surgeons and many butterfly fish present.

Therese Rocks: 12m
Therese is a small uninhabited island with a perfect beach, just off the coast of Port Launay. This site is a maze of large boulders, which thousands of crevices filled with interesting invertebrates and coral species, with a good variety of fish too. It's a great place to see the local urchin species, but there is often quite a surge here, so it's not a good idea to peer at them too closely!

Conception Central East: 16m
Conception is another uninhabited isle neighbouring Therese, and is typical of the area with steep granite cliffs, and scattered boulders. I always found Conception an interesting dive because there are visibly different zones as you near the shore. On descent the bottom is flat sand with a few rocky outcrops and the odd pelagic fish. Moving towards the island, there is a huge bank of dead decomposing coral, which although a bit depressing to look at is teeming with feeding parrotfish, wrasse and butterflyfish. Nearest to the shore is a diverse topography of boulders, sporting members of the surgeon family, sweetlips, angelfish, triggerfish and squirrelfish.

There are several operators in the main tourist hub of Beau Vallon. I can recommend the Underwater Centre next to the Coral Strand Hotel (www.diveseychelles.com.sc), which provides room and dive packages, and is run by a lovely British lady, so you don't need fluent French for the dive briefing, and also Big Blue further up the beach at Vacoa Village, Mare Anglaise (www.bigbluedivers.net). Dives cost from about SR150 for short range, including equipment hire. I undertook my rescue course whilst on Mahe, and from my experience and that of other people I spoke to, I would say the general standard of teaching is not as thorough as in other countries. Make sure that you know how to check your own BCD and regs properly, because I have known several experienced divers who have met sticky situations diving commercially in Seychelles. Most of the equipment is imported from the US at great expense, so it is definitely made to fulfil more than its natural lifespan. Also this means a lot of the gauges are imperial, so if like me you learnt in metric, this means some brushing up on the old feet and psi. If you have your own gear, take spare straps, batteries etc. because these are hard to get hold of, or very expensive, on the islands. The water temperature when I was there (April-July) was around the 30°C mark, I feel the cold quite a bit, but was happy in a 5mm shortie.

For those who like to know exactly what's what, I can recommend "The Indo-Pacific Coral Reef Field Guide", Allen, G. R. & Steene, R. (2003) Tropical Reef Research, Singapore, ISBN-981-00-5687-7, as a good general transportable picture reference guide, which contains most of the species seen in the area.

Real underwater enthusiasts should time their visit to coincide with the SUBIOS (Sub Indian Ocean Seychelles) festival which is held annually in May centred around Beau Vallon. The government, along with local conservation societies and eminent marine scientists and film makers from around the world come together for a week of lectures, displays and movies to create much needed environmental awareness. Sadly, although the Seychellois rely heavily on the sea for their livelihood, very few treat it with respect, and appreciate the immediate need to reduce pollution and stop the over-fishing of certain species. There are also a lot of free-to-try water-sport initiatives such as wind surfing, snorkelling and SCUBA held in conjunction with the dive operators, for both adults and children, as well as swimming competitions. The best part of SUBIOS is the closing weekend when a huge open-air screen is erected on the green by Beau Vallon beach, and a few talks about the local marine life, along with presentations by such people as film makers Leandro Blanco and John Boyle are given, and it is all rounded off with an interesting documentary. All this is free to attend, and there are stands with food, (expensive) local crafts, wetsuits, an art competition and environmental displays. The only thing that marred it was constant barracking by a group of inebriated locals, but beware if you intend to visit Seychelles that this isn't unusual. There is a lot of general unrest, both social and political - it's not all sunshine and coconuts like the tourist board would have us believe. SUBIOS has a website www.subios.sc

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This was one of my early Ciao efforts, and I thought I could vastly improve it, so I have expanded the content, discussed a few more dive sites and related topics, corrected my appalling spelling, and most importantly added a few photos so you can see what I'm on about!

© 2005 V. L. Collyer

 

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