East Coat on Saturday 21st April

Most peoples' weekend in the UAE falls on Friday and Saturday. I was busy with other DSDC business on Friday, so at some uncivilised hour of Saturday morning I set off from Dubai across to Fujairah, there to meet with the other club divers, launch the boat and have a couple of dives.

Desert Sports Diving Club keeps one of its boats dry-moored on a trailer at Fujairah Marine Club. The boat is under a sunshade during the week, and it's a lot more convenient to hitch up the trailer here and to use FIMC's slipway than to drag the boat (shiny new trailer notwithstanding) from the Dubai clubhouse over the mountains and back.

There wasn't a breath of wind first thing in the morning and the sea was like glass. The five divers loaded the boat and set off up the coast to Martini Rock. It was very pleasing to note that the mooring buoy has been replaced; there is no need to damage the sea life with an anchor.

The first group of three divers kitted up and lobbed into the oggin. Although the water looked very clear from the surface, there turned out to be a thermocline at around five metres, below which the water was chillier and also rather murky. There were also numerous long brown strands of some unidentified coelenterate wafting around in the gloom. As I approached the sea bed, I discovered that these brown strands were all of angry and extremely painful jellyfish. Headbutting these, I discovered, was a very bad plan. So, it turned out, was diving in a shorty wetsuit, and I'm not referring to the 24 degrees water temperature.

Soldiering on, Martini Rock offered its usual delightful array of marine life, including the usual plethora of lionfish, morays, goatfish, filefish and a couple of large broomtail wrasse. Unfortunately one of my buddies got stung by the nasty strands of jellyfish right through a lycra skinsuit, so after half an hour we decided to escape to the surface.

The other buddy pair had a rather better time. They were both completely covered in neoprene and therefore hardly got stung. They returned with photos of a large stingray and some cuttlefish, among other things. And as we sat on the boat we were taunted by a turtle that must have been hanging around underwater just out of sight.

As we slipped off our mooring the wind had started to pick up, although the sea failed to produce any large waves. We made good speed in comfort to Inchcape 10, which is an old support vessel sunk just off Fujairah as an artificial reef. She lies upright in around 24m and is conveniently buoyed and thus very easy to locate.

We dived in the same buddy pairings as before. To my delight I observed that there were almost none of the brown string horrors here. Those that did exist were easy to spot and to avoid. Inchcape 10 is teeming with shoaling fish, and by looking carefully you can find lots of nudibranchs. There's also a family of large puffer fish all of which seem oblivious to divers. Last time I was here I found a decorator crab, but there was no such luck this time.

It's a very short ride from Inchcape 10 back to Fujairah Marine Club, where we recovered the boat, packed up our kit and headed off back to our respective homes. All in all, a very pleasant day out. A shame about the stinging things, but I hope this is a very temporary situation. (Note to self regarding a sting suit.)