Mine's a Martini

Martini Rock is always an entertaining dive. The site is easily accessible by boat from Khor Fakkan on the UAE east coast. Although only a few metres from the mainland, it's impossible to get there by land as there are steeply-sided mountains dipping right to the water's edge. The rock is immensely popular with all of the commercial dive outfits as well as local clubs. This can be a disadvantage. With four or five dive boats clustered around the site there can be dozens of divers in the water at the same time.

The Emirates Diving Association (EDA) established a mooring buoy next to the site a little while back. This has unfortunately disappeared. Perhaps some felonious ne'er-do-well decided that a free buoy was too good an opportunity to miss, or perhaps he believed that by removing the buoy no-one would be able to find the site. Either way, someone hacksawed through the padlocked mooring chain and made off with the float.

As Martini Rock rises from the sandy sea bed from between 13m and 20m to within a couple of metres of the surface, the top is usually visible from the boat, so anchoring in more or less the right place is generally pretty easy. We usually try to hit the sand to one side of the rock rather than dropping a load of ironmongery on to the soft coral.

Incidentally, the shallowness of the top of the rock makes snorkelling viable, but beware of currents. I regard continuous boat cover as a must.

The rock is covered with teddy bear coral and there are generally large shoals of sergeant majors, blue-stripe snappers and fusiliers streaming over and around the rock. A couple of large puffer fish are resident, and definitely look out for the lionfish, stonefish and moray eels that abound. Recently a lot of feather stars have appeared. In the sand there are shrimp gobies and goatfish. Turtles often appear too, which is always a treat.

Underwater visibility unfortunately has a habit of being only a few metres. But there's plenty of small stuff to check out if you're willing to get up close and personal.

With the Inchcape 2 wreck a mere stone's throw away (hand me my ballista) there are two easily acessible dive sites close to Khor Fakkan slipway. But the Inchcape wrecks are a different subject.