Dec 11, 2011 Netrani (also known as Pigeon island) is a small island about 12 nautical miles off the coast of Murudeshwar, a small temple town in Karnataka. After my diving trip to Andaman in 2008, i hadn't done much diving and my skills had gotten a bit rusty. And given that Murudeshwar is just 12 hours away from Bangalore by bus, it's a perfect weekend getaway for avid divers. While i was googling for some dive shops in Murudeshwar, i came across this dive shop by the name of Dreamz diving run by Mr Dhirendra Rawat ( http://www.dreamzdiving.com ). They charge Rs 3500 for a one tank dive and Rs 4500 for two tank dives, for certified divers. If one opts for 2 dives and budget accomodation in murudeshwar, the entire trip including basic food and bus fare (roundtrip from bangalore) can be managed for just under Rs 6000. I never trust these private bus operators to reach any destination in time, and this one from VRL got delayed by nearly 2 hours and reached Murudeshwar by 10 AM. We hurriedly loaded our scuba gear onto the dive boat (fishing boat) and set off to Netrani, which takes roughly 1.5 hours in these boats. Mr Rawat, who was our dive master for the day along with Kishore, explained a bit about the marine life to be expected in Netrani and some do's and don'ts regarding the marine life. One of the Don'ts that caused my jaw to drop was when Mr Rawat asked us strictly not to touch the Conch shells on the sea floor, as some varieties of these conch shells host snails in them, which can shoot venomous darts at it's intruder. The venom allegedly can cause death in humans in less than 3 minutes and worse there's no anti venom available for this. Hmmm..... Netrani island - That's me (in yellow), Rawat in the middle and Mahesh on the right. We reached Netrani by 1 PM. The clear emerald green waters of Netrani was inviting. The weather was perfect and the visibility in the water great. I could not wait to take a plunge. But we had some dissapointment waiting for us in the way of additional delay, as the district magistrate along with his wife and the whole jing-bang of coastal police were present at the site. No, not to arrest us, but the magistrate and his wife wanted to experience scuba and visually sample the marine life in the area. While both our dive masters got busy with the magistrate and his wife, i was chatting away with the coastal police regarding the controversies surrounding the diving in this area and on the issue of permits. Well, according to them it's not really legal to dive in Netrani at all. Look who's talking :-) . It apparently falls under the overlapping jurisdictions of both the coastal police and the coast gaurd and outside the jurisdiction of the Navy. Despite being designated as a biodiversity hotspot recently, the Navy continues to use this island for their target practice. The good news is that now they do it only twice a year. I donned my mask and snorkel and plunged into the water, while Rawat was busy training the magistrate and his wife. The inviting clear waters were too irresistible for the coastal police crew, as they stripped away and took plunge one after the other. Snorkelling was pretty good as it gave a good preview of the marine life that was waiting for us underneath. Finally by 2:30 PM, we got into our Scuba gear and did a backroll from the boat. Boy, did it feel good, doing it after a long time ! My scuba buddy for the day was Mahesh from Mumbai, along with Kishore and Rawat who were our divemasters.   Finally we started the descent and i descended rather quickly and could not equalize fast enough. I had this sharp pain in the ear and i bolted to the surface immediately. It took me a couple of minutes to recover from the pain. The second time i used the anchor line from the boat and made a slow descent and it went well this time. We were instantly surrounded by an army of red-tooth blue trigger fishes. Rawat was saying that the Groupers which feed on these trigger fishes were dwindling in numbers (thanks to overfishing), which had caused the population of the trigger fishes to swell. Two things that exceeded my expectations were the the visibility, which was anywhere between 10-12 metres, and the abundance in marine life. In line with my expecations, the corals were nothing to write home about. It's practically impossible for the corals to remain healthly after years of Naval bombing (target practice) in this area. After diving in the South Button island (near Havelock in Andamans), it has sort of become a benchmark for me as to what a colorful dive would look like. Netrani comes no where close to that when it comes to richness and diversity of Corals. As far as marine life goes, Netrani can probably give most dive sites in the world a run for it's money. As we made our way out of the school of trigger fishes, we were greeted by the Moorish idols and the colorful butterfly fishes. Kishore pointed at a crack in the rocks, where a honeycomb moray eel was peering intently at us. As we reached the end of our dive time, about 40 minutes, we reached a spot which was full of table corals. While we were marveling at the table corals, a lone grouper passed in front of us. All in all, it was a good refresher dive for me. After some snacks and refreshments on the boat, and a surface interval of about 45 minutes, we started our second dive by 4 PM. The visibility was still good. This second dive site was way better than the first one and i was pleasantly surprised by both the diversity and the abundance of marine life here. We descended to about 12 metres and as i gazed up, while fine tuning my bouyancy control skills, it was a cool sight to watch the trigger fishes circling above our heads and the shimmering water surface above it. This site had mild currents which we were constantly fighting throughout the entire dive. A school of fusiliers passed by as i lay still watching them, followed a red spotted grouper. This was followed by another school of exotic white fishes, which even Rawat could not identify. As i was watching a honey comb moray eel, playing hide and seek with me, an incredibly colorful pair of golden trevally passed by. Finally we saw this master of camaflouge, the scorpion fish, which deceptively looked like a coral. Rawat had warned us to keep distance from this fish as the sting could be intensely painful. There were also plenty of beautiful blue wrasses around. I also spotted a Parrot fish and of course the usual suspects the moorish idols, the butterfly fishes. The clown fishes here are apparently black colored as opposed to their colorful orange counterparts, which i had seen in Andaman. Rawat had taken the shot of a batfish, which we missed seeing completely. It was a very satisfying dive overall. Well, we certainly did not see any large pelagics like the rays, sharks, cobias or orcas. According to Rawat, the chances of seeing these creatures is 1 in 1000. So while it makes for good advertising material for the dive shops, the place is not really abundant with these large creatures, which are only rare sights. Something to keep in mind, to avoid disappointment based on inflated expectations. Bottom-line, Netrani has piqued my interest and count me as repeat diver to this place again. |
