| As appeared in Diver January 2008 |
| Monkey business
| | | This is monkey diving the Tala way. |
So what is a 'techreational' Red Sea trip? Chris Boardman takes to a liveaboard that allows divers to get more mileage out of their time. Images by Andrew Georgitsis
OUR TWO ZODIACS BOBBED up and down in the heavy swell and stiff wind while the waves crashed over the reef just 50m away.
I could see why the reef of Abu Nahas has, over the years, proved to be a popular place for wrecking your ship.
We were planning to dive four of these well-known sites but, rather than spend a day and a half doing so, we intended to do it in a single dive, on a single cylinder...
It was Faisal Kahlaf, the owner of the liveaboard mv Tala, who dreamed up what he called "monkey diving". I won't go into how it got its name, but the best description I could come up with was "extended range snorkelling". Such a novel concept had to be tried!
Monkey diving consists of a stainless-steel backplate for weighting, a single stage cylinder of nitrox under the left arm, a scooter and - well, that's it. |
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