Mirissa is a world-famous beach destination in down south Sri Lanka. Marissa is very famous for its beautiful sandy beach and marine life. Great Blue wales and Dolphins roam the sea makes Mirissa especial. There are Several Dive locations in Malissa. “Aththalamba Rock” is considered one of the best out of those locations. The depth of this location is 16m -20m.
This is the third chapter of underwater meetups. 1st one hosted by me and 2nd one hosted by my LG buddy Kasun. When I hosted this meet up Kasun( @kasunaaa ) confirmed the participation. We drove to Marissa on the previous night and stayed at a Hostel “Babylon Mirissa”. it was a nice place. If you are looking for a chilling place to crash at Mirissa for a very affordable price. Then don’t look further than “Babylon Mirissa”
We went to the beach in the morning had a light breakfast from the nearby Rotishop, Then we reported to the dive center “Mirissa Dive Academy”. Our dive instructor greets us and provides us some materials to go through about the dive lotion. We waited for a while to see if there is any other participants coming. But it seems there was not anymore. So we give the go-ahead to the divemaster.
We were provided with wet suits, BCDs,fins Masks and other equipment. We choose what matching for us. Then we selected weights belts. 4kg for me and 4 kg for Kasun. It is very important to select the correct dive weights. Otherwise, it would be very hard to get neutral buoyancy.
We were suit up in no time. All exited. Pick up our gear and headed for the boat.
Sithara was our dive instructor for the dive. He assisted us to get our gear on to the boat and we are all set to explore the deep blue sea.
We ride the boat for about 15 minutes and reach our dive location “Aththalamba Rock”. The ride was bit rough. “The sea is rough today” our boatman said. Sithara Anchored the boat, we geared up with our BCDs. Got our Air Tanks attached and did the ABCD check to see if everything is ok. Then it was time to Jump out and meet underwater.
We went down along the anchor line and reach the rocky bottom. Siithara led us to an open area and check with us if everything is ok. Then we set our bouncy correct. Took us a few minutes but we got it correct. Then we began to explore the area. The depth was 20 m there. Lots of rocks and we saw various kinds of fish. But due to the rough sea visibility was not that great.
RECAP Video
We started to go along the rocky belt following Sithara’s lead. Sithara showed us some hidden fish in between rocks and some Lobsters. We saw a set of Barakuda they just swam across us. Little by little we were inclining along the rock belt. We reach the top of the rock after about 25 minutes of exploration. It was full of fish. There was a flock of little fish. Little fish maybe hundreds of them. They were not afraid of us. But they made sure to keep a distance from us.
We rested a few minutes there and head back to the anchor. Along the way, we saw more fish and corrals. But unfortunately, we didn’t meet any turtles as we expected. Maybe because of the rough see they are not roaming around much. We arrived at the anchor and wait a few minutes there.
Then we started our ascend along the anchor line. We did a 3 min safety stop on the midway to equalize the pressure. Then we reach the surface.
It was another wonderful underwater meetup. Even though visibility was not that great We met interesting underwater friends and it was a exciting underwater exploration.
We got back to the Boat and drank a lot of water and headed back to the beach. We could use a good seafood lunch…
#LetsMapUnderwater #LGsealTeam #SriLankaLocalGuides
@MariaNgo @SilvyC @CeciliaRatto , @InaS , @VasT , @JaneBurunina @TorM @KarenVChin hope you enjoy this
), but Ocean is fantastic.
