Lost at Sea

I was given the opportunity to visit the latest venture by the Marina Bandar Rowdha. A ''submarine'' parked at Bandar Khayran which affords you the luxury of viewing the abundant sea life and seascape without getting your hair wet.

The boat takes you from Marina Bandar Rowdha to Bandar Khayran in 20 minutes to rendezvous with a smaller vessel where you embark on your tour of the coral and its life. Descending the steps, , into the keel where there are stools in front of each portal a total of x people can sit and watch the fish. It's like being in a large fish tank. You slowly move above the coral oohing and ahhing at the various fish and if you are lucky as we were , you get to see a Moral Eel poking its head out to gawp at the people looking out in wide-eyed fascination.

The tour lasts an hour and we saw at least 6 varieties of fish, Triggerfish, 2 types of butterfly fish, or was it 3?, something very similar to a parrot fish, domino fish, clownfish and one I couldn't identify on the chart which looked as though it had striped pajama bottons. Along with 3 forms of coral; brain , fan and one I can't remember (visual overload). Sea slugs litter the floor along with spiny black sea urchins with their spines ready to spear the unsuspecting; a species I can never forget as it tried to kill a young me (when I was 7 in Dubrovnik) but didn't succeed as you can attest to.

Sadly there are fools out there who think nothing of throwing their empty soda cans into the sea as I saw at least 4 of them and can only hope that this may be the future home of a coral and subsequent habitants. There was also coral damage and I brought this up later with the operators of Al Khayran who did say the draft of the boat is not so deep that it will touch the coral but they have noticed vessels who anchor amidst the coral. They did mention they have sent photographs of the coral damage to the Ministry of Environment - now I just wonder if anything will be done about it!

Its wonderful to see more opportunities for tourism opening up, along with the catamaran Azura, dhow trips up the coast, diving tours and assorted water activities and now the ''submarine'' , though I ought to mention this is not for the claustrophobic or non mobile people. I wish the Marina and its venture all the success.

The website for online bookings is http://www.alkhayran.com/ though at this time of posting the site was not up.