The salty side of Madagascar

Sea fans off the northwest coast of Nosy Be

I've taken my time getting all our photos in order from Madagascar and I have finally, finally, finished getting through all the images. In some ways, I miss film and slides because back in those days you couldn't straighten the crooked horizon or tinker with color versus black and white for a shot. Because I'm not a professional photographer, I don't mind trying to crop images or mess with exposure to improve the shot. Anyway, this blog focuses on diving off the island of Nosy Be and I've got one more blog to write about Lokobe Nature Special Reserve and then I'm done with blabbing about the red island. Based on all these Madagascar blogs, you probably think that Jay and I haven't been up to much fun in the Pacific Northwest this winter....but if you know us well, you know that would be incorrect! We have been having a great winter! We took a few ski trips (to Whistler, to the Mt. Rainier region, etc), Jay is building me a wooden kayak in our garage, and I just returned from a long weekend visit in NY to see my family). Maybe I'll get around to posting a few photos of those trips once I'm done with my Malagasy musings.

The island of Nosy Be is circled in bright red. We made it to the island after a bumpy 13-hr long road trip from Sambava (the yellow star) that I blogged about in my previous post. Jay and I are not much for planning trips in advance, but we do tend to read about the entire country before going so we can have a general idea of places we may want to target. Our typical behavior is to make a hotel reservation for the night we arrive in the country and that usually ends the extent of our planning. This trip was no different....we figured out our general itinerary the day after we landed in Tana. Nosy Be was always of interest to us because of the diving and Lokobe Reserve, but it was not originally at the top of our list because it is more touristy (which still isn't that touristy because this is Madagascar after all) and because the island is known to be a hot spot for sex tourism. Yup, I said it. Sex tourism. Jay and I have spent a fair amount of time in SE Asia, where sex tourism is readily evident. Thus, watching foreign white dudes walk down the streets with gorgeous and extremely young Malagasy women was less shocking to us than it would have been had we never seen this behavior before. That said, we both find it difficult to see and watch. We know that the average wage for a Malagasy person is $2 US a day. You bet these women are making more than that. Whether it is right or wrong I'll leave to you to decide, but no matter what, I'll say that I really struggle with it and I don't need to have shoved in my face. Nevertheless, we quickly learned that sex tourism was everywhere in Madagascar - every restaurant, every hotel, every national park, basically everywhere we looked we saw sex tourists traveling with their hired women. If you want to avoid seeing this, you may as well stay home and not come to Madagascar at all. And that, my friends, would be a shame because this is an incredible country with beautiful and kind people who are working hard to welcome non-sex tourists as well. Thus, Nosy Be was put on our itinerary since we knew we could avoid the main town on the island where sex tourism was the most rampant and enjoy the island for the many other aspects about it that make it fabulous.

After arriving in the town of Hell-Ville and taking a lovely cab ride out to our hotel that was far away from the hustle and bustle of the town, we wandered down to the local dive shop to plan our dives. We only had three full days on the island so we decided to spend two days diving with Plongee Toukoul off the northwest corner of the island of Nosy Be. What a treat! It was just us and the divemasters on the first day and on the second day another great couple joined us. We are not big fans of large groups of divers, so both days were really fantastic.

Our first dive was amazing before the dive even started! As we were blasting along on the boat to the dive site, I was standing up and enjoying the feeling of the warm air on my skin while I looked into the water for anything of interest. Well, I saw something of interest alright! The water was blue, blue, blue, then black with white spots, and then blue, blue, blue. I shouted "whale shark!!" as we quickly turned the boat around to try and find this amazing animal. We had arrived in Madagascar at the end of whale shark season but we had remained hopeful that we might get to see one - and there it was. Right under our boat. We literally drove over the top of the shark....had it been more shallow we would have hit it (which would have been horrible). After several minutes of searching we managed to find it again and Pascal, the owner of the dive shop, shot this video clip which he graciously shared with me. Please note, it isn't a great video as the camera has a fish-eye lens on for underwater shots, as a result the shark looks incredibly small and insignificant. How sad! It was a medium-sized whale shark...probably about 18 ft. long....and far more graceful than the video implies. We all planned to jump in the water and snorkel with it, but it took a deep dive and was out of our sight before we even had our masks in hand. I will never tire of whale sharks. Back in 1999, when I had the OWUSS scholarship and was diving in the Galapagos I did a backroll off the boat and practically landed on a massive adult (30+ ft). And Jay and I snorkeled with some sweet juveniles (12 ft??) off Mozambique several years ago. And now we have seen one off a small boat in Madagascar. I hope my list gets longer, but considering how these slow-growing animals are now targeted in fisheries I have a feeling it will get even harder to find and swim with these magnificent animals.

The fun didn't stop with the whale shark - before we even got in the water for our first dive we saw the whale shark, two manta rays, several minke whales, bait balls, some type of tuna jumping, and a petrel flying over the bait balls. My wetsuit wasn't even on yet! Jeez. Our first dive was a deeper dive to about 90 ft. where the seafloor was covered in sea fans and schooling fishes. We couldn't stay down long because of the depth, but we knew that we were off to a great start based on how lovely the first dive was!

Pascal and schooling fish on the first dive

Sea fans

We had no idea what to expect in terms of the coral reefs and we were pleasantly surprised to see.......wait for it..........FISH! Yup. The fish stocks seemed quite healthy here! You may be wondering why? Well, check out their high-tech fishing vessels in this photo. When you fish from dugout canoes with handheld lines, it is almost impossible to overfish. In addition to these fishermen, we also saw men freediving to catch lobsters and probably other invertebrates as well. Overfishing started to become a global problem when technology became so advanced that there was no place for the fish to hide. Now, Madagascar sure sounds like it has problems with overfishing, especially on their barrier reef along the southwest coast. But the reefs we were diving on appeared almost entirely healthy. The only reason why I won't say 100% healthy is because the reefs did not have sharks (the filter-feeding whale shark doesn't count). A healthy reef should have predatory sharks milling about and we didn't see a single shark. Boo. Although the apex reef predator was missing, the reefs still seemed healthy. The visibility wasn't great because of all the plankton in the water (hence the big filter feeders like mantas and whale sharks) and the coral polyps were open in the day to feed (they are normally open only at night). The fishes were schooling and turtles were bobbing along. Life sure seemed sweet down there.

Perhaps a hingebeak shrimp? Rhynchocinetes sp.??? In either case, this animal is AWESOME.

We doesn't fall in love with animals any time you travel? The place we were staying at had a kitten and a puppy. They played so rough the kitten was always growling and hissing, but anytime it would get away from the jaws of the puppy it would go right back for more. The cat lover in me intervened now and then, I couldn't help it. Here I am with the little flea bag in my arms and the puppy waiting for me to put it down for more play time.

On both dive days we finished by the early afternoon, so we would have a late lunch, go for a dip in the pool, drink a beer, and laugh at these funny animals for our entertainment. Really the only thing that was sad about both days was that the "beach" we dreamed of sitting on after diving was quite loaded with sand fleas and it was also a bit mucky - not the best for lounging and reading or swimming. Hence, the afternoon dip in the rockin' pool at our place. It could have been worse right?

The second day we were diving in a bit more shallow water, which was fine with us because this tends to be where the action is. I should know who these cute little fish are by now, but I'm not a fish person, can't help it. Maybe these are a type of glassfish? I remember seeing something similar in the Red Sea a lot when I was diving there years ago. They are probably everywhere, but like I said, I'm not really a fish person.

I am a nudibranch person though! We have an entire guidebook to nudibranchs in the Indian and Pacific oceans, but alas, this rad nudibranch was nowhere to be found in the book. I'm pretty certain that it is a dorid nudibranch, but that is as far as I can get. Maybe my old UNH advisor is reading this - Dr. Larry Harris - and he will tell us?

Our first dive was totally dominated by soft corals, as you can see in the photo above. Just a few kilometers away our second dive was totally dominated by hard corals (as seen in the black and white photo below). Sometimes soft corals pop up after disturbances like dynamite fishing....but I'm not sure if that is an issue here. It is possible this area is naturally dominated by soft corals.

Check out those lips! This is some species of scallop.

Blue, blue, water

Happy divers! 

Table corals make for great black and white images.

Jay hanging on his safety stop - not a bad place to have to hang over for a few minutes! 

Post-dive pool - I've always wanted to swim around in an infinity pool and I finally got my wish.

Sunset from Nosy Be - complete with lightning and thunder!