In September I went on a scuba diving holiday to the island of Vis in Croatia. This location is a bit farther away and the total drive time is about 6h, not including the ferry time. So quite long compared to the overall holiday duration.
For the first two days, I didn’t take any pictures as I had some new equipment and wanted to test it out first. My thinking is that I take one new piece of equipment per dive. This allows me to test it out thoroughly throughout the dive and focus only on that thing.
I still managed to get 4 days for photography. Unfortunately, the conditions at the end were not ideal and we had to stay ashore.
Access to the diving spots is done by boat.
We visited some nice wrecks:
As my camera isn’t really equipped to take wide-angle photos I don’t have any of the whole wrecks. But you can find lots of nice pictures online.
There are a lot more wrecks around Vis.
Teti wreck
This one is the easiest of the two. Unfortunately, it is also in quite a poor condition. Still, I would recommend it as it has turned into a nice reef with lots of life. So there is definitely something to see.
While I don’t have any wide-angle photos, these two were taken at the wreck. The moray eel was hiding in a piece of the wreck. The forkbeards were hiding in the crevices of the wreck. There were quite a lot of both, also conger eels but they are difficult to photograph.
In general, I saw a lot of moray eels around Vis.
Vassilios wreck
This one is a bit more challenging due to the depth. You can quickly go into decompression if you are not careful. The wreck itself is quite well preserved and there are two large cargo areas where you can swim inside.
The highlight for me was the propeller in the back, which is at about 45 m.
You don’t really have a size reference but one blade was taller than me. I would estimate about 2 m in height.
And I also saw this one for the first time on the side of the wreck.
It is an Arctic cookie star (Ceramaster arcticus).
Reef locations
In addition to the two wrecks, we also visited several nice reef locations.
The moray eels were a constant in all locations so I took quite a lot of photos of them. Of course I can share some of the better ones.
In the first image, you can see a shrimp cleaning its teeth.
The one in the last image was quite suspicious of me. It was interesting to see such a small one in such a big hole. Probably planning for the future.
I try to keep my distance from the larger ones. The problem with moray eels is that they have backward-facing teeth. So it is difficult if not impossible for it to let you go.
The spiny lobsters (Palinurus elephas) were easy to identify by their antennae protruding from the walls. And there were countless other organisms.
The highlight of the whole trip was a John Dory. The one we saw was probably at the maximum size already. I would estimate around 50 cm if not slightly more.
A beautiful fish and it was also the first time I saw one. Unfortunately, I was on my way back so I couldn’t get much time with it, otherwise, I would probably look at it for quite some time.
And for the end, a bearded fireworm (hermodice carunculata) most likely eating a starfish. Luckily starfish are able to regenerate their limbs. This fireworm was quite long compared to others I saw.
There were places with huge populations of fireworms. Just do not touch them.
Next time
The scuba diving trip was over quickly. I enjoyed it a lot so I will certainly be visiting again. As it takes a while to get there I will try to visit for longer to make the most of it. There are a lot of good scuba diving locations still left for me to visit around Vis.