Dive Log: Sunday, 1 March - Diving Lake Malawi
Unbelievable - clear water, mostly clear sky, sunny - a perfect day for diving! Rains had been soft, so no ugly brown runoff either. More unbelievable is that we had actually booked to dive (a real act of faith in the 'rainy' season). We met Jonnie at Aqua Africa, the dive master and instructor, who had more good news. We could do the Lake Dive as part of our adventure diving ticket, since the lake is at 'altitude'. No wetsuits required here, I even consider the temperature in the lake quite reasonable (29 degrees, in this case). It is also calm, has no nasty stinging things nor any large, toothed, aquatic life. Instead, it teems with fish-tank fishes. You may wonder how so many little aquarium fishes end up in this big lake. In fact it is the other way around. Exports from the Lake, and their descendants, account for about 90% of all freshwater aquarium fishes. Cichlids is their unpronounceable name. They never have to say it though. Another inhabitant is the mouth-breeder fish. This mommy fish guards over dozens of her progeny who feed on algae. She rudely chases any other fish that wants them for lunch. If she thinks the threat is too large, she takes them all into her mouth in big bites and stares aggressively at the threat (us in this case).
A beautiful and easy dive, we finished and hour later, completing some theory and adding this interesting site to our dive list. We also got good tea, which we discovered is the 'local stuff', so have stocked up.