﻿Coming up! The Bird Family explores a shipwreck,
and meets a hungry stingray! Welcome to Jonathan Bird’s Blue World!
I love diving all over the world, cold water, warm water, fresh water, and salt water. But I
have to admit, sometimes I really want that nice warm, blue, tropical destination with
great visibility and cool stuff to see. There are lots of places that fit that description,
and today we are visiting one you may not know about—the hidden gem of Porto Santo, Portugal.
The adventure begins on the beautiful island of Madeira. Although Madeira is part of Portugal,
it is located less than 400 miles off the coast of Africa in the eastern Atlantic Ocean.
Christine, Elise, Liam and I have ventured to Porto Santo, the northernmost island of the
archipelago of Madeira. It’s a warm, dry island, famous for one of the best beaches in Europe. And,
surrounded by crystal clear tropical water. Our day begins when we are
picked up by Miguel Matos in the Rhea Dive van, for a ride from the hotel to the shop.
Soon, we disembark at Rhea Dive Center, a full service dive shop located right on the breakwater.
Nelson gives us a short briefing on today’s dive sites. This will include a popular wreck known
as the Madeirense. For almost 50 years, the Madeirense cargo ship made runs between Lisbon,
Madeira and Porto Santo carrying everything from food to vehicles. In 1998, she made her
last trip and was sunk as an artificial reef in 2000. The wreck is now broken into two pieces,
with the bow and stern laying right next to each other. Next, we start assembling our gear.
Since the wreck is down around 30 meters deep, we need to analyze the nitrox.
Next we load all the gear onto a trailer.
And while we walk to the boat with the cameras, the gear goes in style.
To our surprise, the boat is particularly spacious. I can get used to this.
Miguel fires up the twin outboards, and we’re off.
Our first dive site is only five minutes outside the harbor. We
tie off to the mooring line, and its time for a dive briefing.
Finally it’s time to dive! That
looks very bad! Just waiting for the boys, they’re so slow!
We sink down into the crystal clear water and immediately see the ship. After more than
twenty years underwater, the deck plates have holes in them where rust has taken over.
An incredible school of Two-banded sea bream is hanging around the port side lifeboat davit.
It’s fun to swim through the second deck of the stern, and imagine what the ship
felt like when it was still afloat. Liam leads the way with his mom in pursuit.
Then we turn and cruise down the port side walkway.
Turning to look inside one of the hatches, I can see what Miguel was telling us:
the wreck is starting to collapse, so going inside is dangerous. We decide to stay outside
the wreck. We investigate a furious frenzy of fish activity. A mixed group of wrasses are
raiding the nest of another fish, and eating its eggs. Next we decide to swim over to the
bow and check that out. The visibility is so good that the bow doesn’t look that big.
But when we swim all the way out to the very front, we realize just how big it really is.
Christine
drops down to check out a porthole.
Then we start making our way back towards the stern. We find a Madeira Scorpionfish,
which is actually found all over the eastern tropical atlantic and Mediterranean sea. Like
all scorpionfish, it has venomous dorsal spines, but it has no interest in stinging anyone.
Nearby, the wrasses are harassing yet another fish’s egg nest. Back at the stern,
we can see how the top deck is collapsing. We
swim along the starboard walkway and then back into the stern deck area. It’s
hard to explain why swimming around in a three-dimensional playground like this is
so fun, but it brings out the kid in everyone, even medical doctor moms. I
dreamed about doing stuff like this when I was Liam’s age. I mean,
I’m not saying he’s spoiled or anything but I mean he kind of is.
As we are nearly a hundred feet down,
we soon have to depart the wreck and head back towards the boat.
Liam stows his GoPro so he has both hands available for the mooring line.
We rise slowly and safely.
During a surface interval, we give our bodies time to off-gas excess nitrogen,
and Miguel moves the boat to a new site, close to Cima Island,
an uninhabited rock that looks small on the map, but not so small compared to our boat!
We are diving a site called Cabeço do Poio right near the island. Ya hooo! I think it’s
crooked.
We hit the water and follow Miguel down.
We follow a channel in the rocks that leads to a school of fish.
And they’re beckoning us further.
Out on the rubbly sea floor, I see tufts of algae. Miguel told us that this is new. They used to have
millions of sea urchins that ate the algae, but a disease has wiped out the sea urchin population,
and the algae is going crazy. As if out of nowhere, all the sudden a stingray appears. She
is hunting, using her keen electrosensory system. Like a living metal detector,
the stingray has tiny pores on the underside of her head that can detect the faintest electrical
current created by living things, even when they are buried a few inches in the sand.
I watch as the stingray carefully homes in on something hiding in the sea floor. And when she
knows she has found something, the stingray starts working to extricate her meal.
It looks like she got something!
Once she swallows the meal, whatever it was, she turns and swims off.
I follow behind to see what she might do next. All the sudden
she turns and makes a beeline right to Christine. It’s possible that she got a strong electrical
signal from Christine’s camera and went right over to investigate. Then she swims away.
We leisurely make our way back to the boat.
That awesome stingray encounter made our dive! In a single day of diving,
we experienced a magnificent shipwreck, terrific animal behavior, and warm,
crystal-clear water. Scuba diving doesn’t get much better than this. Porto Santo really is an
awesome corner of the Blue World! Hey Guys! If you want to learn more about diving in
Portugal, check out portugaldive.com. They’re the Portugal diving experts!