Jewel of the Indian Ocean

Billed as one of the most pristine, untouched Edens of the world, the Seychelles offers divers the opportunity to discover diving as it used to be. Jason Brown goes ‘wild diving’ on Alphonse Island...

Feature Details

Author:

Jason Brown

Publication Date:

October 2018

Publication:

Sport Diver UK

Feature catagory:

Dive Travel

Photo Gallery #1:

Seychelles Underwater

Photo Gallery #2:

Seychelles Topside

This feature and all images are copyright © Jason Brown and may not be republished, reproduced or copied in any form without the express written permission of the author. This feature and all images are available to licence.

That feeling of absolute escapism is compounded still further when you just happen to be visiting in the middle of November. Whilst the UK shivers as the first throws of winter kick in, the Seychelles enjoys the sort of climate that you’d expect from an archipelago nation located just South of the equator. With Emirates and other airlines running regular flights from the UK, getting there takes about 11 hours - not counting a short stopover in Dubai for an overpriced sandwich and a stewed coffee.

Island Hopping...

Touching-down on the Seychelles’ mainland island of Mahé is the end of the journey for most, but our destination lay a further 400 kilometres South West on the private island resort of Alphonse. Part of the Seychelles outer island group, Alphonse is a spectacular coral island that – along with neighbouring St Francois and the tiny nature reserve island of Bijoutier, is blessed with the sort of climate and natural beauty that is the stuff of travel dreams. Boarding a small 16-seater twin-prop aeroplane, we covered the 400 kilometres across the open ocean in about an hour. All too soon, our little plane bumped down on the tiny runway that runs the full length of Alphonse island.

Shaped like a shark tooth with a large lagoon providing shelter from the sweeping oceanic currents, Alphonse Island is less than a square mile in size. With the island split down the middle by the air strip, one half is given over to guests with accommodation comprising of a small number of raised beach bungalows and suites that run along the North-Eastern edge of the island.

From the moment you arrive, it’s clear that everything about Alphonse oozes exclusivity – the accommodation, whilst simple, is finished to a very high standard and the onsite restaurant caters to your every whim – the resort chef even seeks you out on arrival to get a feel for your culinary tastes. Quite simply, nothing is too much for the friendly staff there to answer your every beck and call.

"Diving operations on Alphonse run through a compact but well-equipped dive centre that overlooks the island’s expansive lagoon."

Whilst diving is a popular activity on Alphonse, the island’s core market remains sport fishermen that travel from across the globe to cast a line into the deep waters that surround the islands. The game fishing around Alphonse is literally world-class with a myriad of blue-water fish species including Sailfish, Wagoo, Dorado, Dogtooth and Yellowfin tuna to be hooked. Whilst divers might balk at such activities, the island practices a strict ‘catch and release’ policy to protect fish stocks. Close proximity to experienced fishing guides does have its fringe benefits for divers though, as we would discover on our last day.

Alphonse Dive Centre

Diving operations on Alphonse run through a compact but well-equipped dive centre that overlooks the island’s expansive lagoon. Run by British ex-pats Sam Balderson and Lucy Martin, the centre operates two purpose-built boats and offers all the usual PADI training opportunities. Mirroring the ethos of everything else on Alphonse, Sam and Lucy like to keep things exclusive – there’s rarely more than a handful of divers on the island so you’ll always have the dive sites to yourself.

With our kit safely delivered to the dive centre ready for our first day of diving, we hopped on our complimentary bicycles and peddled across the island dodging the human-sized webs spun across the jungle tracks by the resident – and thankfully harmless - palm spiders. These colourful little critters are the closest you’ll find to anything even remotely threatening on the island – unless you count the resident Aldabra giant tortoises that could, in theory, step – very slowly - on your flip-flop exposed toes.

Alphonse Island may be small but the 40km of outer reef that rings the island offers a healthy diversity of diving including deep drop offs, hard-coral plateaus, patch reefs, over-hangs, pinnacles and more. With thirty dive sites to choose from plus the option of joining the team on exploratory trips to dive unchartered areas of reef, there’s plenty to keep even the most demanding diver happy. Whilst currents are a recurring theme on the outer reef, Sam, Lucy and the team have become quite adept at reading the conditions and selecting sites that can offer anything from little or no current to a full on steam train experience.

Marine life encounters

Whilst there is very little in the way of soft coral in this part of the Indian Ocean, we were spoilt by spectacular forests of Gorgonian sea fans, stunning black coral and sea whips – all of which can be found on most of the outer reef sites. With so little diving activity around the island, the reefs attract a healthy abundance of marine life too with colourful fish darting around the hard corals as Bluelined Snapper, Yellow Goatfish and Barracuda sweep around you in large schools.

Encounters with large marine life are commonplace too with Humpback Wrasse and Green Turtles all making an appearance. Just don’t expect them to get too close – with little or no contact with divers, most of the life we encountered seemed a little skittish around us with the turtles, in particular, giving us a wide berth.

"we were joined by a mid-sized bull shark that clearly found us of interest. For several minutes he circled us closely, making several passes before disappearing into the depths."

Diving in the lagoon offered its fair share of delights with ancient porites coral dwarfing everything we’d seen previously. Although the viz in the lagoon isn’t quite as good as the outer reef, an abundance of life more than makes up for it. Here too you’ll encounter plenty of life including schools of Humpback Snapper, Bigeye Trevally, both eagle and marbled rays and – if you’re lucky – even the occasional manta.

We got our fair share of shark encounters too. On our first day of diving, one member of our group had the pleasure of facing off against an almost 3m-long lemon shark following the contours of the reef wall. Neither he or the shark was any the wiser until the very last moment - I’m still not sure who got the biggest fright!

Nurse sharks were a regular encounter too on several of the sites we visited but the biggest thrill came on our last day of diving when we visited a site called Galawa. Dropping down to maximum depth, we were joined by a mid-sized bull shark that clearly found us of interest. For several minutes he circled us closely, making several passes before disappearing into the depths.

Angling for adventure

The biggest buzz of the trip, though, came on our last day. “Fancy something a little different?” teased Sam. Like yellowfin tuna taking the bait, we were hooked – leaving our dive gear behind, we jumped onto a boat and headed out to sea with nothing more than our fins, mask and a snorkel. Clearly whatever Sam had in store involved fishermen as the boat we boarded was loaded with fishing gear. With members of the Alphonse angling team on board to bring in the big guns, we were all set to jump into the water with one of the ocean’s most agile predators – the awe-inspiring sailfish.

"With every sense heightened and our hearts pounding, we frantically span around in the water trying to catch a glimpse of the sailfish as they shot past us at high speed."

With deep water on its doorstep, sailfish are a regular visitor to Alphonse and a popular target for visiting sport fishermen. The technique the fishermen use to bring in the sailfish has been perfected over many years.

Travelling at speed out in the blue, two hookless lures are ‘trolled’ behind the boat to tempt the sailfish in for a closer look. When the sailfish see these lures, they approach them at high speed and knock them with their bills. As soon as this happens, the boat drops into neutral and a third lure baited with a fresh piece of Bonito fish is cast into the water – as soon as the sailfish knock this lure, they taste the Bonito, sending them into a feeding frenzy!

Sailfish safari...

Locked and loaded, the signal is given and we hit the water as quickly as possible. In truth, it’s all over pretty quickly as the sailfish soon realise that they’ve been tricked – on each occasion, we were in the water for no more than 3-4 minutes. But what an adrenelin rush those few short minutes are! With every sense heightened and our hearts pounding, we frantically span around in the water trying to catch a glimpse of the sailfish as they shot past us at high speed.

The lure is cast out over and over again to keep the sailfish interested, each time they rush in with their magnificent sails raised, flashing by us in spectacular style. Of course all this activity can attract sharks – thankfully Sam joined us in the water with his focus on keeping an eye out for unwanted visitors.

External Links

Alphonse Island

Visit Seychelles

Tourism Seychelles

Reassuring exclusive...

“The diving’s not as good as it was 25 years ago. Back then it was wall to wall whale sharks, pristine reefs and I’m pretty sure the beer tasted better too” – how many times have you ever heard that old chestnut rattled out over a post-dive beverage? It’s safe to say that Alphonse offers a glimpse of what many of the more popular destinations were like before the weight of tourism took its toll. It offers something increasingly unique – the opportunity to dive sites rarely visited by others. Yes, it’s expensive but Alphonse offers a high-end product. Alphonse prides itself on exclusivity and this is exactly what you get – a destination offering safari-style diving with the sort of ‘only the best’ service and quality that you’d expect from a premium resort.