Bahrain! (A Bahraini Spearo)

[SAMoloGY]

First of all, id like to introduce myself to the forums since its my frist post.. and congratulate you guys on the great spearfishing community you've established here.

im a 24 year old spearo from Bahrain, spearfishing and the posession of spearguns being illegal here in bahrain has forced us to go underground.. and kept spearo groups in 4 or 5 buddies max.. although getting a speargun would be easy in bahrain since most dive shops stock them under the counter, ull have to show some id and proove that your not there to get them busted! but, we usually smuggle them from accross the boarder.. KSA,Kuwait,Qatar,UAE.

Bahrain being a group of 40 or so islands is a great place to hunt.. since most of these island are isolated and seldom visited before.. we're usually welcomed by good amounts of hamoors, subaiti, yanam, faskar, jash, and cuda's.. one thing to point out.. bahrain is overpopulated by cuda's and small hammerheads when going south to the hawar islands boardering Qatar.. but we havent had any bad experiences.. yet!

if any spearo's in bahrain are willing to join up just drop me a PM.. im usually spearing around Jarada and the khalifa port every weekend.

[mishu1984]

me and my partner are discussing a road trip and a few places in the gcc came up. most likely musandam or salalah, maybe shwaymiya in oman. bahrain is our fallback. well let u know

[SAMoloGY]

sounds great.. lemme know if anything happens!

[getawayFK]

Hello Samology.

Great informations about spearfishing in Bahrain. I used to sometime spearfish in that channel that separate hawar island from zikreet peninsula (Qatar mainland) - (2km off Bahrain) and never found anything significant except small groupers and occasional school of trevallies... However, the coast guard told me not to dive there as they used to very often see sharks in that area which I never did !

I would love to dive in Bahrain sometime and visit it as well. So tell me, how is visibility usually there? What are the most common type of fish you get overthere? any blue water action?

Actually Im just back from a diving trip now, and we got all assorted type of fish; groupers, parrot fish, faskr, trevallies (and my diving partner "baracuda" also shot a 1.2m cobia )...

regards

[SAMoloGY]

well, about visibility.. most of the bahrain coastline is going through reclaimation.. so, visibility is very poor in some areas.. but, just 10 miles outside and the waters are almost crystal clear in some areas.. as for blue water, well ive only gone blue water diving once.. and the current kept pulling me away.. but, we did encouter a school of medium/large hamaam jash (trivally) and a whale shark accompanied by 4 or 5 cobia's.. the hamaams were probably attracted to our flashers... the whale shark though scared me shitless!!

the most common fish are faskar.. balools.. yanam.. gain (parrot fish), hamam jash(trivally).. saafi.. cuda's.. queenies.. sherri.. sheggar which are all reef fish. as for rig diving ive encountered 2 amberjacks, but couldnt shoot since i didnt have a float line nor a reel, gevdar (the big rebeeb's), and a fish called yewaf, which reach up to 2 meters in size.. and go airbourne once caught or shot.

and about the channel between qatar and bahrain.. its off limits since its very close to the qatari boarder.