Kovalam’s sunny beaches and famed waters have been charming visitors for decades. Lately, it’s the tourist destination’s underwater wonderland that’s been capturing their interest. Little wonder every one’s going scuba diving in Kovalam these days. From being a fun vacation activity that you might indulge in while on a trip to exotic locales like the Andamans or Lakshadweep, taking a dive into the sea has become a must-do activity in their backyards for bravehearts of Thiruvananthapuram.
Choreographer Sajna Najam celebrated her birthday underwater this year. “I’m a Piscean and have had a life-long fascination for the sea. This birthday, I wanted to be a mermaid for a day. I scuba dived in Kovalam and even cut a red velvet birthday cake under the water!” says an excited Sajna.
Scuba diving in Kovalam
Avial rock band’s frontman Tony David also went down into the sea. “It’s really another world underneath, one that I didn’t realise existed until I went down. The fish seemingly come out of nowhere. Suddenly I found myself in the midst of a school of anchovies! Then I followed a couple of puffer fish as they swam against the corals and barnacles...It was great fun, even though the water was a bit murky, owing to the dive site’s proximity to land,” says Tony. Being a keen swimmer, he says he was fine underwater (you don’t need to know swimming to go scuba diving).
“Besides, the dive sites in Kovalam are only four or five metres below sea level and you are always accompanied by diving instructors. The only trouble I had was that my throat became dry thanks to the scuba equipment in my mouth and from breathing pure oxygen,” adds Tony.
Handloom entrepreneur Shobha Vishwanath took the plunge twice. “The first dive was to overcome my fear of depths, the second one was for the ocean. It was incredible both times and in the process I got to see some amazing marine life - schools of fish, big and small, corals, eels...,” she recalls.
Many people have started holding events underwater too. Nikhil Pawar, a diving instructor and Eunika Pogran, his fiancée, a Slovakian, tied the knot underwater earlier in the year. Parvathy Nair, programming head of Red FM, led a team of eight women, including K Vasuki, director, Suchitwa Mission, and Shobha, down underwater at Grove Beach this past Women’s Day, to scoop up plastic litter from the bed of the ocean. “It was a continuation of our 935 plastic challenge where we collected 935 kg of plastic from the city streets. An acquaintance tipped us off about the huge amount of rubbish underwater and we wanted to create awareness about it,” says Parvathy, who still seems very enthralled by her journey into the depths of the sea. “It was like exploring the unknown with a whole lot of wonder. I was underwater for about 30 minutes and it was a novel experience, swimming with fishes and seeing corals in their natural habitat. We also had to rewire our brains to breathe through the mouth while in scuba gear. Given that we talk for our livelihood, it was an interesting experience to communicate with signals with our diving instructors,” she recalls.
Team Red FM went scuba diving to pick up litter and create awareness about plastic waste dumped in the sea. Dr.Vasuki, Director, Suchitwa Mission with the garbage she collected from the sea
Dr Vasuki can’t keep out the excitement from her voice as she talks about that memorable dive. She recalls her wonder at the rich marine life but adds that she was shocked to find so much of plastic on the sea bed. Nevertheless, she is keen on going deep sea diving next.
Sajna, meanwhile, is planning to go underwater again on April 1, Salsa Day, this time to dance underwater, at an event organised by Cool Divers and Bond Safari, Kovalam-based underwater adventure companies. “Kovalam’s golden beaches got international recognition when sight-seeing was the trend in tourism. These days, however, tourism has undergone a sea change and now it’s all about experiencing all what a destination has to offer. Hence, the interest in adventure sports such as scuba diving, food tourism, heritage tourism and the like. Nowadays, there is much more awareness about the diversity, the beauty and the peacefulness of life under the seas. People want to experience it up close and personal and thus sign up for scuba diving,” says Jackson Peter. Jackson’s company has been taking enthusiasts down under the sea for the past year and a half. “Also, did you know that 20 minutes of scuba diving burns 1000 calories? For a lot of our customers scuba has become a recreational-fitness activity too,” he adds.
However, it remains to be seen how long the joy ride under the sea will last, for the dredging activities at Vizhinjam is reported to have wiped out a lot of the ‘paarikal’ (what local fishermen call, reefs with soft coral colonies). Also, the Travancore coast has a natural reef peopled with a rich variety of marine life, some 10 to 15 km out at sea, and environmentalists worry that dredging might have a negative impact on it. “I worked in Majorca, in the Balearic Islands archipelago for a numbers of years. It’s one of the world’s biggest ports that thrives on tourism and is home to one of the world’s biggest marine biodiversity parks too. So, the coming of a port may not necessarily be bad for business. However, there needs to be concrete efforts in Kovalam-Vizhinjam and along Kerala’s 540 km coastline to protect marine life and develop artificial reefs and so on to make the state a top scuba diving destination,” says Jackson.
Into the sea
On April 1, some 30 women, all of them members of women’s only travel club Appooppanthadi are taking the plunge. “Most of our trips involve trekking up mountains high above sea level. This time, we thought it would be a refreshing chhnage to go down below sea level,” says techie Sajna Ali, founder member of the group.
Down under
Grove beach, just off The Leela cliff, is the top dive site in Kovalam. You can expect visibility of three to five metres if the sea is not choppy. There’s also an underwater cave nearby, home to a bed of eels.
“Residents of the city should remember that all this plastic gets degraded into nodules that end up in the food chain. It causes problems for the marine life and for all of us who consume fish. It is carcinogenic,” says Dr Vasuki.
