Go on an underwater treasure hunt this XMAS

How would you like to unearth the ocean’s hidden secrets this Christmas? With the help of this group, your dream of exploring a shipwreck right off the Chennai port could come true. Known as Salty Bone Divers, they’re welcoming experienced, certified divers to come together on December 25 to observe the thriving marine life followed by a meet-and-greet.

Meenal Bhandari, one of the founders and CEO of the company says that the intention behind having the event was to bring the divers in the city closer. “We thought of having a get-together and fun dive on Christmas so that people can meet and interact with one another. We also want to create a community of divers and with their help, promote water-based activities in Chennai,” she says.

As for the team, Salty Bone Divers was started after a bunch of like-minded scuba instructors met during a course. “We realised that while scuba diving is popular in pockets of India such as Puducherry, Andaman and Nicobar Islands and Netrani, there is not much happening in Chennai. We opened our first branch in April last year in Mamallapuram to try and change this,” she says. In the beginning of 2018, a few more instructors joined in and by May, they decided to open in the city.

With the help of the port authorities and a few friends, they got the license to operate out of the port and use the harbour to go on dives. Meenal shares, “It was, in fact, the chairman of the port who told us about this shipwreck we’re planning to visit on Christmas. He gave us the coordinates one day and after diving for nearly 45 minutes, we chanced upon the it.” The dive site is a sunken ship called Deccan Pioneer — “It was a cement carrier built in Japan and bought by a Mumbai-based company third hand. For reasons unknown, the 103-metre long ship sank in 1988. It has been lying underwater for 20-plus years but it’s still intact,” states Xavier Panangadon, the team’s director.

“Recently, we got to explore the shipwreck from inside and wanted to take other fun-divers to enjoy this experience. It is an amazing spot to see marine life such as trevally, Morey eels, octopuses, bat fish, barramundi, groupers, barracudas… you name it. You can find a little bit of reef growth too, which has occurred over the past two decades, making it really colourful,” says Meenal.