Lady Christine ***

Diving: The Lady Christine was driven high onto the reef 300 metres west of Hulhangu Kandu and part of the bow remains visible even at high tide. Most of the wreckage lies scattered on the upper reef slope to a depth of 10 metres. The wreckage and pitted reef provides a protected environment for a wide range of marine life such as surgeon, yellow back fusilier, parrotfish, moray eels, pufferfish, grouper, head-band butterfly fish, crescent-tail bigeye and moorish idol. The variety of marine life is awesome, it's not uncommon to find hawksbill and green turtles, napoleon, eagle rays, barracuda and sting rays all in the one dive.

A vertical wall drops to more than 50 metres on the outside, visibility is usually excellent. There are interesting caves at 30 metres with seafans and sponges. One cave has a swim through to the next and another has part of the wreckage inside. Nurse sharks are often seen inside. This dive offers a great combination of wreckage and marine life.

Diving hints: Once the wreck has been located it's a good idea to dive directly down to view the caves and look into the clear waters for large pelagics, then return to the shallows among the wreckage for the remainder of the dive.

History: The Lady Christine was engaged in survey work and laying communications cable when it ran onto the north west of Gaafaru Falhu at 11 pm on April 16, 1974. A local tugboat tried unsuccessfully to pull the ship off the reef in rough weather and big waves. Another big tugboat was immediately called from Singapore to try and rescue the ship with its valuable cargo of cables and communications equipment.

The ships was holed and two days after running onto the reef the engine room and much of the inside was filled with water. One week later it was full of water and the Singapore tug boat was still on its way. Meanwhile local workers were paid a lot of money to save the cable and contents. When the ship's owners arrived by chartered aircraft, they were shown the rescued cable, all neatly coiled and proudly displayed by the workers. Desperate measures were employed to save the ship but even two days of blasting the reef to make a channel was ineffectual. The ship was stripped of anything of value and abandoned. Divers can see the holes in the reef caused by blasting.