Well the weather doesn’t want to play the game for us – there was thunderstorms most of the night and some prolonged heavy rain, not that Scott woke up to see/hear it. The morning sky was jet black and the winds were still up, but luckily blowing offshore.
We went for our coffee and then back to the hotel for our on-time driver to take us down to the marina. The boat was there and ready for us, as was our dive partner for the day, Dr John (who is a serious photographer). Robert (DM) and Steven (Boat Master) were confident conditions would be OK for diving, although suspect the visibility might be reduced. John had a fully setup for his glasses – some special modifications to his mask.
We sailed out into South China Sea again, the offshore winds were abating and the sea was actually quite smooth, considering. We had a 30 minute transit to the first dive site; one of the first things we noticed the water was greener today rather than the deep blue from yesterday.
Dive 4 – Kenyalang Wreck. This artificial reef in just over 20m of water is industrial; there is a large triangular-frame structure which was part of a gas vent/riser from a rig. Thousands and thousands of fish and soft corals have colonised here and cover the entire structure. The visibility at the surface was ok, maybe 10m or so, just below the surface things improved, but in the structure itself, visibility was markedly reduced to no more than 5metres, partly due to the silting from the storms but also due to the excretions from the millions of fish! Tracy found a scorpion fish in amongst the growth and as soon as we had our eyes calibrated for these, we found many more of these dangerous, ugly masters of camouflage.
Dive 5 – Nemo City. As you might expect from the name, this dive is all about sea anemone and clown fish; thousands of colonies are still not enough for Tracy.
There was more to see though on the 11 metre reef, including bumphead parrot fish, turtles and first the time we’d see it, bunches of nudibranchs (at one point Scott saw four in a space no larger than a hand-span).
Although our camera is only rated to 10m (and had previously failed at 7m), we took it anyway and got some ok shots which do no justice to this magnificent area. (The camera survived too!)
The visibility was better than earlier this morning, but still not as good as yesterday; it was commensurate with the bad visibility we saw at Mabul (about 10-20m).
Dive 6 – Nemo City to Adam’s Garden. We didn’t reposition after the second dive as Robert recommended a different dive to finish the day, to descend into Nemo City then ride the gentle current through to Adam’s Garden (gentle current, compared to Sipidan). With a maximum depth of only 7 metres, we stayed down for over an hour and were again blown away by this spectacular muck diving.
The luncheon surface interval had allowed the visibility to improve to 20-30m.
After the final dive, we sped back to Miri (where it had been raining quite hard) and took our transport back to the hotel where had a quick shower then wandered to a nearby travel agent to arrange flights to Labuan on Wednesday. Of course this gives us another day of diving tomorrow! We both think it is going to be quite a while until we get to experience diving like this again, so are going to make the most of this opportunity.
We went back to the hotel and took siesta. When we woke up to head out for dinner, we noticed it was pouring rain. Tracy bought a small umbrella in Kapit and it since has proved useful at keeping one of us dry. We dodged traffic, puddles and more rain to make it to the Indonesian restaurant where we had dinner the other night. A quick dinner, then back into the rain to dash back to the hotel. Hopefully, this will blow over early for our diving tomorrow.