Thursday, 20 May 2010
Another sunny and hot day, can’t really complain though as the water is also like glass, not a ripple and I am not even going to take a sea sickness tablet today.
Dive 1: Lobster Wall, Mabul: Scott’s second dive on this site, but Tracy’s first due to equipment failure earlier in the trip, so she was looking forward to finally getting there. This time the current is much stronger than last time so this is much more of a drift dive. There were strong thermoclines too, making visibility “wavy” or at least a little blurry 🙂 One the wall were the usual gammut of nudibranchs (I am getting better at spotting these and have started playing with some of the macro settings on the camera to see if I can get some better shots), octopus, crocodile fish etc.
I found one lobster (rather small compared to the Western Rock Lobster, but larger than a big prawn) who wasn’t very keen on having its photo taken. I assume once there more of these which is how the wall got its name?
Dive 2: Sea Venture, Mabul: Scott’s second dive on this site (Tracy gave it a miss and went for a walk and a swim), although this time the current is much weaker than before, almost non-existent. The visibility was about the same at around 10m. Allegedly this spot gets some awesome vis, but we are yet to see it! Tracy was having a break so I dived with Leslie, who isn’t part of the Perth SCUBA Crew but is just staying at the resort (her husband has succumbed to the gastro bug). We descended away from where we had been previously, and found more “rubbish” collection disguised as artificial reef structures. Again, I know I am repeating myself, but there has to be some demarcation between dumping rubbish and creating habitat.
We saw a very large cuttlefish out in the open, much to its chagrin as it was photographed from all sides before eventually having enough and meandering away. I spotted some more nudibranchs, some were also out in the open so were easier to spot, but some were tucked away and I still managed to find them (sheer luck of course).
Dive 3: Kapalai: Scott had already done this dive, but I hadn’t so was looking forward to it as it got rave reviews from him last time. The resort is an over-water resort located on a sand bank island. We descended with another boat of divers (this can be annoying as it is hard to see who is who). I didn’t think the visibility was very good, but there is a plethora of clown fish down here so they are great fun to watch. We followed the reef for a little while before moving over to the wrecks when two almighty huge bangs were heard underwater, not sure what they were but certainly got the heart racing and the DMs regrouped everyone to make sure we were okay, as it turned out later it was the Indonesians doing some dynamite fishing nearby. I did however manage to also see a tiny seahorse which is rare.
I spent most of the time at the top of the wrecks looking as the corals and other little creatures that were up there as below it was a bit silty. There was a bit of current which made swimming against it hard and I used up a fair bit of air quickly, but wasn’t unhappy to finish the dive as the photography was hard with all the disturbance in the water and Scott is having problems equalising as he has a cold, so we surfaced and boarded the boat before heading in.
After the diving we went for a walk to the nearest resort and bought a t-shirt. We are feeling very bereft of dive t-shirts compared to everyone else, although we have also to be aware anything we buy here we have to lug around the island, so won’t be buying a pile of them that’s for sure.