Monday, December 19, 2005

Eventful Days.....

Went to guide at Chek Jawa and Semakau on Friday and Saturday & dived Pulau Hantu on Sunday. What an eventful weekend!

Eventful indeed it was!

Have a family of 14 including grandparents on Chek Jawa. The kids and the parents were okay but it was nightmares from the grandpa.

For the first time, I felt like stopping half way through the walk on Chek Jawa.

WHYyyyyyy?

Because my heart was broken when I saw ‘Ah Gong’ using drinking straw to poke a carpet anemone and worst still, stepping on them. This despite ample times telling him not to do destructive things to the marine lives. And yes, Ah Gong, when I told you that they are alive, they are really ALIVE! NO need to use your methods to test! Urghhhhh!

I wanted to stop the walk for I feared that he would continue to do harms to other creatures. Therefore, I told the rest of his family members that if this continues, I would have to cut short the walk and bring them back to the van. (Wonder if I have done the right thing? Maybe I will asked other guides for their opinions)

As for Semakau, we spent quite sometimes on the shore for the tide was still too high for us to make it across the seagrass lagoon to the reefs. I managed to find a nudibranch (Bornella stellifer) on the shore. The last time I saw it was on Kusu and Pulau Hantu.

When the tide was low enough, I led my group across the seagrass lagoon (I have a participant who just refused to cross the seagrass lagoon. When asked why, his response was that he was wearing a white pant and did not want to get dirty). Just when everyone in my group landed on the sand flat across, I saw flashes across the sky. And upon hearing the thunder, we made a u-turn back across the lagoon.

But the big storm did not come. So we have some times on the reefs but short one, as the sky was getting dark.

Went diving at Pulau Hantu the next day. Buddy with Kah Chine who was doing her first local water dive.

For the first dive, we went down at the wrong spot and descended to about 9m where it was dark and the vis was almost zero. Since we were unable to see anything, we decided to surface and head nearer to the shore. But somehow there was a current that kept carried us back to the same spot. So for the first dive, most of our times were spent ascending and descending to check our position. :o(

But I have an enjoyable second dive. This time, we got the right descend spot. Manage to see some sunflower mushroom corals with all their tentacles coming out. Tried my hand on underwater photography and took a shot of the tentacles (Turns out that this is the only photo that is not out of focus). :oP Saw a small flatworm too but of course the picture is blur (Later, I realized that I have forgot to switch to macro mode for this tiny little guy) Urghhhhh!

Still a long long way to take good pictures of the underwater world I guess!

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