War and Peace

Looking back at Sipadan

It's hard to think of the highlights of our time at Seaventures, let alone sum it all up.

Here's a few things that come to mind:

- Diving towards a Leopard Shark as it swims by with its remora entourage.

- Seeing giant turtles watching you watch them, as they lie/swim/eat - they're very graceful underwater, and at least at Sipadan don't seem too concerned by your bubbling, flapping presence.


- Seeing Kat being attacked by a Titan Triggerfish. This was VERY funny. It was slightly less funny when it tried to take a chunk out of my bio-fins though...

- Finding a giant, black frogfish - so black, that it was impossible to take a picture of (well for me anyway).

- Watching huge schools of fish congregate around the rig on a couple of nights. There were many hundreds, if not thousands of them - and a giant trevally was hunting from below - you could see patches of water clearing as they were chased, and the ebb and flow of the school.

- Swimming amoung a few hundred barracuda as they circle in the ocean

- Being close to a grouper that was almost as big as me - he didn't really care for me trying to take his picture, so he retreated into the depths of the artificial reef.

- Hovering less than a meter from massive bumphead parrotfish as cleaner wrass nibble at parasites and such - these guys could do with a nice electric toothbrush on their "beak" - maybe I'll take one down with me sometime and see if they like a clean.

- Wondering whether the reef sharks are going to decide that they'd like a nice piece of Australian meat. They move so smoothly underwater, and you just know that if they want to move fast, they can.

- Last but not least, getting free t-shirts - so now we have our very own dive paraphernalia to wear around!

Looking back at Mataking

What a change from Tawau & Seaventures. This was more of an island getaway, and the first time we have obverved the native Italian on holidays. The diving here was nowhere near as spectacular, but not without its highlights.

It was amazing to see the effects of dynamite fishing first hand - the undulating wasteland of dead coral is a depressing sight, but look close enough and small patches are growing back - in a few decades it may begin to recover, if we haven't ruined the climate by then. The reefs around Mataking must have been spectacular 50 years ago.

The night dive on the house reef was an eye-opener - things that appear dead during the day spring to life at night.
Creatures bloom from what appears to be rock, and juvenile cuttlefish venture out to eat.

Strange crabs duck in and out of holes in the coral, and most peculiar of all a small ball that "flew" through the water on "wings" to bury itself in the sand.

Even the sandy bottom is alive, filter feeders come out to play, small lionfish lurk on the bottom waiting for their prey, and the mantis shrimp sits patiently in its hole..

The jellies were also out, seemingly attracted by the guide light of my strobe, swimming towards me and stinging me and twisting and turning. Arrr me hearties it would be nice if I was wearing a wetsuit at this point.

The downside? Getting an ear infection wasn't fun, and neither was the cold afterwards. Guess it was my turn to miss out on a day's diving.

We're in KK tonight, and who should we meet again - Oliver from the rig. If he turns up in Melbourne in August we will be worried.

Posting this from KLIA... Free WiFi is my friend. Photos are ready to go, just waiting for enough upstream bandwith. Deliver me Internet Lord.