Another enjoyable weekend on The Seaborne, with sightings of a seahorse, crabs, schools of barracuda, jack fish, many many nudibranchs, several stingrays and lots of cuttlefish on the night dive!
On Saturday morning, after the boat briefing everyone was on the dive deck checking and setting up their gear. Excited preparing for our 1st dive of the day.
The 1st dive was at Codd Wreck. As it was the 1st dive, we all descend using the buoy that was tied to the wreck. I noticed that 2 divers had problems descending and I had to pass these divers some extra weights. There was slight current, but the divers were fine. Just underweighted. We spotted lots of nudibranchs and 2 stingrays. The 1st dive was kinda short as 2 divers were too excited and were low on air at 30 minutes mark. I guess they really enjoyed the view!
The 2nd dive was at Kerang Gelang Reef North. The reef was beautiful and the visibility was great 10 to 15m. We spotted a few more stingrays, and the resident batfish is growing bigger. We saw so many nudibranchs that once back on the boat, checked their names. They were Facelinidae, Chromodorididae and Phyllidiidae – yellow, blue, green, purple!
Our 3rd dive was at Kerang Gelang South. Everyone seemed a little tired as everyone had had a delicious lunch prepared by our great cook Kiki. We found spotted puffer fish, batfish and several rainbow nudis.
The 4th dive was simply amazing! There were only 4 divers left as the rest were tired and wanted to skip the dive to rest for the night dive. It was a wrong decision for them to skip this dive! The current allowed for us to have a drift dive. We were drifting then suddenly many schools of barracuda and jack fish appeared out of nowhere. The school of barracuda was huge and part of this school consisted of baby barracuda around 1 to 1.5 metres long.
During the night dive we saw spotted hairy crab, spider crab, a bamboo shark, stingray, cuttlefish and lots of little shrimps. We finished the dive 10 to 15 minutes early due to our rumbling tummies. There were many signals of hungry divers underwater. And the divers didn’t seem to mind at all.
On Sunday morning the 1st dive was a drift dive. We all descend using the anchor line, once all divers were at the bottom, I gave the signal and we all let go of the anchor line and drifted with the current. During the drift dive we spotted a few stingrays. GS-Diving PADI Dive Master, Bernard even fought against the current for awhile with one of the divers as they spotted a seahorse and wanted to take a photo of the seahorse. Now that is a first for this reef!
For the last dive of the weekend we went back to the wreck. We found the baby moray eel too.
It truly was a wonderful weekend. Eat, Dive, Eat, Dive, Eat, Dive, sleep, wake up, eat and dive again! Only on The Seaborne and in less than 2 hours away from Singapore front yard!
Cheers, Gary Lim (GS-Diving PADI Dive Master)