Another day in the office at Hantu, Singapore, and an amazing one at that. Who says Hantu viz is crap? Oh, I did last weekend.
I really wish I had taken my camera this weekend. I could have gotten some great shots of a turtle, stargazer, a nudi laying eggs, big grouper, bat fish, and the wooden wreck would have made for some hot shots, but as you can see by this report – no photos. Sorry about that!
I was conducting PADI Open Water with Hunter, Veena, Ethan and John. Instructor Glenn was conducting PADI Junior Advanced Open Water with Adam. Adam is getting prepared for the upcoming trip to Moalboal, where he will do the final deep dive with me for his certification. Laurynn and Rob joined as leisure divers both days. We were using the Dolphin Explorer this weekend.
We did two dives at the small reef just off Hantu and the first dive of the weekend we saw the Turtle. Not bad for Open Water Dive 1. Open Water Dive 2 we saw loads of clown fish.
Sunday we went to a dive site I had previously named Anchor Rock. There were fish everywhere and excellent viz. We could see the boat on the surface from the bottom at around 7-8 metres. The viz was so good, Adam immediately found the item Glenn “accidently” lost overboard (well, it was a decent throw towards the marker bouy). So Glenn had to do the exercise again, and hid the said item again and made Adam find it again. Anchor Rock is a small site with a sandy bottom always loaded with rabbit fish and trevally.
The next dive was at a small wreck. It was a wooden bum boat at about 7-10 metres deep. A nice wreck with a big grouper and bat fish and the ribs of the vessel help create swim throughs for the fish life. We spent about 15 minutes on the wreck and then headed east to the reef. The viz was again really good at 7-8 metres.
I found a stargazer hidden under a rock. Man those things look ugly and scary at the same time. I left it be and moved on. There is a picture of one here. I was somewhat reluctant to point it out to my students, one in case they created a sand storm trying to look at it or two, in case one of them would be crazy enough to try and touch it.
The last dive of the day was around 45 minutes and my now three students had passed the course. Ethan stopped diving because he could not descend on the first dive on Sunday due to an equalization problem. He will be seeing the dive doctor on Monday to make sure there isn’t an underlying problem.
Congrats to Hunter, Veena and John. They are our latest PADI Open Water Divers. Ethan will try again to complete dive 3 and 4 early February. Adam completed 4 of the 5 dives required for the PADI Junior Advanced Open Water Diver Course, and is well on his way to obtaining his certification.
Sorry, no photos at all. I even forgot to take a group photo with my iPhone. I didn’t have Suzanne to remind me. She has since moved to Houston and is missed by many.
Gary