Another enjoyable weekend over at Batam, Indonesia upon The Seaborne. Leaving 8am Saturday morning returning 2pm on Sunday, provides an easy quick diving getaway.
This weekend there were 8 divers with myself (GS-Diving PADI DiveMaster, James) and GS-Diving PADI DiveMaster in Training, Nico.
Heading straight over to Nongsa Batam from Tanah Merah Ferry Terminal (TMFT) we arrived to have breakfast ready for us. Making the short trip over to the Kerang Gelang Reef we were ready for some diving.
Spending the day diving at different places all over the massive Kerang Gelang Reef we were treated to an array of marine life including; spiny devil scorpion fish, giant puffer fish, blue spotted ribbontail and blue spotted stingrays, loads of nudibranch, loads of flat worms, scorpion fish, flounder, yellow tail barracuda, moray eels and much more. We also discovered a new wreck of decent size in shallow water just off the reef, a big old ship in its day now lying on its side with segments of the hull intact, no penetration was possible though as it had all caved in. After 4 dives the sun was setting meaning it was time for our night dive.
The night dive (also at Kerang Gelang) proved to be the highlight of the trip with some seriously cool stuff coming out after dark, such as; octopus, cuttlefish, (very inquisitive) squid, swimming stingrays, decorator crabs and many other crustaceans. My personal highlight was a huge ornate white basket starfish maybe 8″ diameter traversing a gorgonian sea fan. Would have made for a stunning photograph which of course means I didn’t have my camera on me!
After a relaxing calm evening moored back at Nongsa Point Marina we did one more dive on Nongsa Island. The visibility was a little more limited being so close to the river mouth but we still managed to see many different nudis, eels and stingrays. After the dive it was back to Nongsa to catch the ferry back to Singapore.
A very nice weekend coming back after my Christmas break with a really nice crowd of people. Cheers all.
James
Photos courtesy of Nick (particularly the spiny devil fish).
