What a Year was 2013! It has just sped by and December was no different.
I must apologise for the lack of trip reports for December. I have been busy.
Also I was trying to take a bit of time off here and there, so I am going to update December local Singapore scuba diving in one condensed report.
We dived Hantu, a local island off Singapore on the 30th November and in December on the 1st, 14th, 15th, 21st, 22nd and the 28th.
The visibility what not as good as November and during the middle of December it was really bad. Less then 50cm on Sunday the 15th. Regulars Daniel, Scott, Ovi and Christian joined just about very weekend. As Scott says, “Diving Hantu beats sitting on the lounge”.
Kishore dived Hantu a few times during December and he completed his PADI Rescue Diver Course.
Simon also completed his PADI Rescue Diver Course. It took me a while to convince Simon to dive Hantu, in the end, he enjoyed it.
Karen dived three times in December and each time as a GS-Diving Dive Guide.
Once with Maki.
The second time with a group of friends (too many names to mention).
And then Karen had some challenges with a father and son team, Brendan and Andrew who was only 10 years old.
Andrew had a few issues descending and even lost his weight belt. He was so small, the belt just slipped off, so we put weight in his BCD pocket for the next dive. Short dives for Karen that day.
Richard, GS-Diving’s newly accredited PADI Dive Master was guiding every weekend. Congratulations Richard, on completing your PADI Dive Master Course.
Grace is most of the way through her PADI Advanced Open WaterCourse. She has completed the wreck dive, the drift dive and the navigation dive.
Sebastien completed his PADI Speciality Search and Recovery Course. We had a failed attempt to find the pink weight belt during the first dive, but the next three dives were perfect with the now famous GS-Diving Watering Can being found and taken to the surface via the lift bag. Which is not so easy when the GS-Diving Watering Can has 8 weights inside.
For two weeks we dived the same dive site where the pink weight belt had been lost. But during one dive I found it lying where I had left it. . . If only the students could find things as easily.
Despite the average viz in December, we still had some good sightings.
Blue spotted rays, pipefish, turtles, sea snakes, seahorses, nudi’s everywhere and some flat worms.
We even dived some new sites nearby Hantu. The hard coral was amazing, much more than often found at the commonly dived reefs at Hantu.
This new site also had a lot more fish than at Hantu Jetty.
We also dived the Small Wreck most mornings and it appears that people have been reading my previous trip reports about this small wreck. A few boats dropped divers off nearby the wreck and were clearly trying to find it. Both times, I had just removed the line tied to the wreck prior to their descent. I don’t think they found it, so the secret is still mine.
Daniel took some good video of shoe horse crabs making more shoe horse crabs. We saw this in November, but I wanted to share the video with you today.
Also, congratulations to the 2 newly certified PADI Open Water students and 6 PADI Advanced Open Water students not mentioned above.
Additional pictures from our December diving at Hantu can be found on our GS-Diving FaceBook page – please click here
And of course – Happy New Year from GS-Diving! May 2014 bring new adventures for everyone!
Cheers – Gary
And thank you to Karen for the use of your photos.