Tulamben Dive report ~ June 2009

Tulamben Dive Report~ GOD ‘s Inaugural trip 19^th to 23rd June 2009

I had the honor of leading GOD’s first trip out of Malaysia to the beautiful island of Bali.

I have done so many trips before but this being my first under GOD, kind of made me more apprehensive and I hope that all will go down well with the group of 7 divers whom I regard as “ The Magnificent Seven”. It was also nearly the two years ago that I first met these 7 divers when I brought them to Bali to Nusa Penida.

We arrived around 1 pm from Malaysia abroad the Malaysian airlines and the immigration was fast and within 10 minutes we were all out of the airport and on the way to Tulamben, some 2 hours away by road. On the way, we stop at a good Nasi Padang shop to fill our stomach. We arrived at Mimpi Resort, Tulamben which is regarded as the best sea front resort in Tulamben at around 5 pm. We all slept early that night in semidetached cottage rooms.

After a 7 am wake up call, we headed for breakfast ( 3 course selection ) and then walked over to the beach facing the most dived sites in Bali, the Liberty Wreck at Tulamben. The Liberty Wreck lie just 30 meters from the beach at depths of 5 meters to 30 meters.

It was a huge cargo ship which was sunk by torpedoes during the WWII and although the damaged vessel was brought back to the shore, a massive Volcano eruption from Gunung Agung in 1963 pushed back the wreck back to the sea to its current position. The wreck is scattered in several large chunks and there are several big holes in the hull where divers can swim through. The wreck is scattered about 100 meters on steeply sloping black sand.

Getting to the wreck is challenging for most of us who are not used to shore dives and walking on black gravel, stones and rocks. The trick is to wade in and don your fins when you are chest high in water. Better leave the regulator in your mouth as I experienced a near death incident because of this. More later.

The first photographic customer we met was the ghost pipefish. There was a pair at just 10 meters depth. Next was just a few bump heads feeding on hard coral. On a given day, you will see hundreds of bump heads as the wreck is their hotel. A school of about 100 jacks circle above the wreck and on approaching the wreck, I could understand why so many varieties of fishes lived or sheltered in the wreck which provides protection and a good breeding home. Nevertheless, a giant barracuda will suddenly dart in to catch unaware prey. I headed to 28 meters depth and to a particular gorgonian where there were 3 pygmy seahorses or Bargibant’s seahorses, Hippo-camous bargibanti waiting to be photographed. Engrossed in photography could catch you unaware with deco time and luckily my early years of “errors “ messages in my dive computer, made me more aware and all of us made it up safely with different stories to tell.

We did the second dive to the right end of our resort at The Coral Wall which plunges to “out of bound “ depth. There is a massive sea fan at the corner and along the slopes are nice colorful soft corals, sponges and a variety of fishes. We caught the glimpse of the rare comet ( Calloplesiops altivelis ), a beautiful fish with elaborate finnage and a false eye.

The last dive of the day was in front of our resort, the Coral garden. At 3 pm , the current was around 1.5 knots and ribbon eels of all ages ( black for young to the yellow for old ) can be easily found. We surfaced about 50 meters before the Liberty wreck, some 500 meters from where we went in. Coming out of the water and walking on slippery stones were no fun.

The second day we again did an early morning Liberty Wreck dive, followed by two dives at Seraya. Seraya is pure macro haven and is Bali’s answer to Lembeh.

We finished the day by doing a fourth dive at Alamanda which I consider the best dive site in the Tulamben area. The site profile was excellent which walls, little mounts, sandy resting areas and beautiful hard and soft corals. Good variety of fishes and nudibranches. This was our only boat dive.

The thing about Tulamben is that almost all the dive sites are shore dives so the right season to go there is important. Avoid the rainy period and period when sea is rough. Entering the water is one thing but getting out with high waves hitting your back and pushing you face down onto stones and rocks can be dangerous. Oh yes. My almost death drowning experience. I went into the water backwards and had just put on my fins and was watching the others coming in when I felt someone pushing me down into the water. I immediately inflated my BCD but in the struggle I could not find my regulator and I turned around underwater and realized that one of the divers was struggling and was climbing on top of me to keep afloat. I search for his inflator hose but there was no air entering his BCD. I managed to push my head out of the water and gasped a few breath of air. The dive guide managed to jump in and pulled the diver back to the shore.

I in the meantime was glad to be breathing and floating on the water with a fully inflated BCD. The diver panicked when he waded into the water and begin to sink when his BCD leaked. The slope steep sharply after just 3 meters from the shore. He also did not have his regulator on. Moral of the story, keep you regulator in your mouth. Less air for diving not important. Better to be safe. That happened on our second last dive and I am glad to say, after regaining his composure, the diver did the last dive on borrowed BCD. If he had skipped that dive, he may not have dived again.

We left the next day as we wanted to spend a relaxing night in Kuta and do some shopping and have some fine food. After dinner, we relaxed over a couple of drinks at Hard Rock Café where there was this 7 person band from Jakarta playing. They are very good and they played both my requested songs, Poker Face by Lady Gaga and Hotel California by The Eagles excellently. They will be coming to Hard Rock in KL in August and September. Catch them.

The next day, we boarded the 1pm flight back to KL.

Hammerhead John’s rating;

**** resort and food

***** divers

*** dive sites. We just didn’t like the shore diving

**** Overall package price

Tubbataha reef- a disappointment

Well, someone forgot to tell all the large pelagic that we are going there.

We arrived at Tubbataha on the morning of 9th May after 12 hours overnight on the Apo Explorer. There were 16 of us, 10 from Malaysia and the other 6 from Singapore. We had very high hopes that this is the area to dive esp after a 45 minutes check out dive at Malayan wreck, my best check out dive todate.

Malayan wreck sits atop the reef at only 5 meters and the same wreck is a home to about 100 bumpheads which were just leaving home when we dived in at 8am. The visibility was around 35 meters with no current. We then swam towards the wall which drops to about 70 meters. Swimming at depths of 36 meters on our first dive was amazing. It is exactly like the Barracuda point at Sipadan minus the school of barracudas. There were sharks all over and it soon became clear to us that the reef is a nursery and kindergarden to reef sharks. Looking out into the blue, we saw only one thing...blue water. No large pelagic was swimming past us. Something amiss, I thought.

The following dives were all mostly similar, wall dives and beautiful reef that were mainly covered with hard corals or sandy bottom. There were few soft corals and hence, not many anemones and macro like nudibranches. We were really disappointed.

As we were using Nitrox most of the time, we were diving very close to our MOD ( maximum operating depth before oxygen turned toxic ) becos of the great visibility ( maybe that is why there is no pelagic...they are camera shy ). I did most of my first day dives with air as i wanted to explore the deep end and went down to 56 meters to see some juvenile barracudas.

Our dive on 9th May was on Full Moon and despite this, there were no current, the sea as calm as a dead woman, and no large pelagic. No Mantas, no rays, no whale sharks, hammerheads, etc etc. The conditions were perfect but no big stuff.

In most of our dives, we could hear dynamite exploding some 50 miles away. It was common to hear 2 to 3 explosions on each dive. Maybe these scare away the big fishes. Unless the filipino government takes some drastic actions, no fishes will dare come into filipino waters.

Tubbataha reef is beautiful and it definitely beats places like the Great Barrier Reef in terms of marine life and there are corals ( many barrel corals ) of enormous sizes. It is definitely a breeding ground for turtles, sharks, Napoleon wrasses, octopus and reef fishes. Maybe it was parent days off when we were there.

The renown washing dive site was also a disappointment. Someone switched off the power and no noticeable current were felt. Imagine..we had brought reef hooks, gloves, mini anchors etc etc.
Some brought down some dirty linen.

We visited the Ranger's station that houses around 10 Rangers that patrol the area to keep out fisherman and pirates . It also double up as a T-shirt sales center.

Our group of 10 Malaysian makes use of the nights drinking away the beer that cost USD1 per can and the two bottles of liquor that we brought. The other 6 Singapore divers kept to themselves mostly except on the last night when they decide to have fun with us.

The manager of the boat, Colin who is a Canadian is great and very attentive to our needs. The crew on board the Apo Explorer who we were told only earns less than RM150 a month, are friendly and good at their work. The Malaysian gang were so taken by the services and each of us gave USD40 to the crew as tips. Sad to say, the Singaporean group only gave a fraction of this.

Tubbataha "the Africa of diving"

Tubbataha. Never heard of it ? Well, it is described in one dive magazine as" The Africa of Diving"- Wild and Unexplored. And I will be going there this Friday, 8th may 2009.

Where is this place ?? Tubbataha reef is an atoll coral reef located in the Sulu sea of the Philippines. It is a marine sanctuary protected as a National park and is nominated as the New 7 Wonders of Natural World.

The reef is made up of two atolls which are 5 miles apart and in between is a channel that provides passage to all large pelagic and fishes. Wall dives, reef dives, drift dives and "washing machine' dives are all available here. The marine life here is so vivid and diverse that this sanctuary rivals the Great Barrier reef.

Declared a Unesco world heritage site in 1993, Tubbataha can only be visited by Liveaboards that weather only permits entry in March to June each year.

The Magnificent 10 of us will be going and hopefully all 10 returns will fish tales......more soon.

Thin line between Love and Hate 2

An unpleasant incident compelled me to write on this subject again. After a few drinks last night with PJ's group at Armada, I came home to once again find my neighbour ( 2 doors away ) 's car parked in front of my house ( at the other half, not blocking my gate ). This fellow has 4 cars ( wife and 2 kids ) and they parked their car all outside neighbours house and not inside his own house. He has been doing it for a year now since he moved in. As we all leaved in terraced houses, it can be annoying as I will then have to park my car inside the house's compound which is very troublesome for my wife to move in and out with her car. So I got mad and paste a notice "not to park outside my house ' with my phone no and name. Guess what. He called me up at 7am this morning on his way to work and said I should have gone to his house and settle the matter. Firstly, would he had welcomed me middle of the night or I must wait until he gets back at night. We do not know each other and being hot headed, situation may get out of hand. Over the phone, he says he has the right to park anywhere as the land does not belong to me and he is someone that I should be afraid of. After some shouting on the phone, I cut him off and tried to go back to sleep thinking anticipating a problematic day ahead.

However, I thought i better settle this as my wife was really sore with me and had left home for office early. I sms Zainuddin, the neighbour, and said that he caught me in a bad mood this morning from my hangover and that I want to meet him for breakfast as there should not be bad blood between neighbours. To cut a long story short, he promised not to park in front of my house and I told him that I will park on my side of the house and his small car can still park on the other half. Comprehend?? At the end of all this, we agree that society has made us all cold to each other and we now hardly know our neighbours.

Anyway, if i had not made the attempt to defuse the situation, who knows even a bloodbath may ensure. It is indeed a thin line between love and hate. My wife probably hated me like mad for arguing with the neighbour although she often complains that the neighbour parks their car outside our house. There was one time that he left one of his car there for one complete month without moving it.

The incident above is some which we faced in everyday life. Don't you at times wish you drove a 16 wheel truck and ramp thru all those who drives at snail pace on the fast lane and will not barged despite your continuously flashing of the headlights and then honking.

I told my wife we should have a gathering and invite the neighbours to get to know them. I fully blamed UMNO for making us hostile and cold to each other. In fact, I even blame UMNO when my goldfish dies....

Blogs clean up

My great lawyer fren, Sam tells me that I went beyong sanity and wrote some nasty stuff about politicians in my blog and I'd better clean it up before Najib's gang learn to read. So I took his advice and removed all my political blogs from labelling MCA as running dogs to our new PM...son of Razak. Anyway, I wanted frens to comment on my blogs but I guess they are scared shit in case they are called up to whereever it is now that they make u sit on ice until your balls get frozen then they easily smashed it up.

So I will write nice blogs on subjects that I have passion for like scuba diving, make love to the Ocean...I mean love the Ocean, beautiful ladyboys , my new GOD travel websites and educate someof you on lovely animals of the sea. I will also do some cartoons as I know that some of you are poor readers.

GOD is here

Recently the word 'GOD' crops up many times in my mind and will now play a more significant role in my life. Have I gone more religious??? Maybe about time. Maybe my time to meet the Maker is round the corner.

Anyway, let me first speak about the first GOD. GOD is the acronym for Great Ocean Divers and that is our new website, www.greatoceandivers.com . My good frens, Hadi, Yaohan, Mark and I are setting the website to go into the dive travel business, training and later offering land and sky adventures. We will offer many great benefits for those who want to be GOD's members like discount rates for diving, lessons, points for future free trips etc. We should be launching our website in middle April.

The second GOD is our maker and also known by so many names that I have lost count. No one knows how many GOD is there. Why only one and not two, three or four ? I often believe that the most important rule to follow is the rule to do good for others....do what you want others to do upon you.

One of my young frens, Hazel suggested I come to church with my family who are honestly neither here nor there with regards to religion. I am to be fully blamed for that. As I was not ready to accept GOD and to follow its rules diligently, I shun from meeting GOD. Religion is a very personal thing. Some become religious because of parents, friends whilst some have religion shafted into their throats. In Malaysia, the later is true. Why must all Malays be Muslims? Sensitive topic that can get one in hot soup. Or a cell in Kamunting with cold soup.

I drop the hint to my wife about the activities in the church for the kids this weekend and she says that similar activities are also carried out in temples. Mmmmm. Dilemma.

FireflyXXXXX

I must be mad to fly on Fireflyz again. Last year, I faced the screw up on their changes in the flight schedules and this year it is happening again. Firefirez announched that they are changing the schedules of some of their flights and cancelling some. These people do not care on the welfare of their passengers and are protected by some fuking clauses giving them the right to cancel, change , reschedule flights at their whimps and fancies. Can we as paying passengers do the same ?? If we cannot make it for the flight, we are penalised but the airlines can get away with murder. What a one loped sided world that we lived in.

The problem with flyfirez is that they are run by people of the moronic kind who are not answerable to anyone. They fail and losses money....no problem, government will help. That is their attitute. We dare to fail so we will fail.

Flyfirez is a new airline and the only reason people uses them is the convenience of flying from subang airport as oppose to going miles away to KLIA or LCT. BUT they will soon lose all creditabilty as a reliable airline by constantly changing their flight schedules.

Fly the fly no more.