Shark Bait

Tiny horizon

So the diving went well, surprise surprise. Given that I expected to end life as I knew it in Tulamben, it was quite a relief to return in one piece to my parents and forlorn dogs.

Our digs from 10 to 13 November 2012 were at Tulamben Wreck Divers’ Resort, and we were paired up and put up across several rooms. I was also rather surprised to find Steve* sited in the room diagonally across ours on the first night, and was a bit jealous of his breaking dawn view of the sunrise. Even though he was expert enough to go muck about with the more experienced divers, and had only one day to hang about Tulamben, he very nicely took it upon himself to look out for me because he worried that I might panic and drown.

We had six dives over two days, and I generally found it a little underwhelming, which I attribute to me being a noob and hence not fully able to comprehend what I was looking at. For example, what I thought was a weird yellow blob turned out to be a frog fish, and tiny pygmy seahorses didn’t really look like much other than a pale fuzzy frond. I also had a bit of trouble with the weights on the first day, being severely overweighted and having to fiddle a lot with the BC.

The highlights were undoubtedly being able to catch a glimpse of brightly coloured, but much much tinier than expected, nudibranches, as well as watching the many brilliant blue fish dart about at the seabed. There was a school of travelly though, all clustered about in a huge fish shape, which was very interesting to look at. Perhaps the coolest instance was when diving with Steve* and he pointed up into the distance (I was always concentrating on following the dive master or the dive instructor) and upon following his gaze, I saw loads of silver fish gliding randomly against a backdrop of brightly lit sea, much like a screen saver. It was truly a wow moment, and honestly beats diving all the way down to certain depth to poke around at a poorly plant for a tiny seahorse that can barely be seen. The other bigger fish were a bit more boring since they were of dull hues and meandered about at a slower pace.

What I find a bit sad is that pictures of whatever creatures spotted tend to come out nicer on a camera screen than what I remembered – if that’s the case, I’d be better off watching documentaries of the deep blue, no? But I don’t mean to sound ungrateful. It was a great trip to unwind, though I was perpetually exhausted from diving and suffering a depth induced headache. However, I did manage to catch up with Steve* and Wei Quan before they left for Gili and Ubud respectively, which was fantastic.

V3 Acquatic Club!

Would I dive again? Probably yes, but I’ll need to get over the trauma of several aspects of the dive trip. For example, I had a terrible Dive 5 and was confused, irritated and annoyed by how it was conducted. I also crash landed into hydroids and have wheals on my thighs, and am rather wary of finning too close to coral.

What you get when diving in a 3mm shortie

My fins fell off, which was pretty scary. The dive guides were very enthusiastic about dragging me over the pebble shore into the sea, which almost led to me twisting an ankle. But then again, I’ve sunk a lot of cost into dive equipment so I need to make sure they’re all well utilised, heh heh heh.

* not his real name