Our first dive in aceh goes to a location called rubia Sea Garden. It's a nice and easy dives with beautiful corals.
First day of diving and I don't think two dives per day is enough for me. So I asked the people there if there were any night dives around. And they said yes, so I wanted to go. My dad allows me to go and agrees to come as well. But there is just one hitch, I'm only an open water diver, and nightdiving was never part of my training- therefore I'm not really allowed to go. There ia a solution though, I just have to read and do the summary questions on Nnight diving in the Advanced Open Water Book. My dad suggested why not just do the full course, I was meant to have my Advanced Open Water a yearago anyway, so it's about time to ever get it.
So they gave me the book to study, and the nextd The greatest experience of my life. It felt like I was in a washing machine.
This afternoon's dive site is somewhere where there is a small ship wreck. There are two ship wrecks found in P. Weh but the other shipwreck is deep down under, about 40m down.
The shipwreck we visited was quite small. And the location was near a harbour in progress. People say that the men don't work there every day so it wouldn't affect the visibility of our dive. But they didn't say that they were not gonna work today, so we picked a bad day to dive. We got in the water, and we realised that this wasn't the best visibility we've seen here. But it was ok, I mean that it wasn't the worst. Ooops, I thought too soon. JUst a few minutes after we got in the water, I heard loud metal bangings. At first I thought it was my tank. Maybe I've accidentally banged it against the ship or something, or maybe There is a major leak. Later on I realised that the noise was coming from above. I looked up around trying to find what was making the noise but couldn't see anything. Instead, what I saw were other divers looking above doing the same thing as me. At first I found this noise rather annoying, but I just ignored it. This wreck dive is rather a short dive, we only spent 40 minutes down there. During that time I found a small eel and a juvenile oriental sweetlip. It's so adorable. I just love the way it swam. It swam just like a worm, wagging around its fins everywhere. We just did a really quick dive so we were then arranged to do another minidive. And the next divesite is called the hot spring, because it's located near a hot spring; therefore it's gonna be a warm and relaxing dive.
Once we got to the divesite, one of the boat men pointed out something hat weren't so 'relaxing'. Apparantly, the place there stinks. At first I thought it wouldn't be that bad, but then I realised that it was. But once you got on to your equipments and breathe of the air in your tank, you could barely smell anything. Obviously becuase your nose is covered by your mask. If you just happen to accidentally swallow the water, you cant get the disgusting taste of your mouth for awhile. Basiically, this whole dive is just for relaxation. Aftyer all those exhausting dives, you really need to go to a place like this. This divesite had no corals or anything. Just us and some fish who were there to enjoy the warm water as well. So I found this area where it releases really warm gas, and then I just clinged on a piece of rock and stayed there forever. It was awesome. But then, a moorish idol swam towards me and also stayed at this same 'station'. The moorish idol was so close to me, I could almost touch it. Anyways, we stayed down there for half an hour only. I really wanted to stay longer, but if I still wanted to do a night dive tonight I really have to go. Or else I might get nitrogen narcosis. It's when you have to much nitrogen and too little oxygeIt's really horrible. I've never gotten it and never want to. This is my last night dive in Gapang Beach. Wished I could stay longer though, too bad we can't.
During this dive we found a giant Hairy Hermit crab. It's size was just massive. I took some great pictures of it. It was really amazing. This place had shown me some really strange creatures and this is amongst one of them. Later on we saw a cowfish. We saw this fish the other day, but it seemed to be alot larger than the ones we found yesterday. The cowfish looked very beautiful when it fan out its tail, sadly it doesn't do that very often. I saw it open up its tail only once throught this whole dive trip. Oh, and this fish also classifies for the weirdest fish around. It's early friday morning, and there seems to be a tradition going around this place. No boats are allowed to leave the shore in the friday mornings. SO our divesite this morning is the homereef, it's called the Gapang Beach.
During this dive we found some amazing little critters. The nudibranchs we saw were extremely small. We also found a pair of leaf scorpion fish. They were the smallest I had ever seen. Usually I would find leaf scorpion fish at about 15-20cm in length. I'm not sure how common this is, but the leaf scorpion fishes were only 3-5cm. It's a first for me. Anyways, I didn't really like them as their colour was so dark and dead. And they were covered with sand, making them uglier than they already were. I tried to take a picture but it wasn't in a great position. My dad went up to it and it moved a little a few times. He thinks that they were either dying or super super lazy. We then moved on, hoping to find better creatures. The guide said that there is a small frogfish, less than 2cm in length, somewhere around a big piece of coral at depth of 18m. But sadly, the frogfish didn't seem to be there today. Maybe it didn'tIt was a real shame, because I really wanted to see it. And this is my last dive in Gapang Beach. Funny thing happened, our group were the first to come up to the boat because my mum nearly ran out of air, even though I still had tons of air in my tank. So while waiting we decided to watch my sister bubblemaking, and I thought of an idea; why don't I go up to her snorkelling and take pictures of her, because that'd be really nice. Then one of the boatmen said to use my tank again as it still had lots of air. So They put my equipment in the wtaer and I put them on, I got my camera and ready to swim up to my sister. BUt only after two kicks, my sister and her instructor surfaced. I just missed the moments and I was quite disappointed. My mum and Dad felt sorry for me and told me I could have a quick 5 minutes Dive while waiting for the other guy in our boat. Well, that was a relief. I dived down and saw beautiful corals. I also saw other divers down there. I tried to just stay around in one area so I didn't have to swim so far to find the boat. BUt I somehow managed to get far away from the boat. I have eithered disoriented, or the boat went around to pick up my sister. The I just swam back to the boat. BUt somehow I went into another boat. I must've thought that the other boat was my boat. They were in fact similarly painted. And to avoid anymore of this confusion, the boat just went around to pick me up. That was certainly, one memorable last dive. |
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