Blue Reef Scuba Dayang Trip November 15th 2008 or OMG THAT WAS HUGE

This was the last weekend, end of season. Whale Sharks were sighted in previous weeks. Ashar from Blue Reef invited me up. Initially I was hesistant, as I had other plans... but how could I pass up a chance to swim with a whale shark (again)?

And so we went there hoping to bump into something. Yeah, something!

Dayang did not disappoint.

On the Saturday dive, 5.54pm, we encountered a giant Manta Ray, an albino monster. Let's call it - "Mr White". It was huge - measuring 5m+ in wingspan. It dwarfed the ones I saw in the Maldives. I was mesmerized by the sheer size of the thing. Wow, it was massive. It would totally fill out one British snooker tables.

It was totally pure white - except for the black markings on its back. One large Tuna-like fish was following it as well as the usual attendent fish.

And it was so cute too. It kept on circling around and surprising us. Maybe it was playing a game with us. But it would come close- and tempt us to chase after it - which is a futile effort on or part. Then it would turn around and catch us in our blind spots again. This went on for about 15 minutes... and then we had to go up because we were running low on  air. haha.

You can watch the video footage in my video section.

Visibility was very bad. A fair number of the dive teams had to abort the earlier 2oclock dive because when they descended it was like swimming into a fog or green bean soup. This is the start of the monsoon season so the waters are being churned by the stormy winds. The seas were very choppy. One or two of the divers got seriously seasick.

The down current was especially dangerously strong in some areas - Pulau Lang. What happens is that as you descend, the down current will push you down suddenly. Some divers have been pushed downwards to 50m before they could recover. The max dept for leisure divers is 30m). If this happens to you, you are suppose to inflate your BCD to rise up. Trying to swim against the current is futile and will exhaust you.

Anyway after boring the whole resort with our exploits during the night, we went back there the next day - but Mr White did not deign to appear. We left after lunch- but we suspect that if we hanged around til evening time - he may have made an appearance.

Special thanks to Sing, Ashar, Nizam, Janice, and Elaine - and of course the Blue Reef Scuba Company for making it a special weekend.