An Exciting Bubble Making Adventure...: Salu's Lush Greenery

Sunday, 16 July 2006

It was good to see familiar faces. Met ardent divers like Chon Ming and Chay Hoon again. This trip was organised by the "Localdivers Yahoo group". I was a sleeping member of this group for almost half a year since I signed up. This is the 1st time I'm on a trip with them. Ivy who is the group proprietor cum organiser couldn't make it to this trip last minute and got herself replaced by Yan.

The meeting time was 2pm @ Keppel Marina. There were a total of 9 divers on this trip and we set off on Dolphin Explorer for our destination. It was my first time on Dolphin Explorer and i'm enthralled by how comfortable and spacious she is. It was a 40 min journey to Pulau Salu and i chatted with my buddy, Kat along the way. We were blessed with good sunny weather and the sea condition for the day was predominantly calm.

On the way to Salu, Dolphin Explorer briefly stopped by the buoy marking Sudong wreck which Kat and I could identify almost immediately. It reminded us of our wretched dive the week before. It was in total contrast today. An almost perfect condition to dive the Sudong wreck. There was seemingly no surface currents, the water don't look as murky and we could get very close due to high tide. We passed it on as the agenda was to dive Pulau Salu. Dolphin Explorer cruised to the Western side of Salu Island and we started our dive at about 3pm. We went down in buddy pairs unguided. The good thing was that Kat possessed a compass and a dive computer so I heeded her navigation signals. The first dive was a very shallow dive with a max depth of 4.5m and an actual bottom time of 61 mins.

Turbellaria(left) and Nudibranchia(right) : Flatworm Pseudoceros sp. and Nudibranch Phyllidiella pustolusa are some of the common residents of Singapore's coral reefs.

Chartreuse Panorama

The underwater scene was thick lush green forests of seagrasses. Among the vegetation were numerous thriving healthy corals. Reef fishes abound. There were gentle currents rocking us to and fro over the greenish hued seascape. We seemed lost in the vast expanse of the greens and our search for macro subjects were in vain. The creatures were well hidden amongst the foliage. We managed to fin out of the frondescence and to our delight, creatures started to appear under our watchful eyes in successions. On the list were the numerous shy swimming crabs hidden in crevices, Bandit crabs and shrimps in acropora corals, Tomato clowns in carpet anemones, Phyllids nudibranchs and etc. The highlights were a small Blue-spotted Stingray and an Eeltail Catfish.

White-lipped Eeltail Catfish(Paraplotosus albilabris)

.............Swimming Crab and a Tiny Nemo amongst the stinging anemone.............

We spent exactly an hour of surface interval onboard and were served with refreshments. The second dive was done at the same site but we went deeper this time. Visibility was still good of about 2 - 3m although it was darker as we decended deeper. There were a few large coral heads and small patches of sparsely scattered reefs. Otherwise, the bottom was mostly silty. We came across flatworms and Blue dragons while mucking around the deeper silty bottom. We generally navigated east towards the shallower reefs and encountered more crabs, Polycad flatworms, Blue Dragons, hermit crabs and a baby Thuridilla. There were lots of Acropora corals, each colony hosting a place for refuge to small crabs and shrimps within their branches. Those shy critters were extremely hard to photograph as they were mostly obscured by the branching acropora and they ran around too much..... I took lots of shots of those acropora shrimps and crabs but sadly, all of them were either out of focus or inconspicuous. We ended the second dive after an ABT of 63 mins and headed for mainland.