The World Behind The Viewfinder

It was after our first dive at Mak Cantik that the dive master Jan Shir was asking, "Do you guys wanna see something different?" and let us think about it during the surface interval. The 'different' site is called just 'Sandy Bottom' (and I heard the divemaster calling it 'Twilight Zone' but I might be wrong) and there will be no corals and no big fishes, but he guarantees we will be seeing something different. Even though Redang is not known for great muck diving site, Bill and me are all game and we want to see something different than the coral reefs.

We started to get prepared for this special dive after our lunch at Redang Pelangi. Our friend Gan didn't show up on time at the dive shop so after a bit of waiting and briefing we start our journey to the dive site. JanShir talked about the normal stuff but put emphasis on lost buddy as well as underwater navigation. In this type of terrain (Sandy Bottom) navigation can be assisted by observing the sand pattern, the current flow direction (coolness on the left side or right side, if any), and the sun orientation (sun over left shoulder or right shoulder). Well I was like, aye aye, and can't wait to get to the dive site.

It was about 10-15min of speed boat journey to the south. I noticed we went pass the Marine Park island at our right hand side. The boat slowed down in the middle of the sea and Jan Shir was like, "Lets get prepare divers!", and there is no buoy or mooring line in sight! We slipped into the fins and did giant stride into the water and start to descent.

I had problem equalizing, just like in any other dives, but eventually get over it. We went straight down until we reached the sandy bottom which is 18m depth. There is literally nothing insight except seemingly unlimited stretch of sands, and not a single drop of coral exists here. This is probably what a Muck Dive is. I had experience another similar muck dive at Tulamben, Bali where we descent over a slope of black valcano sands before reaching the USS Liberty Wreck (and we were lucky to spot some pretty nice stuff there too), but I have never done a full 50mins of muck dive.

We started to explore the sandy bottom and visibility is not great but about 10m. I had my first enconter ever with a sea hare, which can swim gently with its big flaps. This creature is really fun to observe, where some will be crawling at the bottom while others trying to swim away from all our attention. We saw at least 20 similar sea hares during the whole dive. It seems to be this species Aplysia sydneyensis but I might be wrong. We see a few different species of the sea hares but it is really hard to distinguish between them. After spending some time playing with some of them we moved on along the seabed searching for other stuff. I see some tiny vegetation that I just couldn't identify for now. Everything here seems to be in minute scales.

Moving on we were treated with what I would call 'Oasis of Anemone'. It was in the middle of sandy bottoms (similar to desert on land) that suddenly we came across a patch of anemone, lesser than 20cm in radius, along with a few saddleback clown anemonefish swimming within. The saddlebacks swim a bit awkward, and it gets really funny when they tried to hide within the short anemome fingers that almost the whole body is exposed. This is my first encounter with saddleback clowns too. And when look closely, there are actually many tiny shrimps, mostly almost transparent, living in within the anemone too!

We saw a few more of these patches of anemone with clownfishes throughout the dive. I was wondering whether this is how the aliens/ETs see us, strangled in a small planet in the middle of no where?

Fire urchin - 1st encounter for me, too - is really beautiful but dangerous to be touched. We saw 2 fire urchins, one of them is home to a tiny little Zebra Crab. Too bad the photo that I took of the Zebra Crab (Zebrida Adamsii) living in the Fire Urchin was out of focus -- did I tell you that I hated the super slow, hunt-and-miss focus of the Canon A620 in Macro mode? --  I should have stayed a bit longer here! Lesson learnt: always take a couple more photos of the same subject! There was a pretty snail (don't really know its real species name ) too, and a big shell that I've seen mechants selling at some of the beaches.

Last but not least, we came across a rather well preserved fish skeleton. It is only possible here, at this deserted Sandy Bottom, that the skeleton can remain in such a good condition. It seems like it just died not long ago, where some of the fleshes were still intact. JanShir was elated when seeing the skeleton. He wrote this down with his pencil on his plastic slate, turned it and showed to us: 'fish skeleton', as if we couldn't tell. And this was the ONLY thing that he has written  down at all on the pad throughout the 3 dives! We spent some time inspecting this rather lonely death before venturing away.

All in all a very fascinating 50min dive on the 18m Sandy Bottom. I am sure this is not even close compared to other great muck diving sites elsewhere but seeing so many new and rather bizarrre stuff to me are good enough to counter my ear pain. The photos were all taken with 'Underwater' white balance setting in the Canon A620 but it certainly is not good enough to cure the color tint, and I made no effort to have them fixed up in Photoshop too... Laziness is setting in.

When can I go muck diving again?

Link to more trip photo: http://travelgaia.com/gallery/redang_2007/index.html