Taken on my second dive (or was it third)?
Anyway, it was during the 2nd school term holidays (nowadays they go by semesters) in July 1982, and I went to Tioman island for the very first time on board the Marine Police patrol boat PZ4 (Kapal Polis DiRaja Lang Kuik), which has now been passed to the new Malaysian Maritime Enforcement Agency. The journey was from the naval base at Tanjung Gelang straight to Tekek. The CO, DSP Michael Lee, asked me if I could swim, and being a school swimmer, I said yes. So he said once we arrive in Tioman he’d take me scuba diving. So there I was, I donned this stoopid looking mask, J-valve tank on a backpack (nobody’s heard of a BCD then), and a pair of “two for RM10” fins and did my first dive at Renggis. That was the first time I scuba-dived, saw my first swimming turtle, my first black-tip reef shark. No RDP, nothing. Not even an air gauge. All I had was this crude looking depth gauge (in Imperial unit). I ran out of air at 70 feet..literally. That was how I knew I no longer had any air. So I removed my backpack, and yanked on this yoke for spare air, and immediately surfaced to the waiting assault boat.
Safety stop? What da fock is that? This was 1982, remember?
Come to think of it, it was my third dive when this photo was taken. I did a solo dive earlier that morning. Haha, yes, solo.
I was 16 years old..I was invincible. What was there to be scared of?
SeaDemon Says 