SeaDemon Says

Sugar Wreck has always intrigued me. It can be eerie and haunting if dived alone, but I have dived here alone before. Sometimes i get to reflect upon life in solitude when I dive here alone. Alone means either I dive this wreck alone, or dive this wreck without a buddy.

I think she was the MV Unistar VI, carrying sugar from Thailand to Singapore, when she developed engine trouble and sank in a storm back in November 2000. Over 90 meters in length, she now rests on her starboard in a SE to NW orientation.

There are many things to see here: Giant Pufferfish, Tiger Trevallies, Lionfish, Scorpionfish, Razorfish, Yellowtail Barracudas, Chevron Barracudas, Porcupine Pufferfish, lots and lots of Fusiliers and Snappers, Bamboo Sharks, Leopard Sharks (those days), Blacktip Reef Shark (only once).

My dive here during this trip was superb. I made a free descent, head down from the surface to 18 meters, smack bang in a school of fusiliers and hunting trevallies. From the bottom I could see the two dive boats above. I circled the wreck alone initially and was then joined by Ridrahim. I took him to several cargo doors and anchor some 50 meters away from the wreck. There were a lot of Sweetlips there but the usual Lionfish were missing.

I spent most of the time making eye contacts with the Lionfishes and Giant Pufferfishes..just to see their reaction. After more than an hour, I left the bottom to commence my stops at 12m, 9m, 6m and 3m. I watched below me as fishes swim…thousands of them. This wreck is now a home to thousands of them.

Sugar Wreck has always been a good dive site for me. I hope to dive it more often next season.

This was where she and I did our first dive six weeks ago. The visibility was great then and there were lots to see. This time around, I was more interested in a hunt.

A hunt for seahorses.

The group had wanted to go to the Sugar Wreck first, but storm clouds were gathering. So we headed for the Vietnamese Wreck first. I had a bad headache from the night before. No, not DCS but it could be something else. Stress, perhaps.

Anyway, both boats went to the same place and we divided ourselves into the “wreck group” and the “seahorse group.” I joined the “seahorse group” as I have never seen seahorses in Perhentian before although I have heard of them.

Surface current was strong and I was already tired swimming to the buoy line. So the best thing I thought was to do a quick descent. Blew all air out of my BCD, flipped head down and made a rapid descent. I settled at the stern of the wreck, on the sandy bottom, where she and I were six weeks ago. I turned to my right to look at the wreck. Light was fading fast and I began to regret not taking a torch with me…and a compass. I saw Anuar heading out to the area where seahorses have been seen before. I had programmed myself for a maximum depth of 22 meters, but the bottom seems to average at 23-24m. I had to recalculate my remaining gas and no decompression limit, and maximum bottom time at depth given the variables.

It was almost like diving at dusk. Light was really fading.

I found an anemone with shrimps on it. I called out to Ridrahim who was holding on to Deepblu’s camera to snap some photos of them. He signalled back to me that he didn’t know how to operate the camera. I took the camera from him and had to fiddle with the controls. First of all, I am not familiar with Canon’s set-up, and secondly, the Ikelite housing’s controls had me all worked-up. And because of the lack of light at 24m, I couldn’t get a focus lock on the shrimps and the wide-angled lens made the pics half lighted by the built-in flash.

I gave up.

By then, I was already left alone down there as the rest had moved on. I saw clusters of seagrass and started hunting for seahorses. I saw one, it was about an inch high. I felt uneasy, as if something was looking at me. I looked around but saw nothing. Although visibility was at about 15 meters, it was dark. I could only hear the high-pitched sounds made by outboard motors of traffic moving above me. I turned on the camera, tried looking for that seahorse again when suddenly this huge figure spooked me by making a quick dash from my right to the left, and as quickly as it had appeared, it disappeared. It was a Blacktip Reef Shark (Carcharhinus melanopterus). This species can grow up to 2 meters and have been credited to 11 unprovoked attacks on human since 1959. It does not pose a serious threat on human beings.

After that nasty surprise, I was already disorientated, I couldn’t find that seagrass patch where I saw the seahorse. My air was already running low (I had about 80 BAR of air left, or roughly 15 minutes of useable air at that depth) while my no-decompression limit was down to 9 minutes. Suddenly, I saw a flash of light. It was Spazm’s focus light, and he was shooting away at something. I hurried next to him. I switched on the camera and tried to focus, but still couldn’t. I would normally get in as close as I can to a subject for a macro shoot but this setup had a wide-angled lens on it. Everything was just blurry. Ah, I snapped away as many shots as I could.

Suddenly I heard alarms blaring around me. All the other dive computers had gone off because they were approaching the end of their no-decompression limit. I looked at mine: 4 minutes left and the LOW DIVE TIME warning had come on. Damn! My air was also running low. Still I snapped away until I was 1 minute from the end of my NDL. I said goodbye to the seahorse and ascended at 9m per minute to my first stop 1st 15 meters where I spent 3 minutes, carefully monitoring my air and cutting down on my breathing, breathing shallow just enough to supply oxygen to my system, and deployed my Surface Marker Buoy in case there were boats moving in the vicinity. The next stops at 12m and 9m were all done at 1 minute each, and the last two stops at 6m and 3m were at 3 minutes each. When I finished my last stop, I had run out of air. I had to manually-inflate my BCD on the surface, push my mask down, and lie flat on my back while waiting for the dive boat to come and pick me up.

When I got onto the boat, I realised that during the commotion with the shark, I had lost my slate: the one she and I wrote on six weeks ago.

I guess that was the final closure.

Six weeks ago, I went with someone to two dive sites. One was the Vietnamese Wreck, and the other: Terumbu Tiga. When I came back to Perhentian, I only went to Batu Layar instead because I could not bring myself to go to either sites. So when Birgit told us that the next site was Terumbu Tiga, I knew I had to face my demons.

Once we got there, Spazm buddied with Ridrahim, Tim Yang with Atan, Deepblu with Sharon, and I went alone.

I descended at the same place we descended, and retraced the whole dive again…alone. Ridrahim somehow broke away from Spazm and joined me. There wasn’t much to see although visibility was good. Apart from a Jorunna funebris, I could only find a few Balistoides viridescens, the fish I fear most. But I was only like 2 meters away from a huge one.

Finally, I arrived at the chamber where she I and traded messages on my wrist slate. I just stared at the place for a few minutes. I could almost hear the giggles and see the smiling face. A huge Arothron stellatus swam by me, probably sensing some hurt in me, hovered in front of my face, just staring at me. Its huge eyes looked beautifully black. I just looked at it as it swam around me. Outside the chamber, Ridrahim just stared as the fish and I danced around inside the chamber, the fish keeping some distance from this strange land creature.

After an hour, I commenced my stops, alternating between looking at the chamber I was slowly leaving and my dive computer for my run-time.

On the surface I could still see her…giggling still, making her way towards the dive boat.

It shall remain so…those sweet memories. So that Perhentian will always remain my paradise.

It had been a long night. Going through the Kuala Lipis – Gua Musang road, we stopped for an hour at Gua Musang to refresh, and then made our way again at around 4.30am, arriving in Kuala Besut at 7am.

It is already monsoon season, and none of the speedboats were running as per normal schedule. Luckily there are 13 of us so we could charter a boat for our trip.

I was last in Perhentian five weeks ago. It was a superb trip, designed to overcome certain emotional pain, and to regain my sanity. It was six weeks ago that a closure was made there.

I got to the dive shop, geared up, and went off to Tukun Laut for my first dive. I was tired. Yup, I felt tired, but still I went. There was a slight surface current, but not as strong as I would have imagined it to be.

Down at 24 meters with Katakpink and Ridrahim, I looked up and saw the dive boat. Such excellent visibility – a trademark of monsoon diving. How I wish I have a new housing for my camera; alas, my model has been discontinued so it defeats the purpose to purchase a new one online which would be cheaper than the cost to ship it to Malaysia. I’ll just have to buy a new camera…and housing…and TTL strobes.

Huge Porcupine Pufferfishes patrolled the immediate area; Tiger Trevallies hunting. There was this baitball of literally thousands of Snappers ahead of me and all I could do was stare as Trevallies burst in and out of this tight ball, taking one or two from the ranks for breakfast. I knew there was more to come…I had that funny feeling.

True enough, a 1.2 meters Blacktip Reef Shark (Carcharhinus melanopterus) appeared out of nowhere passing in between Katakpink and Ridrahim towards me. I was smiling to myself: if this animal suddenly preceives me as a threat entering its personal space, I’m gonna bleed a lot and lose a limb. It banked to its right, exposing its white underbelly to me. I went into full flutter kicks, and gave it a chase. And Katakpink and Ridrahim could only watch me going after this shark alone, disappear into the depths, only to emerge a minute or so later slapping my forehead because I did not have a camera on me – and all that chasing had taken a lot of air from my single AL80 cylinder.

Then from a 16-meter depth, I saw a school of Chevron Barracudas (Sphyraena genie). I swam towards them. They were huge. So as not to startle them, Katakpink and I went down to the bottom, knelt down and just looked at this school of predators pass by.

Excellent! Who says you have to go to Sipadan to see them?

I maintained my depth at about 14 meters after that, searching for nudibranches other than the Phyllidae sp. when I accidentally spooked a Bamboo Shark (Chiloscyllium griseum). It took flight and sought refuge in another hole only to discover that another Bamboo Shark was inside. A fight ensued and both had the other in a tight grip of their jaws. It was a funny sight. Katakpink and I decided we should mediate this quarrel and tried to force the other to loosen the bite. Was it risky? Well, yes, either could have bitten off a finger or two of ours. Anyway, they have probably decided that one has to win and the other lose. So they were not letting go of the other. What else was there to do? We held both sharks to Spazm’s camera for a photo opportunity showing two dumb sharks biting each other for a hole beneath the corals.

Next, at 12 meters, we spotted a Hawksbill Turtle (Eretmochelys imbricata) feeding on sponges. We approached it slowly and gently, Katakpink to its left, and I to its right. I lie on my tummy on the rough sea floor watching this old man of the sea eat away the sponges…my mask almost touching its beak. It was a very relaxing moment.

In the end, I had to leave it alone as I was already running low on air, and had to do my stops before I could surface.

Soon I was back on the boat, looking down through the surface of the sea…straight to the bottom…where other divers had just commenced their dive.

Perhentian has always been full of pleasant surprises for me.

(Next: The Return to Terumbu Tiga)