Tag Archives: Thresher Shark Divers

Kimud Shoal and night dive at Evo Reef

Posted on by
Reply

22 February 22:00

Our last dive on Malapascua has come and gone. And what a great day of diving it has been!

The day started with our alarms going off at 4am because the boat to Kimud Shoal left at 5am. It was extremely low tide this morning so we had to walk a fair bit out to reach the small boat that would take us to the bigger one. The night sky was all clear and the stars were on such display. Magical start of the day. It then got better when we sailed into the sunrise and watched a big pod of dolphins jumping. Just magical!

We were first at the divesite, the waters were so calm, the visibility a refresh sight after yesterday’s extremely bad visibility at Deep Rock. Not too many thresher sharks at first, and the same goes for divers. But at the second dive, there were many more of both. I had some sharks swimming real close to me this time. It was incredible and I got it all on video! Unfortunately on my GoPro Hero 4, which is ancient compared to Mikaels’s DJI Osmo Action 4. I’m still excited to see the results when we have time to go through it all (once we get back home).

During this dive, we also saw a swimming moray (they usually only sit in their holes gaping at people) and huge schools of fish out in the blue. I actually kept looking out there to see if there was a whale shark casually swimming by, but no. That would have made a perfect day even perfecterer.

Moray half out of his hole swimming. That’s not something you see every day.

We were done with our two shark dives at 9:15 and headed back to the island. Great, so much more time to chill before the third dive of the day.

During our surface interval, Mikael and I found an Australian girl from Perth who joined us at Blanco Beach Resort where she is staying for some snorkeling. We hung out the full day, had aloe massages together, had lunch, went snorkeling. It was really great. On the southwest point of the island, there is a marine protected area where no boats are allowed, strict rules of not standing, just snorkeling around. And what’s so cool about this place (the corals weren’t that impressive if you compare to what we’ve seen diving) is who you can snorkel with: baby black-tipped reef sharks! We saw so many and at the end of our snorkeling trip, I had four at the same time in front of me. Adorable!

Something that’s not as adorable was the huge sea snake we also saw. Terrified fascination kept me going closer for that money shot, but shit, I was scared! I know they’re deadly but also have super tiny mouths and teeth so far back that that can’t really bite you. But not having a wetsuit on that would definitely get the best out of a potential bite was scary. We survived though!

Sea snake!

Baby sharks:

At 17:00 we were back at the dive center and geared up for our very first nightdive. We went to Evo Reef, many artificial reefs. There was a thresher shark structure, some other sunken things and sure enough, many things came to life during the night. But since it was our first night dive, we were more focused on doing everything right and not losing each other, rather than looking at macro things. We did however see some cool things like a big crab, lionfish, moray eel, mandarin (not sure exactly but I think I might have seen them while trying to get my head in between the other 5 divers who were also looking at the same time) and many other things like swarming fish, mating fish, sea stars as usual, sea urchins.

We started the dive as the sun was setting so at first, we didn’t use the torches. Eventually though, the sun disappeared and it grew darker and darker. The visibility was okay, but it was hard to keep track of who belonged to our group since there were so many other divers. I think that was great though, because even if it obviously was dark all around, you didn’t feel alone and isolated and closed in. That was what I had been afraid of, feeling claustrophobic. But it was fine. It was a very different experience diving when it was dark, for sure. But not sure if that is something I want to do a lot of in the future. It was cool to have tried and it might get cooler with time and experience, but right now I feel fine with diving during the day with great visibility (I miss Gili T where all the dives had 50+ m visibility, we really took that for granted).

One cool crab, that was completely oval.

These night dive pictures are just to show you how hard it is to take pictures while night diving, haha!

Super tired, but not very hungry, the three of us went to dinner at the next door restaurant, Villa Potenciana. Mikael and I shared the tacco pizza and Emma told us about diving in Western Australia. They have hammerheads there! And sea lions, and a ton of other cool things. Apparently it’s not just the Great Barrier Reef that has nice diving (I’ve also actually heard that the Great Barrier Reef is kinda overrated). One day, I’m gonna dive both coasts! We also heard this morning that you can dive with hammerheads outside of Tokyo.

What a great day! But we are so exhausted now. Diving in itself is not too bad. But all the fuss around it is really hard! But it is so worth it! In total, we did 14 dives each during this stay. I am now up to 31 logged dives, Mikael at 27 and I more than doubled my accumulated divetime. Great job!

Deep Rock

Posted on by
Reply

21 February 20:03

 

I think we have finally come to the vacation mode where we don’t mind spending the morning in the hotel room and on the balcony just relaxing, going through photos and videos. And reading some. Our dive today didn’t start until 14:00. We thought it might be worth seeing a new divesite and not just diving with sharks. It was an okay dive, but we have definitely had better ones. Both here and in Indonesia.

This dive was a soft coral pinnacle, and sure enough, there were so many soft coral on the bottom at 24m. Many cool seastars as usual, we saw a pygmy seahorse, a cow fish which are so cool. I also found a dive writing board that one of the divemasters took since he didn’t have one. I also found a silicone muffin form that I brought up to the surface and threw away. I pick up everything I see and I’m so glad it isn’t too much at these dive sites.

The visibility was really bad, only like 10m. At Kimud Shoal, we had around 40m and on Gili Trawangan it was always 50+, on all dives. So the last three dives have not been optimal. Mikael is consuming much more air than normal probably due to stress of not seeing. What if we missed a whale shark today in the distance because we couldn’t see?

Pygmy seahorses. Somewhere in this picture!

Cow fish

Mikael, I and one of the divemasters ascended earlier due to Mikael running out of air. At the surface there was a pretty strong current and I started drifting away from the boat. But it worked out fine. We circled around for like 10minutes before the other ones surfaced. On the way back, on the waves, we saw lots of fly fish and we decided to skip the night dive today because Mikael has been feeling a bit off the past few nights. I think the divemaster looked a bit disappointed for the last minute cancellation, but not feeling okay while diving is not good. So we signed up for thresher shark dives tomorrow at 5am and a night dive at 17:30. It’s our last day of diving so we will max it! No matter what. The Kimud Shoal dive starts at 5am because they are going to Gato Island also. We thought about signing up for both of those big trips, but 4 dives in one day? On two divesites that are in the opposites directions. We both don’t feel 100% on these boat rides and forcing 4 dives out of our last diving day doesn’t quite feel alluring. Even if we want to give Gato another chance, I just don’t really see it being worth it. So Kimud Shoal and thresher sharks and our first night dive sounds like a good last day of diving.

Dinner once again at our new favorite restaurant, Villa Potenciana with leftovers for tomorrow’s breakfast. I can’t believe our alarms will go off at 4am, haha! And we’re on vacation, crazy people.

Today’s sunset looked like Mordor.

 

 

Gato Island

Posted on by
Reply

19 February 23:46

 

My hands this morning were almost miraculously healed! Aloe Vera is the shit for real! They were still red of course, but I could move them and touch them without them hurting or stretching the skin. My face is still a tomato, but definitely doesn’t hurt.

We got to sleep in a bit today, the boat to Gato Island didn’t leave until 11am. I had such high expectations of Gato, and they weren’t quite really met to be honest.

The boat ride was 40 minutes and before even getting on the boat, I was feeling a little bit off. Probably exhaustion. Three dives yesterday probably did that. Feeling off is fine, because that is gone once you’re in the water. But scuba diving is tough. Putting on a super tight wetsuit is not easy, it’s squeezing everything. Gearing up, putting on the weight belt which then pushes on your stomach. Making sure everything is in order, being a little bit anxious before jumping in. Everything around scuba diving is hard. Even the boat ride can be bad, even in perfect conditions as we’ve had this whole week so far. But once you descend, everything is fine. There is nothing else then what’s in front of you.

The hype around Gato Island was of course concerning the tunnel/cave diving and the reef sharks. We weren’t allowed to go inside the cave since we didn’t have 50 logged dives yet (as a safety measurement from the dive center which I totally respect) and that was disappointing. The second disappointing thing was the visibility. It was so bad. We couldn’t see the bottom and not even the instructor who went first. Eventually we found the bottom and down there the visibility was much better, but still so much worse than all the previous dives. Outside the cave, was all about the macro diving. And we did see some really cool stuff honestly. On the first dive, the coolest thing we saw was definitely the sleeping white tipped reef sharks. And they were big, like 2m? Lying on the bottom of a cave, opening and closing their mouths to breathe. There were two caves and like 2-3 in each. The first cave was under a rock formation that I had to swim through, it was scary but I saw the sharks and it was so cool. Mikael actually swam around the formation on the other side and unfortunately missed the sharks. But, lucky us, there was another cave right on the other side where more sharks slept. I got really close and it was so incredible.

Huge nudibranch

White tipped reef sharks sleeping in a cave

Shark sighting

Other things we saw was electric clam, huge nudibranchs, lots of soft corals, a fish with a big horn, clownfish of course. The electric clam was really amazing. It sat inside a crevice and there were literally visible pulsing lights coming off of it, like how?! Nature is amazing!

We had our safety stop in the middle of the turbid water which was a new experience for me I think. Probably not, but so far on this trip we haven’t really done the safety stop in mid water. But it was fine.

The surface interval was great. The BBQ was incredible like yesterday, but I still felt a little bit off and wasn’t too excited about jumping in again due to the low visibility. It was an okay dive and we did see cool stuff, but both of us had troubles with our buoyancy and I think Mikael was very nervous about the visibility because he consumed a lot of air and both dives were really short, only 44 and 36 minutes. That was fine by me though. I agree that it was not perfect diving conditions, at least when we have been spoiled with much better conditions on all of our dives together.

The second dive was really scary going down. We saw nothing and our divemaster disappeared in front of us. So they had to shine their lights up towards us so we could see where they were. But like before, the bottom was much better. As soon we reached the bottom, our divemaster showed us a coral on which so many pygmy horses lived. I can’t believe they are that tiny! Holy cow! So cute!

The rest of the dive we actually didn’t see anything too exciting. Just the normal Filippino things.

Boat ride back, cleaning equipment, writing logbook and then dinner with a German guy at the only vegetarian place on the island where they also had live music and fire show. Definitely the most popular restaurant close by. Also super good food! And cheap. For all three of us (including 5 deserts and four main courses) the total ended up being 410 SEK. Crazy!

We signed up for a dive tomorrow at a new dive site at 14:00. But we’ll see how we feel. I was feeling better after the two dives, but that’s when Mikael caught whatever I had had. 5 dives on 3 days is intense so a day of resting tomorrow might not be too bad, but one dive close by could be fine. We’ll see.

Time to hit the bed with my aloe vera socks hands again. Goodnight

Monad and Kimud Shoal

Posted on by
Reply

18 February 18:23

A day of rest did wonders, because three dives today was no biggie at all! The boat left at 6am today, we got assigned a Divemaster who led us through one dive at Monad Shoal and two at Kimud Shoal. The focus of today was sharks! At Monad, it is possible to see tiger sharks, which apparently is the most aggressive of all sharks (I thought it was bull, but no). Unfortunately, we finished that dive only having seen a white tipped reef shark. We saw a shark at three separate times but I’m pretty sure it was the same. One scary thing that happened was that my air valve was not open fully, so halfway into the dive, I actually couldn’t get enough air, but the divemaster helped me in one second and just like that, my 20 bar turned to 110. That was a bit scary! Seeing the shark, not at all! It was only like 1,5m maybe? But it was swimming around very fast.

Other than the shark, we didn’t get to see so much there. Monad Shoal is basically a big sunken island and it’s mostly sand bottom. Of course, there are a bunch of beautiful fish, starfish but it’s the big things that are really cool. We sat down on the bottom every now and then and looked out towards the blue at 22m or something, but the tiger never came. Such shame! But we have a week left, we will have more chances of seeing it!

Our next stop was Kimud Shaol. The thresher shark haven! No stress getting in, which was nice for once. The first dive, we saw a lot of sharks. Maybe not as many as two days ago and the visibility was slightly worse. But it is still so cool seeing them swimming around with their long tails. They truly are something to see! The second dive was only 48 minutes long, compared to the first one of 55 and when Mikael and I were the first two of our group of six to ascend to the surface, the crew on the closest boat looked at me and asked if I was okay. Yes, of course, why wouldn’t I be? Then they told me I was bleeding. And I really was, like a lot! I’m not sure what happened, but it must have been something with my sinuses. And the more I thought about it, I realized that it might have been something with the long stride off the boat, I think my mask went up hard on my nose when I jumped in. So for the next dive at Kimud, the third of the day, I was told to do a spin jump, it was much better and not as hard on the mask. No blood! Good thing there are only thresher sharks at Kimud, hehe!

On the third dive we didn’t see as many sharks at all. Maybe only like 10? So we focused on the small critters. The fish are so colorful and if you look closely at the soft corals, there can be so many tiny fishes there. We saw a baby moray, some nudibranchs, stonefish, pufferfish, some really cool anemones. In general, a really cool dive as well. But we were a bit disappointed that the whale shark from yesterday was nowhere to be seen today. That would have been epic!

We did see some other cool stuff on the surface though. Get ready for this: how about a big flock of dolphins jumping straight towards our boat while we were going to the first dive site? Or a blue marlin casually hanging out by the surface when we were chilling and waiting for a proper surface interval before doing our first dive at the second dive site? Or jumping thresher sharks while waiting for our third dive while having an amazing bbq onboard? Or flyfish while going back to the island? So many jumping animals, haha! And then there was the jumping eagle ray two days ago.

One, not so awesome thing, is that the sunburn from yesterday, is infinitely worse today. My face is almost purple and my hands are completely destroyed. They are swollen, they burn intensely and as soon as I move them, it feels like my skin is on fire and about to crack. The hotel receptionist and her Swedish boyfriend who lives here permanently and works from home, are so kind though, helping me mix fresh aloe to heal and trying to find out what we can do about it. The service here at Blue Coral is truly amazing! Let’s hope it is true that the second day of a sunburn is the worst and that tomorrow will be better, otherwise I’m not sure I really look forward to spending a day on the boat, diving at Gato Island but not being able to use my hands. Like just imagine squeezing them through that tight wetsuit? Or handling your gear? Or gearing up? It stings just thinking about it. Mikael also burned his hands, but not as bad as me fortunately. We will see how it goes. With a burn this bad, I’m not sure the second day is the worst…

THRESHER SHARKS / Day two of AOW

Posted on by
Reply

16 February 20:22

These past four days have been so intense that I can barely keep my eyes open at 19:00. Being tired has never meant anything before today, haha. I don’t recognize myself. But what four days it has been! First traveling to the other side of the world. Then two dives yesterday and three today, might have been a bit too much.

Our alarms went off at 5am this morning, we got takeaway breakfast at 5:30 and were at the dive center not more than five minutes later. The boats left at 6am, two going to Kimod Shoal, the feeding stations of the thresher sharks. The boat ride took about 45 minutes. I was a bit tired, but couldn’t manage to eat any breakfast. But it was all fine. It was still early. We geared up on the boat when we neared and when it was our turn to long stride in from the boat, I realized that my BCD was too big, the crew had accidently given me a M instead of XS, which was of course my responsibility to check right when we boarded. Oh well.

The first dive was our deep dive, we were going down to 30m and would do a couple of exercises down there. We hadn’t been down in the water before long before our instructor showed us the sign for shark. The first thresher shark was clearly visible, maybe 15-20m away. Can’t really say how big it was, but like all the other ones, probably a grown up one, 3-4m perhaps? It was so cool! And not scary at all. It looked so cute! Unfortunately, since this was a course dive, we weren’t allowed to bring any cameras so we have no photos from this dive. So if you can’t wait to see our photos, google it for now, they look funny and majestic at the same time with their long fins. Their eyes are so big and cartoon-y, they always swim with their mouths open.

The first exercise was to write on the board what color we saw on a scale, just so we would be aware of color distortions at that depth. Then we pointed at the board and right number sequence and touched our nose to show that we didn’t have oxygen narcosis. While we were down there, a couple of sharks passively swam past and it was just so cool! We had dived off a reef wall and had a 200 m drop below us. It was definitely dark, even in 40+m visibility. Light disappears fast. I thought it was a little bit harder to breathe down there, but it felt normal fairly fast. Being down at that depth was more scary than seeing the sharks, for sure!

The rest of the dive was just cruising around until we “ran out” of air. At 70 bar, we started swimming towards the mooring line to make our 5m 3min stop and by the time we got there, I had only 50 bar, which is the reserve. I actually got a little bit panicked, even if I knew it was only 3 minutes until I could surface, I felt like the air was running out. But of course, that was only my brain playing tricks on me. But scary nonetheless. And it didn’t help that we were so many divers at the same time on that mooring line making our safety stop in quite the current.

We surfaced and swam to our boat and when I came aboard, I was so exhausted and didn’t feel like diving any more. And we had two more! But that feeling changed after the second dive!

During the surface interval, some people saw a thresher shark jumping. Apparently they do that and can jump pretty high! I missed it and only saw the splash afterward. BUT, right before we got back to Malapascua, I saw an eagle ray jumping out of the water. That was so cool!

The second dive was a “drift dive” so we practiced the negative descent, when you enter the water without air in your BCD so you sink directly to get away from the current on the surface. The current wasn’t so bad today, but we still did everything like it was. Compared to our first dive on Gili Trawangan (Halik’s Reef), this was like a fun dive. Halik’s reef was STRONG current where you just drifted with the current.

A course dive among thresher sharks at 20m was incredible! It might have been the best dive we’ve ever done! I think I lost count of the sharks after around 6. And that was early into the dive. Many were probably the same ones, but still. They just casually swam around all of us divers, looking goofy and cute. I had one fairly big one swimming straight towards me but steering off course quickly like 3-4m in front of me. It’s incredible how fast they are and how clumsy we are underwater. SO WOW! After forty-something minutes of a very pleasant dive and countless thresher sharks, it was time to end the dive. WOW!

I felt better on the boat but still not in the mood to eat. Although the third dive didn’t feel like an impossibility. We had time to eat lunch at Angelina’s again. After not feeling like eating anything at all, that tagliatelle ragu did seem rather alluring.

At 13:30, we met up at the dive center for a briefing of the last dive of this advanced open water certification: the underwater navigational dive. I was dreading this the most. Navigating underwater with a compass. I failed to understand on land (although I completely understand how a compass works and how to think when swimming a square). But it turned out to be easy underwater. I did surprisingly well and almost made a perfect square (if only my visual reference navigation was a little bit better and I didn’t swim towards the wrong rock formation to end the square, haha).

A bit of chilling at the hotel, taking pictures of the sunset from our balcony and then went to Kokay Maldites Beach Resort for dinner. Same beach as our other favorite restaurant. It seems like that’s where most restaurants are.

First day of AOW/Nitrox

Posted on by
Reply

15 February 19:37

 

We gave ourselves no time to rest for this and I’m starting to think that our 30 year old bodies can’t really handle it. It feels unfamiliar. But we survived today. I wonder how tomorrow will go. Or the day after tomorrow.

We woke up to clear blue sky and had the most amazing view from our balcony. Breakfast was okay, but we had to stress it through to make it to the dive center at 8am. It was already 26C this morning and I started to question bringing a 5mm wetsuit. I was afraid that we would get heatstroke from just going to the dive sites.

The Thresher Shark Divers PADI dive center lies approximately 1 minute walk from the hotel. Super convenient. As usual when diving, we signed so many papers and met with our fellow course taker from China. We were told that we were going to do to two dives straight after each other; Peak Performance Boyancy at Laplight dive site and Underwater Naturalist at Dakit-Dakit. A refresher dive was included in the first one where we filled our masks with water and cleared it but also when we lost our regulator and how to find it and start breathing again. Easy peasy! That was the one part our instructor was impressed with. We wanted to do the refresher part but once in the water it felt so natural again. We were a bit spoiled at Blue Marlin on Gili Trawangan though where the Fun Dives were all prepared by the staff, so coming to this advanced course and not really knowing how to set up the gear was embarrassing. But we are alive so we did everything correctly at least, haha!

At the briefing before boarding the tiny boat, we got to know what we were going to do, and it felt easy enough. I understand why an advanced course starts with the buoyancy part, but buoyancy is tough, especially when you are performing specific tasks and trying to do it expertly. We all did okay, but I had some serious issues with staying neutrally buoyant vertically upside down. I just flew back up to the surface. No controlled breathing could have been stronger than that force. I am guessing that my new, extremely buoyant wetsuit had something to do with it. I don’t know how many times I had to retry. After a while, the instructor picked up another weight and put on my cylinder. It was better, but I still floated to the top at the end of the minute, Oh well.

Mikael did great on all parts except swimming through the square without touching. It’s hard to know if you’re completely horizontal or not. We did 4 one minute buoyancy positions: horizontal, vertical upright, vertical facing down and buddha. I don’t know how people manages the last one with the fins trying to reach the surface all the time. But I passed somehow, I think. Then was the square we had to swim through without touching and pushing things off the bottom with our regulator by controlling our breaths. It was a frustrating first dive.

The next dive was straight after but at another dive site. A bit bumpy but not too bad. Once we were there we were changing tubes to new ones and I started feeling really bad. I have had some seriously bad boat trips, but I’ve never thrown up before. I know that it feels better once you’re in the water, but I didn’t really want to rush getting that regulator in my mouth. Ugh! But once we were down it was all good.

Underwater Naturalists is supposed to make us aware of what we are diving with, so it was basically just a fun dive at Dakit-Dakit sanctuary with artificial reefs where the instructor pointed at things and we were supposed to tell her if it was a plant, vertebrae or invertebrates. Easy enough once you got the hang of it. We saw some really cool things! Huge bat fish, stone fish, can fish (I think? It looked like a box and swam backwards). I don’t know the words for everything, but there were lots of cool small things. Except the starfish, they were huge! Both blue ones but also light brown ones with white spots.

On this dive, it started to get cold. Even with the 5mm full wetsuit. It was not too bad, but I felt sorry for Tina who only had a 2,5mm shorty. Poor woman!

After the dive I felt so tired. I love diving. But today was rough! My mask was too tight and I got a piercing headache on the leftside of my forehead, I threw up, all the heavy gear, after not sleeping too well in a room that was way too much AC’d. Not too much good food eaten in the past days.

We asked for advice for lunch and went to an Italian restaurant, easy food. And super good! Angelina’s right on the “main” beach where the ferry comes through. Quickly though, because we had to be back at the dive center for the dry part of the Nitrox course where we learn how to analyze and dive with higher concentrations of oxygen. It basically lowers the risk of nitrogen toxicity, but you have to be super aware of how deep you can go with different percentages of oxygen. With our dive computers it won’t be hard. But it’s good to know why we have these limitations and what could happen.

It started raining after that, the blue sky gone and we went back to the hotel for a nap before heading out to dinner. We woke up, feeling weird and decided to stay in and skip dinner. Filled out our dive logs and will now go to bed. Because at 6am, the boat leaves tomorrow morning for two dives with sharks!