dive tioman 12-14 may 2006

despite once swearing that i would never make another road trip to malaysia during a public holiday long weekend (read previous post of old travel report on tioman for reason) , i headed off to tioman again during vesak day long weekend like a moth attracted to fire.

took several precautions this time though. like 1) arranging for our minivan to pick us up at the unearthly hour of 5.45am so that we can reach the singapore/malaysia immigration points half hour earlier than all the public coaches, and 2) going by the second link at tuas, which is more costly but less likely to have traffic jams. the additional cost of S$10 was well worth it cos we cleared through the customs in about half hour. the driver's sources informed him that there was a bad traffic jam at the woodlands checkpoint.

we were early and had time to stop over at jb for breakfast.













restoran queen park had an exciting array of chinese food. there was chye tau kueh, wanton mee, fishball noodles, dim sum etc etc. it was just half hour from second link.





satisfied after a good breakfast.

we were on the roads again at 8am and arrived at mersing around 15 past 10. ferry was at 11.30am and we had more than an hour to kill.













chilling out at cafe at mersing. teh limau was very refreshing on a hot day.

ferry was late as usual. we set off around 12pm. should have bought ramly burger to eat along the way. the boat operator loaded more passengers than the boat capacity allowed for. so some passengers did not have proper seats.













arrived tioman around 1.30pm. a warm welcome by gazillion bats hanging from the rhu tree.. eeewwwwwww













moved into room 302 on first floor. not as nice as the room 307 on second floor which i stayed in during previous trip. first floor no privacy. we kept curtains closed all the time so it was dark and looked pretty seedy esp with the red light from the bedside lamp and the pimply red blankets.













for the first time, organized toiletries! courtesy of mdm wong....

















the divers













back row (from left): raymond (virgin contact lens wearer), freddy (secret agent), bernard (diver who's unrecognisable uw), mark (my reluctant part-time buddy), matthew & jo (loving couple), sharon (xiaojie from the famous Room 302), joyce & edy (pseudo couple), abect (dive guide)
front row (from left): ros (virgin leisure diver), me

old travel report: dive tioman 25-27 mar 2005

Stuck in a Moment

Put off writing this report for so long because it was quite terrifying even recounting the events. Getting stuck in a broken-down boat in the middle of the sea would certainly not be anyone’s idea of fun.

The trip seemed jinxed from the start. Four of the passengers of the coach we were taking to Mersing came half an hour late. They were a Malay family of Pak, Ma and two girls. Usually, half an hour would be no big deal but this time, the traffic jam on the Causeway would worsen the later we were. It was a Good Friday long weekend and scores of Singaporeans were driving up to Malaysia for a holiday. Obnoxious Pak was unapologetic about being late and audaciously demanded for other passengers to make space for his family to sit together. After getting his way, he was still unsatisfied and grumbled throughout the entire journey.

A usual half-hour trip across the immigration points of Singapore and Malaysia stretched to an incredible 4 hours, in part contributed by a noisy Indian family of five who ‘disappeared’ for half an hour each time they crossed the immigration points. I wondered if they were delayed because they could not help dancing around the plastic trees at the immigration centres.

After the 7.5-hour road trip, we arrived in Mersing at 2.30 pm, to see the hourly ferry speed off from the jetty. We bought tickets for the 3.30 pm ferry but the boat came half an hour late. As the ferry sped off, we thought we had left all the bad luck behind. On the way to Tioman, the ferry broke down. Our boatman tried to repair the engine and watching him shake his head as he was fiddling with it did not reassure any of us. The sea was choppy and people were throwing up. We were told that there was no SOS radio system on the boat and our mobile phones were not receiving any signals…

We finally arrived at Tioman at 7pm. Thankfully, what followed was two days of great weather and great dives. Satisfied and relieved… until we met the same Indian family on the coach on our way back to Singapore!

Well, at least I had made it back to Singapore in one piece to write this report. I need another holiday to recover from this one.

kusu reefwalk 29 apr 06

see previous post on kusu reefwalk

this time the weather was great! no rain mud soggy shoes silty waters. was sposed to be on training as a reefwalk guide. but i chickened out and played bystander. the other trainee guides were very very good. they obviously did their homework and answered even inane questions from me confidently. at the end of the session, i was like, i don't want to 'graduate' as a reefwalk guide cos i can't speak as confidently as them and can't tell a moon snail apart from a nerita and i don't want to mislead anyone. another reason is cos i m scared shitless about public speaking.

anyways, was having a really bad sore throat that morning, and stomach was feeling oozy from an overdose of strepsils (which by the way, is a mild laxative). regardless, i was happy to be at kusu on such a great morning with beautiful weather.















the shrimp has great wriggling skills. now you see him...













now you dont....













cos feeling shy from the many kay-poh eyes staring at him, he quickly wriggled into the sand with just his eyes and tail popping out. kawaii ne?

we also saw the anemone shrimp with a pretty tail. like the clown fish, this guy is a good friend of the anemone (at least, he thinks so...). sometimes he can live together with the clown fish in the same anemone. although there may be dominance struggles in the beginning according to a hobbyist website. the anemone provides a shelter for the shrimp, while he contributes by cleaning the anemone. the anemone is a disgusting creature who eats and shits out of the same hole. yea, out of his mouth spews shit. so after he messes himself up, guess who has to clean him up? no marks for right answer. i wonder if mr shrimp eats those stuff or merely removes them. if it is the former, then that makes him equally disgusting and then it makes sense why they are such good friends. anyways, according to reefkeeping, "recent publications (Fautin, et al., 1995; Guo, et al., 1996) have indicated the relationship may be more ectoparasitic than commensal, as at least some – and perhaps all – of these shrimps eat tentacles and tissues from their host."

well, enough shit talk. we also saw several flower crabs that morning. one guy was chomping down another smaller one. wah... seafood breakfast at restoran kusu. i envy him. anyways, do you know why the female crab has a larger, rounded flab compared to male crabs? according to the learned guides, it is so as to carry the egg sac... ohhh.......makes sense. now you know how to choose the crab with higher probability of containing roe when you have a seafood meal.

besides that, the learned guides also shed light on the following stuff found in kusu:
* the Blue coral (Heliopora coerulea) - is hermatypic. has a calcium carbonate skeleton. according to ARKive, "over time the accumulated deposition of calcium carbonate (limestone) by many hermatypic corals can form large limestone structures known as coral reefs." contains zooxanthellae that makes food for the coral polyps by photosynthesis. that's why the blue coral is often found in shallow waters where it can get the sun.

* the Cactus Algae (Halimeda) - look like a cactus and is very important to reefbuilding. grows quickly and produces calcium carbonate. sadly, there aint many of these algae in kusu. maybe an indicator that the amounts of calcium and carbonate are low in the waters here.

* Soft corals - the tentacles of their polyps are always in multiples of 8 (comparison: for hard corals, it is multiples of 6)

* Limpet - is that hard little thing stuck on rocks and looks like a barnacle. difference with barnacle is that it has a conical shell (barnacle has plate-like structure at the top that opens up to allow it to stretch out its feathery legs). it lives throughout the intertidal zone, adhering itself to rocks firmly by its muscular "foot". some species are known to leave their fixed positions sometimes to feed, but always returning to the same spot. apparently, they do this by leaving a mucus trail (just like snails). the shape of the shell grows to follow the contours of the rock so that it is tightly sealed against the rock. this helps prevent the guy from drying out during low tide. it feeds on algae, scraping the algae from the rock with a radula, a ribbon-like tongue with rows of teeth. they are food for some shore birds. you can use the word 'limpet' like this: that annoying person stuck to me like a limpet.

* Fiddler crabs - the males have a huge claw which they wave to attract females to mate. they sometimes fight with other males and if they lost their huge claw in the process, the other small claw will grow larger and the lost claw will regenerate into a small claw. About what they eat, from Wikipedia: "The crab's smaller claw picks up a chunk of sediment and brings it to the mouth, where its contents are sifted through. After anything edible is salvaged, be it algae, microbes, fungus, or other decaying detritus, the sediment is replaced in the form of a little ball. The presence of these sediment balls near the entrance to a burrow is a good indication of its occupation. The action of feeding fiddler crabs is thought to play a vital role in the preservation of wetland environments; by sifting through the sands, they aerate the substrate and prevent anaerobic conditions."

* Black layer under sand - this is the result of the action of anaerobic bacteria, which thrives under low oxygen areas. when the particle size of sand is small the amount of oxygen that can get through is reduced.

here's a map of kusu:














a rough guide to where you can find the different types of marine life. of course, some of them do move around quite a bit...