Once again I have stopped posting for a long time and I admitted that it has become a bad habit to delay any updates over my blog site. After a month long, I have finally gotten out of these writers block due to the busy diving schedule and a bit of over partying the nights away.
Anyway, just an overall update for Layang-Layang Island first 3 months now. I promise to post more on various topics soon.
So far, the season has been great for most divers who came here to fulfill their quest for the pelagic and most of all, the infamous hammerhead sharks. There had regular sightings of the ever shy and elegant thresher shark down at Wrasse Strip and The Valley. For the lucky divers, nothing was better than to see their ever smiling faces back to the resort and the non-stop chatting about their latest addition to their logbooks.
The mantas and the devil rays as well had been the cheering factor and spiced up with massive school of swirling jacks while being stalked by the dogtooth tunas and the giant trevally. It just got more interesting with sightings of the opportunist gray reef sharks just waiting for the frenzy to begin. Another fine day for the underwater enthusiasts.
However, the trips just came to turn into the same direction each time for each avid divers. The completion of the trip may only be reached by having to be lucky with the hammerhead sharks. One shark can be very exciting for some. First sighting will awaken the desire to see more of these amazing sharks. Some will end the trip smiling and satisfied while some made a bid to return to Layang-Layang hoping to be more lucky the next time.
Aside from that, the spinner dolphins have made most of our day especially when the mission to see the hammers came to nothing. The playful mammals gave divers hope and joy at the same time with their flamboyant moves everytime everyone started to scream in excitement upon seeing them.
Well, the season has yet to come to its end, which means more stories will be posted soon. Stories of hope, stories of desperate hearts and dramas as well. See you guys soon.
Started another day on paradise island today with early duty over the Dive Center. Great morning as usual. Two flights today arrived right on time to bring out more underwater enthusiasts. Also a day to say goodbye to Rudy and Tom who have been diving with me for more than 10 days while welcoming more people to jump in with me for the next couple of days. The goodbye was short and simple. Just the way it should be for great friendship.
The next arrival kicked off at 2pm with 7 divers altogether. The first dive was great as it was just nice to start off their adventure here. Amusing themselves with thousands of reef fish and few big tunas, they looked happy at the end of the dive. A short 1 hour surface interval after putting up fresh tanks for them was well spent on reading a book.
The second dive started at 4:30pm. We were heading towards Wreck Point accompanied by gentle swells being on the windward side. It was a great dive filled with excitement and adrenaline pumping. The current was fast enough to bring us more than a kilometer of distance after 50 minutes. A dive site where divers normally go slow along the reef was turned into series of powerful drift towards the channel. The best obviously the current. The ups, downs, left and right you name it gave us almost no time to stop for a glance and any tiny critters around. Walls of blue water decorated by fusiliers and surgeons made the dive even better.
At the end of the day, we were all agreed that the current had drained us all and the post adrenaline rush left us sated at the same time anticipating more action tomorrow.
The wonderful sunny days of Layang-Layang continues today with soothing breeze and the surrounding calm water. 4 boats keep on slicing the gentle waves towards their desired spot in hoping for the best experience it can offer. The smells of hopes and desperation filled the fresh morning air as every single divers start to gather at the dive center checking on their next underwater adventure. The divemasters and all the captains are enjoying their morning coffee as the busy hour crawls in. Definitely a great day to start.
1 more dive for me before I am done being wet and salty. On the board, written was my name and time of departure right inside the Wrasse Strip column. My divers seemed happy to see that. It is good to start a day by seeing others smile at you. A diver forgot his boots and we had to turn back at halfway made some of the guest disgruntled for the delay caused. So much excitement in them I guessed. Others just smiled and kept on chatting with each other made the tension a bit more less.
After less than 15 minutes through calm and clear water, we reached the site. In another 5 minutes, everyone was already in the water impatiently waiting for clearance to sink themselves into the deep blue water. The current was nice enough today. Not so fast and not too slow either. The blue water was decorated with the piercing sunlight from atop and empty background filled with fishes dancing around turned the scenery into perfect picture of the mother herself.
Out in the blue for a while unfortunately did not bring us any of the desired hammers. It was however compensated with the a shoal of surgeon fish circling and tailing each other around us. Back to the reef after 10 minutes we were greeted by a few white tip reef sharks lazily lying on the sea bed while a few more seemed to have entered trance state while being groomed by the cleaner wrasses. A couple of fierce looking dogtooth tuna started to circling around for a while to show off their great built before swimming off to the other direction.
50 minutes felt too short for some of the divers they decided to do longer safety stop as an excuse to dive longer. It was worth and effort as a small school of chevron barracuda passes by and swirled around for a bit.
The rest of the day was great. The current had kept on going faster each time the divers entered the water. Most of the divemasters claimed to have covered 2 sites in a single dive. Sounded great to me. No matter how I hate to admit that not being underwater for half a day made me itching all over to dive again. Another day tomorrow then I can start again with a new group. Cannot wait for the day to pass.
For the past week, I have been busy diving with the second group of divers arrived on the 5th of March. One of them were our very own ‘loyal’ guest who had been telling us that he is not coming back to Layang-Layang this year and happened to showed up with 23 days of staying with the resort. Ironically, he has been telling others how great his dives were while being here last year.
Along the group were 2 very experience divers whom one of them happened to be a professional photographer hired by the boss to get promo images for the American market. A very nice guy who has a big personality and very clear over his objectives.
The first day was not very convincing for them as I brought them down to Snappers Ledge which mainly is an easy wall dive with not so much of a pelagic to be seen. They however understood that it was only a checkout dive.
The highlight however came to happen on the 3rd day when we finally managed to get a look at the infamous hammerhead shark. Having encountered such shark has always been an exciting and great experience for me although I may have seen them many times throughout my diving in Layang-layang water.
The nest few days were decorated with some sighting of devil rays, eagle rays, even manta and other reef sharks. Those sighting sure had made some smiles with satisfaction even though some actually craved for more excitement and much more grand sighting of pelagic. You can’t of course satisfy everyone right.
Anyway, the great news arrived today with the sighting of hammerhead sharks schooling at one of my favorite site, Wrasse Strip. I had a back to back sighting of hammerhead sharks schooling at this particular site for the past 2 years. Although my group was not the one who saw them : ( it was still a great news for all of us here in Layang_Layang especially.
Fingers all crossed for tomorrow as I am going to have another try with the sharks before I hand over this group to other Divemaster as I am in need for out gassing for a day at least. Once a nitro junky, forever one.
The weather on the island was great. Although a bit dry and warm the breeze helps to cool you down just nice. For the past few days I have been gazing at the open sea of Layang-Layang hoping to catch a glimpse of dolphin’s pod. Even though still none for the moment I am sure the time will come when we get to enjoy their playfulness chasing the wave and race the boat.
Today however we were finally given the green light by Jasper to do one dive to check out on one of the best dive site on the resort, the infamous Gorgonian Forest. After an hour of last minute check on our my dive gears which seem very happy to give me some troubles such as regulator free flowing and the BCD inflator that never seem to work, we were finally ready to take our first plunge into the site.
With Averil as the leading Dive Master and me and Nelly as the member of the team we planned a short 30 minutes dive. The boat trip was a bit choppy from the channel to the site.
Approximately around 10:15am all of us were already underwater. The Water temperature was just nice at 27 centigrade. Current however was fast and steady. We chose to enter the water a bit further behind to have more accuracy on the entry point. The first 5 minutes we were swimming towards the blue water with anticipation of bumping into something great. Surgeon fish lining up with the blue background along with school of fusiliers indicating presence of currents. Just after about a minute later at 27 meters, we finally spotted a scalloped hammerhead shark gliding gracefully amidst the fishes and seemed curious at the sight of three of us. It stayed around for a minute before decided we were not that interesting(that hurts). Luckily, it made another circle before heading towards the reef leaving us drifting to the other direction. It was amazing. To make it better, one gray reef shark approached from behind to have closer look at us.
10 minutes later, after heading back to the beautiful reef slope we were greeted by a school of bigeye trevally underneath us along with few white tip reef sharks lazying on the the reef. As if those were not enough we spotted 2 eagle rays gracefully glide over us followed by a devil ray.
Once we were approaching the Point however, we were facing a bit of a down current which had sent us out again before pushing us back to the slope. Again, it brought us to another smaller school of bigeye trevally just over the top of the slope.
All the excitement have made us realized of how much you don’t realize the time as by then, it was already time to end the dive. It felt short.
I am still anticipating for bigger surprise as for tomorrow, we will dive into one of my favorite site, Wrasse Strip the site full of surprises and beauty. Come back again for more update on Layang-Layang action and surprises.
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