Archive | July, 2014

So in the first part of this trip I wrote about getting to Pom Pom, our experience there, the food, the resort and so on. But obviously we went there for diving! So how was SCUBA diving at Pom Pom island?

I didn’t have the best start, gearing up for the first dive..my BCD back plate snapped – boo! Shortly after this picture I think.

But even the shore dive on the first day was great, just look at that scenery and crystal clear water.

One of my issues with diving is that…I’m so white like a milk bottle, whenever someone takes a picture of me underwater with a flash – it gets mad overexposed..haha. Like so:

Anyway as for diving, we had a great time, visibility was pretty good on the whole, currents not to strong and some interesting spots (You’ll see so many turtles you’ll get kinda bored of it haha). The only thing that kind of freaked us out was the bombing, the sea gypsies use dynamic/grenades/c4 to bomb large areas of the coral and catch all the fish.

This leads to massive devastation of the coral ecosystem, and a loud bang under the water when you are diving (if you are near enough you can feel a slight movement in the water as the force wave passes by).

The place was absolutely stunning of course, whichever way you looked it was just amazing and the water was super flat like a millpond most of the time. Really relaxing.

There was a good variety of things if you are into photography too (macro and micro), like this cute Juvenile Spiny Puffer.

And this fearsome Moray Eel.

And best of all this rather prehistoric looking Crocodile Fish.

Here’s Kim and I enjoying to the max, we had a really good time and great dives at Pom Pom – can’t wait to go back!

These were our dive-sites:

Day 2:

#1 Drop Coral – Manta Buan
#2 Aquarium – Manta Buan
#3 Mandarin Playground – Pom Pom

Day 3:
Bohey Dulang
#1 Two Brothers – Beautiful coral landscape, drift dive. Orang utan crab. Turtle. Cuttlefish.
#2 Two Sisters – Juvenile box fish. Saw the results of fishing with dynamite 🙁
#3 Shore night dive – cuttlefish, nudi, lots of eels (zebra eel)

Day 4:
Mataking
#1 Shipwreck post – garden eel, lion fish, angler fish, trigger fish, Moray eel, huge old turtle, juvenile box fish
#2 House Reef – amazing under the jetty was like the world’s best aquarium. Saw the massive resident barracuda called charlie. Scorpion fish, garden eels. Unicorn fish.
#3 Pom Pom Lobster Wall – nudi, scorpion fish, turtle, amazing wall drop

Shipwreck post is actually a pretty interesting dive as there’s an official (POS Malaysia sanctioned) underwater post box where you can send your postcards out, really cool! Unfortunately there were a LOT of particles in the water and it was pretty dark so the pictures didn’t come out great, but it was a really fun experience.

Another memorable dive was the Mataking House Reef, which is basically a dive under and around the resort jetty, there is a lone Barracuda that’s always there, IIRC his name was Charley. He kept his beady eyes on us, but was pretty cool.

The obligatory underwater group shot (which you might have seen printed out at this years MIDE).

I honestly can’t wait to go back, and am just itching to go diving in general. Arghhh!

Underwater pics thanks to Marcus & JK.