We had an early breakfast this morning so we could be at the dive shop by 08:30.
After kitting up we had a dive briefing and made the 20 minute boat ride to The Pinnacle, the other side of Pulau Perhentian Kecil. There were some waves crashing into the reef as we entered the water and made our descent. Unfortunately, as expected, the visibility was pretty poor, ranging from only 3 to 6 metres. However, Ian and I took his camera and underwater housing unit on its maiden dive voyage and taking photographs proved to be quite difficult even when you are negatively buoyant! We did manage to take a few focused pictures that were worthy of keeping but the majority were instantly deleted upon reviewing them at the surface. We had the delights of seeing a bamboo shark and several blue spotted rays, pufferfish, batfish, damsels and beautiful blue ringed angelfish, a moray eel, nudibranchs, moon wrasse and sergeant majors. Back ashore red ants plagued me during our debrief following our dive.
During our extended surface interval we ate biscuits and read our books, conscious of not having time enough to eat lunch.
Our second dive was also at Pulau Perhentian Kecil at D'Lagoon. The visibility was also poor. There were hundreds of christmas tree worms, ranging from 5 to 30 millimetres of numerous colours and varying sensitivity. There were lots of anemones with ever present clownfish. Our earlier dive was predominant of pink lined anemone fish. A large hawksbill turtle made this dive special as he swam around, spent time being cleaned and searched for food. Owing to my reduction in air consumption I was given a smaller tank for the second dive today and ended up consuming even less air! Maybe that's something useful to note in future...
After our dive we ate ice-creams. Ian was too disgusted at the price of Mars bars, at MRG 4 each, equivalent to USD 1, so we had Cornettos, at MRG 5 each, which was somewhat more satisfying...
I basked in the sun reading Ian's book and drying my dive slippers while Ian charged his camera battery. I took a necessary plunge in the South China Sea to cool down before retreating to the cabin.
We showered and packed before dinner by the sea. Well, I did. As we ate a ridiculously hot Nasi Goreng Thai, which required an urgent order of diet coke, we watched crabs going about their business at the waters edge. They're spectacular to watch, such scaredy cats in the way they react to the slightest vibration. We were mesmorised for ages watching one almost completely bury himself in the wet sand and we went to join him in the shallows before retiring early with reading material. We had the prospect of an early start tomorrow to catch the return ferry to Kuala Besut.
Copyright 2003 Helen Fuller. All rights reserved.