A bunch of very happy divers returned from Albatross & Kavin II yesterday! With the current still coming in for the first dive, Albatross was the obvious choice. A blue-spotted stingray, several white tip and grey reef sharks, as well as a big school of batfish and some Spanish mackerel kept the divers entertained. Unfortunately, the current changed towards the end of the dive and after an hour surface interval, the second chosen spot Danny's Bommie was so murky that vis had dropped to only 15m. Not good enough, so the divers went over to Kavin II instead. The trusty Pygmy seahorse still sits on his fan in 17m of water, but no photographers in this group, so after a quick look, they went on along the wall. Photographers can't seem to be torn away from the Pygmy, missing everything else around them. They would have missed the turtle and a school of 7 bumphead parrot fish!! That's not a big number for a school of those parrot fish, but apparently what they lacked in numbers, they made up for in size. Sandy reckons they were HUGE!! 

Bumphead parrot fish at Sipadan. Photo courtesy of our good friends Stella
and Yogi Freund, who came across this large school during their WWF Coral
Triangle Photo Expedition in 2009/2010. Check out their amazing journey on
http://blogs.panda.org/coral_triangle/about/. You can also see more of the
brilliant photos that Yogi takes on  http://www.jurgenfreund.com/ 

Diving? How does that go again?

I can't remember the last time I went diving, but it has been a long time since I've been out on the boat. Our friends Mandy & Steve visited and talked me into joining them on Thursday. I'm glad they were so persuasive, it was a great morning out.

We went to Albatross Passage, as the current was coming in and with full moon just three days prior, it should be running quite strong, so bringing lots of fish action with them. We were not disappointed! In fact, the first dive was so good that we decided to do the second dive at Albatross, also. Unfortunately, during our one-hour surface interval, the rain came and it got quite dark down there at times. However, the current was still running strong, so the water was a bit clearer than on the first dive.



Top of the reef at Albatross Passage, and this is only
the small stuff.



Visibility wasn't that great, and I'm not a very good
photographer, so this photo shows only part of a big
school of Barraducas.

This was a decent size Grey Reef Shark, and he/she
seemed to be interested in checking us out as much
as we wanted to see him/her closer.



This is what I love about Albatross: You have big stuff on
one side, and then, when you are bored with that (yeah,
right, as if...), you have a beautifully covered wall on the
other side.