Today I started my dives, with all three done at Mataking Island. My fun dives were meant to be tomorrow, with today being a spare day in case of flight disruptions. But brought it forward to today as I could join a group as a favour to the dive centre, Scuba Gen. They had been very kind to me and had upgraded my bunk room to a Queen Room. They have no customers tomorrow and I’d be using quite a few resources all to myself.
Little did I know that I would be joining a group of 23 people from Kuala Lumpur and Johor Bahru, split into two boats.
Some how, I didn’t feel excited when I walked to the dive centre. It had been two years since I had dived and perhaps I was losing my confidence a little.
After reporting at 0830, we departed from the jetty behind the shop around 0915. It took about an hour to get to Mataking where Frankie, our divemaster, gave our details to the police.
Our first dive was at House Reef. It was a pretty ho-hum dive with small reef fish with one token turtle at the end. One of the divers touched the tail end of the turtle’s shell, much to the horror of the divemaster.
During the surface interval, the subgroup on our boat decided it would be cool to take an underwater photo of us in a pyramid configuration underwater. The shouting in the planning process that went on was beyond belief. There was also lots of shouting between the two dive boats. So, the surface interval wasn’t a rest to my ears.
The dive masters worked hard to change the tanks over and set everyone’s gear up. This is Asia and it is part of their job whereas in western countries, they like you to know how to set up your own gear.
Our second dive was at Postbox or Wreck. We descended to the wreck amidst poor visibility. Despite this, we pressed on with the planned pyramid photo shoot. It used up a bit of time and air.
Around the wreck I saw some large groper-like fish with horizontal black-and-white stripes, in addition to the small reef fish. [Edit: I saw from my old blog that four years ago there were plenty of turtles and some stingray.]
One of the divers complained at having been asked to surface at 50 bar. He wanted to continue till 30 bar at shallow depth because he had paid for the whole tank of air.
We took lunch and our surface interval on Mataking Island. The white sand beach was stunning as was the turquoise water. There were a few boats of picnicking snorkellers but they left us after a while. We had the place to ourselves, except for the police quarters there.
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- Mataking Island.
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- Mataking Island.
Our final dive at Mataking was Garden of Eden. Visibility here was much better and the group repeated the attempt to do the human pyramid. We started in sandy coral-free part of the sea bed, but with current, we did shift and come into some coral.
The divemaster should have put his foot down and disallowed such activities. He had said “No” before, citing that very same reason but gave in. I think they were afraid of offending the customers. In general, they weren’t a refined bunch. Their behaviour underwater including simulated sex, doggy-style with each other and doing likewise unannounced to the divemaster.
The middle part of the dive had some beautiful coral. We saw the antennae of a lobster that was hiding under some coral.
Unfortunately, the scenery changed into an underwater desert of broken coral on the seabed.
We took a photo stop on Timba Timba Island, which is a little more than a large beautiful white sandbar.
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- Timba Timba Island.
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- Timba Timba Island.
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- On Timba Timba Island.
We reached Semporna around 1700. At the dive centre, I dropped off my gear and didn’t even have to wash it. It would all be taken care of for me. Amazing service.
After freshening up, I took dinner on the waterfront restaurants, accosted by wandering salesmen selling fresh seafood.
Overall, it wasn’t my day of diving in the Semporna area. I was disappointed with the sea and the companions that I had. Worn out, I turned the lights off for sleep before 2000. I woke up around 2300 feeling like I’ve had a full night’s sleep. Fortunately, I fell back asleep till around 0500 next day.