Sunday, August 28, 2011

Good Vis Day @ Pulau Hantu.....

After missing out diving with The Hantu Bloggers for three months, I re-joined their dive at Pulau Hantu this morning. It was a good dive as the visibility was good! About 4m at least! It was still bright at the deeper end!

And good vis means that we can shoot fish! I mean.....taking photos of fish. :p


Like this big Batfish! Wow! This is the biggest Batfish that I have encountered in local water so far! Some divers said it is at least 80cm to 1m!


A closer look at it! Hmmm.....wonder if it is a Hump-Headed Batfish or a Oribicular Batfish???


And it has a little "friend"......a Remora!


This looks like a Teira Batfish. In fact, there's about 3 of them swimming around us! Haha......lens not wide enough to capture all 3 in one frame. :p



Managed to shoot some Gobies before they darted into their holes.


A Winged pipefish!

Other than fishes, we spotted other creatures too!


Hmmm.....a Swimming Anemone?


Small Icon Sea Star!


Sea Fan with lots of Brittle Stars and a couple of Allied Cowries!



Colourful Flatworms!


This big Cuttlefish came into my view as I was keeping my face close to the reef looking for small critters. For a moment, I think we both were stunned by with each other. Haha :p

And of course, there's always the Nudibranch!



Top: Pimply Phyllid nudibranch (Phyllidiella pustulosa) and Bottom: Eyed Phyllid nudibranch (Phyllidia ocellata).




The Snakey Bornella nudibranch (Bornella anguilla) were out in full force! Both CT and I saw at least 6-7 of them in one dive!


These Dermatobranchus nudibranch (Dermatobranchus sp.) are also in season!


A Tambja nudibranch (Tambja sp.)


A small Reliable Chromodoris nudibranch (Chromodoris fidelis).


This looks like a Painted Hypselodoris nudibranch (Hypselodoris infucata).


There were quite a few of these tiny Doto nudibranch (Doto sp.) on the Hydroids!


A Cuthona Nudibranch (Cuthona sibogae)


This looks like another kind of Cuthona nudibranch (Cuthona sp.)! This is my 2nd encounter with this nudibranch. The first time was last month at Pulau Semakau.

Overall, it is a good dive! But on a sightly sad note is that it looks like something had been crushing onto the corals at Pulau Hantu!



Quite a big chunk of these Ringed plate coral had been crushed!

And during surface interval, we saw this large piece of debris floated by Hantu.


It was at least 1.5m by 5m in dimension! Hmmm.....wonder where did it come from?