(Excuse the photo-less post but such exciting events have JUST gotta happen when there are NINE divers onboard the boat, with only ONE camera... the rest of us just got desperate enough to try using our cameraphones but alas....) Anyways, if you're still interested in a photo-less account of our day out at sea with our local dolphins, do read on! Photos and vids will be posted once K! has sorted them out ^_^
We were back to using Dolphin Explorer 2 instead of the air-conditioned Explorer 1. This proved to be a good thing since Mel was shouting "Dolphin!!!" as we were approaching the nursery site at Semakau. ^_^ Open-cabin boat means that snoozing divers (such as yours truly) get the chance to shock themselves awake, look up just in time to see 1, 2, THREE!!! greyish (aka juvenile) pink dolphins just off the starboard bow of the boat! After realising that they were hanging around the area, we were kinda playing hide-n-seek with our newfound delphinium mammalian friends for an our or so. It really was a special treat for the 5 Hons. students who were out with us for their check out dives. Plus it was my third time seeing dolphins in local waters (and second time at Semakau)! ^_^ My first delphinium encounter was near St John's Island, and the second was at Semakau.
After the de-gearing and lunching, we were just starting to head back to mainland SG, and it being a nice and sunny day, the usual chit-chatting and catching up was done whilst drying off in our swimwear. Can't even remember what I was talking to Mei Lin about when I saw a grey fin pop in and out of the water. Dolphin!!! My turn to do the sudden shout! Hee~ This time the 3 (or 4) dolphins (likely to be the same ones) seemed to be riding the waves and/or boat wake. Much more playful behaviour than in the morning. They were even jumping out of the water, and "waving" to us with the flippers at some point! Pretty brilliant performance! Who needs to go for the Dolphin Lagoon show when dolphins are showing off like this in the wild. Real amazing stuff!!! Mwahaha! (apologies but I can't resist gloating~~~ ;p) And the reason why we saw dolphins TWICE in a day? Because we were on Dolphin Explorer 2!!
Oh yes. For those curious about the dive, it was relatively crap vis. Was supposed to locate and retrieve one of my missing nursery tables but we couldn't find it at all >_< Came across this drift net that went over the coral nursery, the floating nursery, coral transplant site, and all the way to the breakwater.... caught all over the corals *bah* kept having to untangle it. k! wanted to take photos/videos of it for documentation but the boatmen appeared to retrieve it before she could do so. D and I swam the entire length of it and the good news is that we only saw 5 fish (1 dead big-eyed fish, and 4 live fish - threadfin(?) butterflyfish, soapfish, common damsel, ~20cm Bleeker's parrotfish) caught in it. Bad news was that we didn't release them before the boatmen came along since we wanted k! to take photos of them....
We *did* have some excitement at the nursery as we had two young cuttlefish mothers gently laying their clutch of eggs in one of the larger Acropora sp. corals. ^_^ Kept distracting me from what we were supposed to be doing~~~ But again, no photos... It really is true that you see soooo many interesting stuff and photo chances when you DON'T have a camera....
We were back to using Dolphin Explorer 2 instead of the air-conditioned Explorer 1. This proved to be a good thing since Mel was shouting "Dolphin!!!" as we were approaching the nursery site at Semakau. ^_^ Open-cabin boat means that snoozing divers (such as yours truly) get the chance to shock themselves awake, look up just in time to see 1, 2, THREE!!! greyish (aka juvenile) pink dolphins just off the starboard bow of the boat! After realising that they were hanging around the area, we were kinda playing hide-n-seek with our newfound delphinium mammalian friends for an our or so. It really was a special treat for the 5 Hons. students who were out with us for their check out dives. Plus it was my third time seeing dolphins in local waters (and second time at Semakau)! ^_^ My first delphinium encounter was near St John's Island, and the second was at Semakau.
After the de-gearing and lunching, we were just starting to head back to mainland SG, and it being a nice and sunny day, the usual chit-chatting and catching up was done whilst drying off in our swimwear. Can't even remember what I was talking to Mei Lin about when I saw a grey fin pop in and out of the water. Dolphin!!! My turn to do the sudden shout! Hee~ This time the 3 (or 4) dolphins (likely to be the same ones) seemed to be riding the waves and/or boat wake. Much more playful behaviour than in the morning. They were even jumping out of the water, and "waving" to us with the flippers at some point! Pretty brilliant performance! Who needs to go for the Dolphin Lagoon show when dolphins are showing off like this in the wild. Real amazing stuff!!! Mwahaha! (apologies but I can't resist gloating~~~ ;p) And the reason why we saw dolphins TWICE in a day? Because we were on Dolphin Explorer 2!!
Oh yes. For those curious about the dive, it was relatively crap vis. Was supposed to locate and retrieve one of my missing nursery tables but we couldn't find it at all >_< Came across this drift net that went over the coral nursery, the floating nursery, coral transplant site, and all the way to the breakwater.... caught all over the corals *bah* kept having to untangle it. k! wanted to take photos/videos of it for documentation but the boatmen appeared to retrieve it before she could do so. D and I swam the entire length of it and the good news is that we only saw 5 fish (1 dead big-eyed fish, and 4 live fish - threadfin(?) butterflyfish, soapfish, common damsel, ~20cm Bleeker's parrotfish) caught in it. Bad news was that we didn't release them before the boatmen came along since we wanted k! to take photos of them....
We *did* have some excitement at the nursery as we had two young cuttlefish mothers gently laying their clutch of eggs in one of the larger Acropora sp. corals. ^_^ Kept distracting me from what we were supposed to be doing~~~ But again, no photos... It really is true that you see soooo many interesting stuff and photo chances when you DON'T have a camera....
3 comments:
Wow... Dolphins!
Yes you should consider not bringing cameras :P
i saw the pics on FB. dolphin sighting here? awesome!
ya la ya la.. we are all very jealous..
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