Michael & Yuhui – Our Life Journey

Dive #5 at Barracuda Point, Sipadan

After a great dive at White Tip Avenue, we headed back to the island for some refreshments and a quick break. The military personnel on the island seem to have the best guard duty in the world? Sea view all day long.

Our next dive would be at Barracuda Point which not surprisingly meant that there would be barracudas! Visibility throughout was pretty good with max depth of ~20m and total dive time of about 40minutes.

After the descend into the clear water with about 20m visbility, we were treated to a school of jackfish right below us. It’s pretty amazing to have them swim up close to you.

Caught sight of this trio of fish swimming idling by, their facial expressions look like total slackers *grin*.

Zh’s eagle eye also caught sight of this turtle taking a break on the corals.

Another reef shark but this time a lot further away and with the strong current, it was quite difficult to get in for a closer shot.

Dive #4 at White Tip Avenue, Sipadan

We’re heading to Sipadan! After the low key dives of the first day, all of us were eager to finally get to dive at Sipadan. Our dive master would still be Niger taking us to White Tip Avenue where the visibility was definitely a lot better than Day 1.

This white-tip shark swam about 2m away from me and I was holding my breath (first time up close to a shark does that to you) when I took a few quick snaps. Luckily this shot came out quite well.

The puffer fish below probably surprised me the most since i always thought it would be a diminutive creature and not the giant that you see below.

Zh enjoying the suspension in mid-water.

Dive #3 at House Reef, Kapalai Island

A quick break and we’re off to Kapalai Island’s house reef. There were some pretty nice sights like the clown fish in torch coral below. Vis was at 5m (becoming a common occurrence) and max depth around 20m.

Pipefish above is almost invisible and cuttlefish below also doing a good join blending in. So far I’m pretty happy with the G11 since it’s able to react fast enough for my needs.

Good end to the first day, the moon was full and lit up the night sky.

Dive #2 at Ribbon Valley 1, Mabul

After a rather hearty lunch at the resort restaurant, we had some time to laze about before our next dive. I managed to grab this panorama of the area (created using my netbook on Windows Live Photo Gallery). Personally think it really captures the beauty of the place and the wonderfully kept corals.

The sea water was ultra-clear with the sun illuminating the sea bed for perfect photo taking opportunities.

Dive #2 was also quite low on vis (5m) which was unfortunate since there was a great many sea creatures to spot. This beautiful orange plate (Thanks Julian for identifying) really stood out from it’s surrounding. If Niger hadn’t pointed out the incredibly well camouflaged frog fish, I would definitely have missed it!

Checkout Dive #1 at Paradise, Mabul

What a great way to start 2010, it was finally time to dive! Our first dive would be at Paradise, Mabul to get familiar with the basics for some of us who haven’t dived in awhile. After such a long absence, I actually had to get used to descending and took a couple of attempts before I managed to hit bottom. It’s definitely beneficial to dive regularly!

While the dive master, Niger, gave everyone the usual practice rounds of clearing masks, I decided to take the opportunity to test out the new Canon Powershot G11 with it’s underwater case which I just purchased specially for the trip (the Canon A90 was getting real old and a new upgraded was in order).

Caught sight of this curious sight where the fishes? hung around in a circle and just floated with the current.

Rather uneventful dive with murky visibility (approx 5m) even though the weather was perfect. The water was comfortable (would apply throughout the trip) and I had no issues in a 5mm full skinsuit.