Wednesday, March 21, 2007

Similan Liveaboard: Leopard Shark

The Seamoth (our liveaboard) sports a really spacious sundeck (or as Yanni our DM says, moondeck) where a lot of us flocked to in the cool evenings to catch the lovely Andaman breeze and have Oprah Winfrey sessions.

The dive sites around Similan include Koh Bon and Richilieu Rock. Visibility was generally quite good but what's visibility when all you can see are other divers and more divers? Still, it took the sharp eyes of Joseph to spot a group of juvenile ... erm.. some type of fish.... at their local Seabucks joint.

The resident hermit crab was very shy and very prudently placed itself in a narrow crevice where none of our cameras could reach. Smart move, hermy!

I always have a problem differentiating between an angelfish and a butterflyfish. Then Yanni taught me an easy way to figure it out: An angelfish has dorsal fins which are sharp at the end, while the butterflys have more rounded ends..... or it is the other way around? Oh crap! I forgot again! Yanni, help.

This is a flatworm. It is a relative of the nudibranch except it is erm... flat.

Here's another cute but shy little crab. This one hid in a clump of staghorn corals while waiting for its meal to float by.

And here is the piece de resistance. A really really big Leopard shark. It was lying there on the seabed posing for us. Thing was, and I didn't notice at the time, seabed was almost 40 metres deep. That's 130 feet from the surface! Gan went crazy when he saw all of us happily snapping away, all the while running the danger of going deco! (or possibly getting the bends upon surfacing.)

Well, thankfully we all didn't, and were very happy to celebrate the sighting that evening with beer and more beer. Damn, and I can't drink.

Before we knew it, the boat pushed into a small fishing village and it was time to say our goodbyes. It has been a great trip, if nothing else, for the fantastic crew and the enjoyable gang of crazy divers on board.

I have made lots of good friends on board and we even met up a week later for some Tom Yam Kung. Thanks so much Ja for taking all that trouble to cook up a storm for us. See you guys soon!




3 comments:

Asther said...

Beautiful group photo! Wide angle lense, ar?

I tagged you... hehehe... answer ar...

Amazonman said...

It was taken with only my S80... not bad leh. hehehe

YOu tagged me? how? teach teach!

Asther said...

Hahaha... go to my blog & continue the tag la... ;P