Sipadan ... Revisited

Today I dived in Sipadan... yup, last night they told us the permits were available. After dinner I prepared my camera and housing for the trip. No macro lense. I wish I had wide angle for this dive.

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Anyway, I was at the shop 7.50am. As usual, the Malaysian crowd was fashionably late, and I assume the dive shop is so used to that because seemed like no one bothered. We finally left for Sipadan at about 8.30 am.

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The 1st dive was at Coral Gardens. In the group was Jean-Li, Lt Col Rtd Dr Lee, his wife Melanie, and her sister Helen and Dr Carl Edmonds... yup, the authority, the pioneer in diving medicine. He and Dr Lee are our lecturers for the IDMO course. Carl would say that he is 'reaching 70 from the wrong direction' when asked his age. ,.... well, I am digressing but I am so awed being able to meet such a legend. And man, he still dives! But true to his lectures he dives very moderately nowadays... he believes aging makes diving more dangerous and one is more prone to get DCS and other problems if diving 'excessively' . Maximum he does is 2 dives a day!

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Anyway, Sipadan was as previous.... turtles, black tip reef sharks, and also a lot of small stuffs, nudibranches, shrimps etc, if you care to look for them.... The 1st timers were awed... yeah big stuff usually mesmerized the newbies. But the corals was disappointing.... From my previous visits (2005, 2006) I feel that more corals have been destroyed and in hindsight, there were even not as many turtles and sharks!

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Jean-Li was my buddy and she became a cam whore underwater... Posing near every turtle she saw... pretending to vomit into a barrel sponge, she looked so horrifying that I quickly took her photos, I was scared the underwater life would be traumatised...hahaha.... Well, it was fun and it reminded me of how it was when Saliha, Marina and I reacted when we came to Sipadan for the first time.

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Anyway, tomorrow were are going to go Pygmy Hunting (Seahorse la!). I am so excited, I am preparing my macro lense. Fingers crossed, hope the photos will turn out ok.

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*apparently tomorrow we are diving with one of the generals (there are a total of 20 of them) of the medical corp. Hmmmm.....